Back to IntroductionBy Michal Smith-Mello
From Listening to Kentucky High Schools
pp. 3-6, published 2002
The four schools selected as subjects of the case studies presented here were identified by a multiple regression analysis designed to predict postsecondary attendance rates for the state’s public high schools.(1) The analysis included data on factors that studies have linked to higher rates of college attendance. For example, we controlled for the percentage of students who are eligible for free and reduced lunches, a proxy for poverty; urban or rural designations; district-level per pupil expenditures; the size of the school; and the portion of the county’s population with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Based on a comparison of predicted to actual postsecondary attendance rates, the four schools chosen for study were found to have overperformed, performed as expected, or underperformed in 1998. The postsecondary attendance rates we use here are from the 1998 “Transition to Adult Life” reports to the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Assessment and Accountability. Our database also includes such data as county unemployment rates and the entire body of data from School Report Cards, which includes school performance on standardized national and state tests, average years of teacher experience, dropout rates, etc.
In selecting sites for study, we also chose to vary subjects by region and by urban and rural classification. Some of the schools chosen for study are located in counties that are designated as metropolitan by the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but the character of all these counties, like the vast majority in the state, is not classically urban. One high school is located in a county that is strictly rural; that is, it has no municipalities with a population of 2,500 or more. In terms of size, the larger schools had 1998 graduating classes between 200 and 300 students, but the rural school had a substantially smaller student body.
We purposefully excluded certain classifications of schools as possible study sites. On the recommendation of staff of the Kentucky Department of Education, we excluded independent, magnet, or traditional schools because it is believed that the socioeconomic characteristics of the student bodies in these schools and thus their overall performance is likely to be skewed. Likewise, we chose not to include alternative schools, which clearly do not represent typical high schools.
It is important to note that these case studies focus only on the immediate postsecondary outcomes for graduates of these high schools. They do not examine critically important rates of college persistence, which are quite low in Kentucky. Here we focus only on the choices students report having made in the year following graduation from high school. Some research, however, shows that these postsecondary choices are highly predictive. That is, students who do not opt to go to college immediately after graduation from high school are far less likely to attend college.
The findings of these case studies also suggest that circumstances in a high school can change rapidly given the quality of leadership, external economic forces, and possibly, as one principal suggested, the character or personality of the graduating class. Figure 1 illustrates the degree to which postsecondary outcomes at these schools have deviated from the state average on a year-to-year basis between 1993 and 1998 though they have been trending sharply away from the state average in more recent years. All of these schools have experienced changes in leadership since the 1998 data on outcomes were collected and, thus, have clearly been in transition. For all but one of these schools, new leadership appears to have made a positive difference, bringing new energy into the school and altering some of the circumstances that existed when these postsecondary attendance rates were reported and refining others. While we found readily identifiable strengths and weaknesses at each high school, we also found many potential strengths and significant promise at one of the high schools at the lower end of the spectrum of both predicted and actual postsecondary attendance rates.
Figure 1: Percent of College-Going Graduates, Case Study High Schools, State Average, 1993-98
To preserve privacy, we have labeled the schools High Schools A, B, C, and D. The letter grades we have assigned these schools reflect our ranking of their performance. As shown in Figure 1, however, High School B historically has had a higher rate of postsecondary college attendance than High School A though, by 1998, college attendance rates were slightly below those of High School A. Its achievements, however, simply meet, rather than exceed, expectations based upon our predictive criteria. While a credit in itself, the +17 percentage point difference between predicted and actual outcomes as shown in Figure 2 and our case study findings suggest that High School A may have considerably greater strengths.
Conversely, we find a wider negative gap, -17 percentage points compared with -12 percentage points, between the predicted postsecondary college attendance rates and the actual rates at High School C rather than High School D. Here, however, our case study findings led us to conclude that High School C has far greater strengths and is likely to become more successful in the years ahead. Our case study found that this small, relatively underfunded school had stronger leadership, a far more positive culture, a dedicated faculty, and considerable social capital to draw upon within the school and from the small, close-knit community where it is located. Further, the school has undergone important changes since the data on graduation rates were collected. In short, High School C appears to have many of the ingredients to succeed while High School D, by its own staff’s assessments, appears headed down a self-fulfilling track of low expectations.
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Ahead to Profiles of Case Study Schools
Refer to Appendix A for a complete explanation of the method and presentation of the model results. Return to text.