In a bold new report, entitled College- and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success, released on January 12, Education Sector’s Chad Aldeman proposes a new accountability measure for high schools—whether they are preparing students to succeed in college and careers.

Inspired by the tendency of some “low-performing” high schools to graduate students who enroll in college at a higher rate, have higher college GPAs, and fail fewer remedial courses than their counterparts from some “high-performing” high schools, the report suggests that holding high schools accountable for their students’ college performance is an essential step to improving America’s high schools.

Of course, as the report acknowledges, many—if not most—“high-performing” high schools graduate students who go on to have great college and career success, and many “low-performing” high schools are failing their students on a fundamental level.  Nonetheless, the fact that any schools that are labeled “low-performing” are outperforming some of their “high-performing” counterparts when it comes to college attainment indicates flaws in the assessments system.

As the report says, “Tests and other proxy measures can offer only a limited snapshot of what students know and can do, and they have the potential to encourage educators to teach to the tests and narrow the curriculum.”

The report argues that outcomes-based assessments have an advantage because they would allow educators to feel that they are being evaluated based on more than the results of a single test, help with inter-state comparisons, and encourage alignment between high school, college, and work-force standards.

College Summit’s own recent policy paper, The Promise of Proficiency, makes a very similar argument, urging the federal government to support the gathering of college proficiency data by high school, disseminate this data and empower educators to use it to drive programmatic change, and reward those high schools that have successfully increased their college proficiency rate over time.

We’re exceptionally pleased to see that innovative education policy minds are starting to realize the value to high schools of college proficiency data, and applaud Education Sector for tackling this issue.

Read the Education Sector report.

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