Background
In Senate Bill No. 183 from the 1989 legislative session, Section 13 set up a program designed to evaluate the performance of individual schools and school districts in the state of Oklahoma. This program not only required multiple types of evaluation by the State Department of Education, but also required that the individual schools and districts be notified of these evaluations, and that the general public also be advised as to the “effectiveness” of individual schools or districts. In response to the directive of SB 183, the State Regents provide the following four reports; (1) High School to College-Going Rates for Oklahoma High School Graduates to Oklahoma Colleges; (2) Headcount, Semester Hours, and GPA Report; (3) Mean ACT Scores by Oklahoma High School Site; and (4) Remediation Rates for Oklahoma High School Graduates in Oklahoma Public Higher Education (beginning in 1995).
The State Regents as part of a cooperative effort with the State Department of Education to provide measures or “indicators” of educational performance has provided information on “High School to College-Going Rates for Oklahoma High School Graduates.”
Methodology
The data used to construct this summary come from two sources, the Oklahoma State Department of Education and the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. Data derived from the State Department are aggregate data, not individual student data, reported to the Department by individual high schools each year. The State Regents’ data are created from the Unitized Data System (UDS). The UDS contains a large number of distinct “units” of data for individual college students every semester. Because no comparable database exists for high school students, recent high school graduates are estimated by ages 17, 18, and 19.
In compliance with Senate Bill No. 183, the State Regents will transmit these data to the Office of Accountability.
Caveat
The data displayed in this report are not complete in several respects. First, there are several private high schools and home-schooled students in Oklahoma not reported on the State Department of Education database. Second, there are several private colleges and universities that do not participate in State Regents’ Unitized Data System. Third, the coding of first-time freshmen depends entirely on institutional input, because a statewide high school database does not exist in Oklahoma.
The report also does not track out-of-state students, nor does it include those students who received GEDs or dropped out of high school prior to graduation, but attended college as an adult or through admission to an “open-door” institution for which high school graduation is not required.
Additionally, beginning with the 2008-09 reporting year data used to obtain the college-going rates will come from the Oklahoma State Regents new data system. The new data system meets the needs of our education stakeholders by providing accurate and timely data used to evaluate student performance and success.
Analysis
The data describes 2012 Oklahoma high school graduates who entered an Oklahoma college or university as first-time entering freshmen in fall 2012. It lists the following information by county, district, and high school site: (1) the number of high school graduates; (2) the number of high school graduates who went directly to college the following academic year (linear college-going rate); and (3) the number of high school graduates who delay entry into college for one year or more.
For 2012, the State Department of Education reported 39,082 students graduated from Oklahoma high schools. Of that amount 20,101 or 51.4% entered an Oklahoma college or university the following academic year. This is 1.2 percentage points lower than the previous year.
All high school graduate years can be viewed by selecting the appropriate links provided on the Oklahoma State Regents website.