Washington state education officials know a lot more about your kids than they ever knew about you. They can now track a child from kindergarten through college enrollment and soon will be able to tell you everything about every child who has gone to school in Washington from preschool through their first job.

By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP

The Associated Pres

Students on the University of Washington campus walk between classes. State education officials soon will be able to tell you everything about every child who has gone to school in Washington.

Washington state education officials know a lot more about your kids than they ever knew about you.

They can now track a child from kindergarten through college enrollment and soon will be able to tell you everything about every kid who has gone to school in Washington from preschool through their first job.

Everything includes every school they attended, every achievement test they passed or failed, their ethnic identity, whether they qualified for free lunch, what college they chose, if they had to take remedial courses, when they started college, and more.

Of course this information is anonymous to outside viewers, including researchers and the public, but it gives local school officials a lot to comb through to find ways to improve their preparation of students for college and the world.

For example, Seattle Public Schools can see in a new report from the Education Research & Data Center (ERDC) that about 73 percent of the class of 2009 enrolled in college after high school, and that the schools most likely to get students from Seattle were the University of Washington, the local community colleges and Western Washington University. The district also sent three graduates to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, two to Harvard and three to New York University.

The report also shows that about 22 percent of the Seattle graduates who went to college had to take remedial math classes — pre-college math — when they got there. About half that many had to take pre-college courses in English.

Statewide, about 63 percent of all 2009 high-school graduates enrolled in college. About a quarter of those 39,537 young people needed to take remedial courses in math, and 13 percent weren't ready for college English.

Seattle Public Schools has been paying a national organization for nearly the same information the state can now provide for free, so as the state analysis reaches the level of detail the district needs, it will likely save the district money, said Mark Teoh, executive director of research, evaluation, assessment and development.

But more importantly, Teoh said, the state is offering this information to parents, giving them another tool for understanding school districts and high schools.

"I want to applaud the fact that ERDC is putting this information out there," he said.

Brian Vance, principal of Seattle's Roosevelt High School, said the college tracking information helps his staff assess if they are making progress in improving student readiness for college.

"This is a good way to verify the numbers and get some confirmation that we're on track," he said. Until a few years ago, the district was relying entirely on self-reporting by students to keep track of who goes to college.

Vance likes the way the state data list all the individual colleges his students are going to, compared to a national site, College Tracking Data Services, which reports enrollment numbers.

But he would like to see more detailed data, including college numbers by ethnicity, which the state said will be added soon.

"There's work to be done in getting more students of color into college. That's been a focus for us," Vance said.

The national college-tracking site also includes data on how many high-school graduates make it to the second year of college, which, Vance said, is as important as college acceptance.

State officials hope to use the information they are gathering about college enrollment to help others better prepare for college and succeed once they get there, and they expect to expand their reports in the near future.

"The silver bullet is to pay attention to people all the way through," said David Prince, director of research and analysis for the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges.

The state's new and improved data center meshes well with efforts in Washington's K-12 and college systems to help young people understand what they need to do to prepare for college-level math, for example, Prince said.

Universities expect students to know more math than they are required to master for a Washington high-school diploma, but some students who thought they were ready for college don't find this out until they apply or enroll, Prince said.

If the state can close that information gap, while continuing to raise its math standards, fewer high-school graduates will need to take pre-college math when they begin higher education.

The high school to college report is the first example of what the state's new joined student data system can do, said Katie Weaver-Randall of the Education Research Data Center, which is housed in the state Office of Financial Management.

Eventually, the state will follow up on nongraduates and track the path of high-school grads who do not go on to college. Another report in the works will focus on college graduates to see if they got jobs after leaving school.

Students on the University of Washington campus walk between classes. State education officials soon will be able to tell you everything about every child who has gone to school in Washington.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016806921_tracking...