{"id":571066,"date":"2021-04-21T07:01:12","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T11:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/?post_type=article&p=571066"},"modified":"2021-04-22T16:37:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T20:37:26","slug":"doomed-by-8th-grade-underserved-students-thrive-in-college-but-disparities-in-access-start-early-persist-insidiously-new-report-reveals","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.the74million.org\/article\/doomed-by-8th-grade-underserved-students-thrive-in-college-but-disparities-in-access-start-early-persist-insidiously-new-report-reveals\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Doomed\u2019 By 8th Grade: Underserved Students Thrive In College, But Disparities In Access Start Early & Persist Insidiously, New Report Reveals"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/span>hen it comes to understanding which students make it not just to, but through college, substantial past education research has identified steep differences along lines of race, gender and class<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A recently released report<\/a>, however, provides an alternate narrative.<\/p>\n

The study, which links middle and high school achievement to postsecondary outcomes in five New England school districts, finds stark racial and socioeconomic gaps in enrollment at four-year colleges. But after students matriculate, disparities in who continues on toward graduation largely disappear.<\/p>\n

While white students in the study enrolled in four-year colleges and universities at more than twice the rate of their Latino peers and nearly a third more frequently than their Black counterparts, the racial differences in postsecondary persistence were comparatively meager. White students persisted in college through their sophomore year at a rate only 15 percent and 6 percent higher than their Latino and Black peers, respectively.<\/p>\n

The data, which tracked about 7,000 students from 8th grade through their 2016 high school graduation, came directly from the participating school districts: Worcester and Malden, Massachusetts; Manchester, New Hampshire; Hartford, Connecticut and Portland, Maine. It was then linked to those students\u2019 post-secondary trajectory two years after leaving high school using numbers from the National Student Clearinghouse<\/a>, which tracks data from colleges and universities across the country, revealing similar patterns along lines of class, disability status, and English language proficiency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real gap is in who gets to go to those schools, not in whether they can succeed once they get there,\u201d Elina Alayeva, a co-author of the study and executive director of Springpoint<\/a>, a strategic advising organization for schools, explained to The 74.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is likely that there are students who are not getting access to a four-year institution who could be successful there,\u201d added Ali Huberlie, another co-author from the consulting organization EY-Parthenon.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Above, steep disparities in rates of four-year postsecondary enrollment along lines of race, gender, class, and more. Below, for persistence at those schools after the two-year marker, gaps narrowed considerably. (EY-Parthenon & Springpoint)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The results may come as something of a surprise in the context of previous research from the Pell Institute finding that just 11 percent of students from the lowest-income quartile earn bachelor\u2019s degrees in six years<\/a> as opposed to 58 percent of peers from the highest income group. Among the population writ large, only 14 percent of Black adults<\/a> and 11 percent of Latino adults hold degrees from four-year colleges, compared with nearly a quarter of white adults.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear why persistence rates for low-income, Black and Latino students aligned more closely with those of white and more well-off students in this New England study. One difference, however, is that students were tracked only two years beyond high school, rather than through college graduation.<\/p>\n

Postsecondary persistence did vary significantly depending on whether students enrolled in two-year or four-year colleges. Across the five districts, students who went on to four-year institutions were on track to graduate twice as frequently as those who selected two-year schools, mirroring national trends.<\/p>\n

The data underscore that high schools should \u201cguide students toward a four-year institution if such an experience is available for them, as these appear to be the schools that are providing the strong supports predictive of success,\u201d the authors wrote in the report.<\/p>\n