The Toolbox Revisited: Paths to Degree Completion from High School Through College

A Forum — March 17, 2006

Background

The Toolbox Revisited is a follow-up to the 1999 Answers in the Tool Box. Using NELS 1988/2000 data, this new study followed students who were eighth graders in 1988, graduated high school in 1992, and set out to earn a bachelor’s degree.  Their educational results were tracked using their high school and college transcripts through December 2000.  

The NELS 1988/2000 data primarily used in this report is data from the national grade-cohort longitudinal study conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). This data set is able to determine which elements of formal schooling contribute to completion of a bachelor’s degree for students who attend a four-year college, including community college transfer students. The report identifies elements that accelerate or hinder academic momentum and degree completion.

Clifford Adelman, a Senior Research Analyst in the U.S. Department of Education and author of The Toolbox Revisited, shared the report’s assumptions and conclusions during this forum. He emphasized that the study does not include students who never attend a bachelor’s degree-granting institution or who are older adults when they become college students. It does not include people who do not finish high school, earn a GED, or never enter a postsecondary institution.

The report does show that of all eighth graders in 1988:

• 78% graduated on time in 1992 with a standard diploma;
• 53% entered postsecondary education directly from high school;
• 48% persisted from their first to their second year of postsecondary study; and
• 35% earned a bachelor’s or associate degree by December 2000.

Of the students who were in the 12th grade in 1992 and subsequently attended a four-year college (including community college transfers), 66 percent finished a bachelor’s degree by age 25/26.

 The NCES Graduation Rate Survey, shows a lower college graduation rate than Toolbox for several reasons, according to Adelman. The Survey includes older non-traditional students who are much less likely to complete a degree. As Adelman puts it, “The Graduation Rate Survey does not distinguish between your daughter and your brother-in-law; and however wonderful and smart a guy your brother-in-law may be, history has shown us time-and-again that his chances of finishing a degree are a fraction of your daughter’s chances.” The Graduation Rate Survey also does not include students who transfer in from either a community college or another four-year college; and it  follows only students who  were full-time students and entered n the fall term. “The Toolbox Revisited,” says Adelman, “shows you everybody.”

The students in the new Toolbox were very mobile, according to Adelman. More than half attended more than one school; 20% started in one four-year college and earned a bachelor’s degree from a different four-year college; and half of those crossed state lines to do so. Adelman emphasized that while the school a student attends is responsible for boosting the student’s momentum toward earning the degree, the student is also responsible.

Toolbox Revisited reinforces the conclusions of the original report but adds new information about what counts in bachelor’s degree completion:

• The academic intensity of a high school curriculum counts even more than it did in the original Tool Box study, as do high school grades/class rank.
• Senior year test scores count less, since the curriculum represents an investment of three to four years while the test scores represent three to four hours on a single day.
• Not all high schools come close to offering a full curriculum portfolio (referred to as opportunity-to-learn). Minority students and those from families of low socio-economic status are disproportionately affected. For example, 45% of Latino students versus 59% of White students attended a high school that offered calculus.
• It is not enough to count Carnegie Units in broad subject areas; it is necessary to know what is actually taught in particular courses and whether it matches the demands for entry-level courses in two- and four-year colleges.
• Some demographic information is significant in predicting who completes a degree, such as parents’ attendance at college, race/ethnicity, family income and gender. Other demographic information does not matter, such as second language background, number of siblings, or immigrant status of parents.

There are also aspects of the high school curriculum that provide greater momentum to degree completion than others:

• The combination of getting beyond Algebra 2 in math and taking three Carnegie Units in core laboratory science (biology, chemistry, physics) is more critical than taking three units in foreign language or Advanced Placement classes, even though Advanced Placement courses contribute to the highest level of academic intensity in a high school curriculum.
• Of students who completed a high school curriculum at the highest levels of academic intensity in high school (the report measures 31 levels), 95% earned a bachelor’s degree.

There are also important aspects of college itself that provide academic momentum to degree completion:

• Timing is important. Entering college or community college directly from high school makes a difference. For students who graduate in June, starting college after the following January dramatically reduces the rate of degree completion.
• Place is less important. As long as students attend a four-year school at some time, where they start does not make a difference in degree completion. As Adelman puts it, “Kids who go to Princeton or Pomona are going to graduate, but that’s only five percent of traditional-age undergraduates.”
• Students are more likely to graduate with a degree if they make a formal transfer between institutions without “swirling” among multiple colleges; they are more likely to graduate if they are continuously enrolled, even part-time and if their GPA trends upward.
• Math continues to make a difference in college. Students who take college-level math as early as possible no matter what their eventual major are more likely to graduate with a degree.

The most important fuel for academic movement during the first year of college is finishing the year with twenty or more credits. “Twenty turned out to be the magic threshold in both the original Toolbox and Toolbox Revisited,” says Adelman. This includes credits earned during the summer, in dual-enrollment courses in high school or regular college courses. For students who cross the 20-credit line in the first year, 78% earned a degree.

There are also aspects of postsecondary education that do not bode well for degree attainment. Adelman says no-penalty course withdrawals and no-credit course repeats are a “death knell that is within the power of institutions to control.” For those who finish degrees, this is the major contribution to excessive time-to-degree. Changing majors does not affect degree completion, but it does affect how long it takes to earn a degree.

Financial aid was not a significant factor in whether students completed a postsecondary degree. The average time-to-degree was 4.58 calendar years (5 academic years), a little higher than the original study. Is time-to-degree an important issue? “Ask any family.” says Adelman, “The fact of earning a degree is far more important.”

Recommendations

Adelman’s recommendations focus on students, institutions, and policymakers. Adelman believes it is important to consider students as adults making a series of investment decisions. Students, not the institutions, should be the center of the story. They must not wait for somebody to do something to them or for them. The study recommends, for example, that high school students log on to college and community college websites and search for examples of the type of examinations and assignments that await them to avoid any “disconnect” when they arrive on campus.

Adelman says colleges should become more involved in secondary school curriculum preparation and provide concrete examples of college assignments, exams, and labs. High school teachers, guidance counselors, parents, and students should have access to this open display of content standards, and it should be included in all recruitment and promotional literature. Institutions should limit no-penalty course withdrawals and no-credit course repeats, creatively increase the use of summer terms, monitor gateway course participation, and report rates of persistence. Overall, Adelman says Florida does by far the best job of tracking college students and offering consistent courses and credit-granting opportunities across all institutions.

In conclusion, Adelman says the important themes of The Toolbox Revisited are:

• Maintaining academic momentum,
• Curriculum counts –both in high school and college,
• Student use of time is more important than place, and
• Students are front-and-center as decision-making adults.

Adelman also connected his analysis to No Child Left Behind of which a major feature is providing quality academic curricula to all students: “The task of providing quality secondary school curricula to everybody, the paths to AP, the paths to the kind of learning challenges students will face in higher education, is enormous. If the promise of No Child Left Behind is to be realized at the secondary school level, it is first and foremost through the equitable provision of opportunity-to-learn.”

 

Resources

The Toolbox Revisited Powerpoint Presentation

The Toolbox Revisited is available online at www.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/toolboxrevisit/index.html. It may also be ordered online at www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs/html.

Conley, David T. College Knowledge: What It Really Takes for Students to Succeed and What We Can Do to Get Them Ready. New Jersey: Wiley, 2005.

American Diploma Project. Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma that Counts, 2004.

Venezia, A., Kirst, M.W., and Antonio, A.L. Betraying the College Dream: How Disconnected K-12 and Postsecondary Education Systems Undermine Student Aspirations. Stanford, CA: Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research, 2003.

Presenter

Clifford Adelman is a Senior Research Analyst at the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education. He taught at Roosevelt University, the City College of the City University of New York, and Yale University, and served five years as Associate Dean and Assistant Academic Vice-President at the William Paterson College of New Jersey before coming to the U.S. Department of Education in 1979.

In the Department of Education, Adelman managed higher education issues for the commission that wrote A Nation at Risk (1983) and conducted the research on which its high school curriculum recommendations were based. Adelman also designed, managed, and served as amanuensis for the higher education follow-up to A Nation at Risk, the Involvement in Learning report (1984), which has been cited as responsible for kick-starting the assessment movement in higher education. He conducted studies of assessment and testing in the late 1980s and then took on the task of editing and analyzing the major national longitudinal studies databases. From this work, Adelman wrote seven monographs in the course of this effort, the best known of which are Women at Thirtysomething: Paradoxes of Attainment (1991); The Way We Are: the Community College as American Thermometer (1992); Women and Men of the Engineering Path (1998); and Answers in the Tool Box: Academic Intensity, Attendance Patterns, and Bachelor’s Degree Attainment (1999). To which he added A Parallel Postsecondary Universe: the Certification System in Information Technology in 2000, the first study of IT certification.

More recently, Adelman has produced the companion volumes Principal Indicators of Student Academic Histories in Postsecondary Education, 1972-2000 (2004) and The Empirical Curriculum: Changes in Postsecondary Course-Taking, 1972-2000 (2004), and added to the collection of monographs with Moving Into Town—and Moving On : the Community College in the Lives of Traditional Age Students (2005). The follow-up to/replication of the original “Tool Box” study using a more recent cohort, The Tool Box Revisited: Paths to Degree Completion from High School Through College, was published by the Department in February 2006.

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