Oct. 17--The College of Lake County and some of its largest feeder high schools have agreed to pool data on student performance to try to tease out ways to give kids a leg up on college success.
The initiative is part of the College of Lake County High School Alliance, which aims to better prepare area high schoolers for college and increase opportunities for them to earn college credit before graduation.
The College of Lake County and 12 area high schools that send CLC more than 80 percent of each year's incoming freshmen formally launched the partnership in February, and the data-sharing initiative is one of the first steps they're taking, said College of Lake County provost Rich Haney.
Haney said he met Wednesday with high schools that have already agreed to the data swap to start talking about what questions they want to use the numbers to answer.
"We would know how students performed when they got here, but we didn't know what happened to them in high school, and high schools didn't know what happened to their students once they left," Haney said. "The idea is we're able to share that information so we can each make better-informed decisions about our process."
Haney said the College of Lake County plans to compare the high school transcripts of successful students to those who struggle. The goal is to pinpoint particular high school classes that seem effective at preparing students for college work, which could help both high school and college counselors better advise students on selecting the right mix of classes, Haney said.
The College of Lake County also wants to see whether they can use students' high school GPAs to predict success in particular courses. In the past, incoming students with a high enough class rank could place into more advanced courses. But now that some high schools are dropping the rankings, the college needs a new way to evaluate which students are ready for higher-level work, Haney said.
Warren Township High School District 121 has already signed on. Superintendent John Ahlgrim said data on his students' performance at College of Lake County could help the high school adjust its curriculum to help students avoid remedial classes.
"What we're trying to figure out is can we decrease the number of kids who have to take preliminary classes before they're ready for college work. Maybe we could find specific skill areas where our students have been lacking, and help build those skills in our program," he said.
About 77 percent of 2013-14 graduates of Lake County high schools enrolling in the College of Lake County in 2014 were reading and writing at the college level, but only 29 percent were ready for college-level math, according to a 2014 report from the College of Lake County's Office of Institutional Effectiveness, Planning and Research.
About a third of students needing extra math work were in upper-level remedial courses, but 11 percent were considered "below basic algebra readiness" and 2 percent weren't deemed qualified for any College of Lake County math course, according to the report.
"It's frustrating for the kids," said Ahlgrim, adding that it means they spend more time in college just getting ready for degree-level work.
While students from high schools that sign on to the alliance's data sharing program don't need to provide consent for their high school academic records to be shared, Haney said their data will be handled securely just like any other College of Lake County student data.
"We're excited about the high school alliance, and I think it's a great opportunity for us to work together to make it a seamless transition from high school to college work," he said.
lzumbach@tribpub.com
