Do we know how Missouri is doing on career and college readiness?

As with many questions about education in Missouri, that is a hard question to answer because the data is either hard to find or not reported at all.

Here is what we do know:

• The state is working to make the most of the new Perkins V federal law on workforce development.
• About 65 percent of our students have taken at least one Career and Technical Education (CTE) course.
• Career connected learning is a key part of the proposed next version of the Missouri School Improvement Plan (MSIP).
• 75,082 high school students and 53,455 middle school students created Missouri Connections Portfolios.
• 8,765 high school students earned Industry Recognized Credentials and 5,581 7th and 8th-grade students attended STEAM events this year.
• Twenty-one percent of high school graduates have to take remediation courses in college (thankfully this number is declining each year).
• About 76 percent of college freshmen return to school the following year.
• The average college freshman GPA is only 2.89.
• Only 36.1 percent of Missouri high school students who entered college in 2012 had earned a bachelor’s degree by 2018. Seventeen percent earned an associate’s degree, and 2.4 percent earned a graduate or professional degree within six years.

These data points give us some information, but fail to paint a full picture.

A new report from Achieve examines college and career-ready outcomes across the country.

That report highlights the fact that Missouri is still far behind in reporting data that matters.

Achieve looked at 7 key indicators of success:

College- and Career -Ready (CCR) Coursework Completion

• Missouri has a recommended CCR program but does not report how many students complete it

9th Grade On Track

• Missouri does not define or report how many 9th graders are on track to graduate based on credit completion.

College- and Career-Ready Assessments

• Missouri does not report at the state level the percentage of students meeting subject-area proficiency benchmarks.

College- and Career- Ready Measures

• Missouri provides multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate they are prepared for postsecondary success. These include earning qualifying scores on AP or IB courses, dual credit, or industry-recognized credentials. Missouri does not report an aggregate value for the percentage of students meeting a CCR measure.

Earned College Credit in High School

• Missouri reports the percentage of high school graduates scoring a 3+ on an AP exam. Last year 12 percent of our high school graduates had achieved this goal.

Post-secondary Enrollment

• Missouri reports the percentage of 2017 graduates enrolling in two- and four-year-, public and private institutions of higher education both in state and out of state in the 180 days following graduation. The data also includes those enrolling in a Postsecondary (Technical) Institution. A total of 66.7 percent of high school graduates enrolled in post-secondary education.

Missouri does NOT provide any data for subgroup performance for any of these measures. As a result, it is very hard to determine how well we are actually serving individual subgroups and if any groups are being left behind.