CCR Data and Transparency Quiz

Minnesota and Massachusetts earned top marks in Achieve’s transparency reports for breaking their data down by student subgroups, earning scores of 7.25 and 7 out of 8 possible points, respectively. See how all states did here.
 

Eight states – Arizona, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont – don’t report any data on college remediation. See Achieve’s full set of transparency reports here.

It’s important for states to consider multiple indicators of college and career readiness to get the most complete picture of student readiness. That data also needs to be disaggregated and count all students. Using only an aggregate number could mask gaps between different groups of students. 

That’s right! Minnesota earned the highest transparency score, with 26.25 points out of a possible 32. See the details in their transparency report here. 

Nope. Oklahoma is the only state that doesn’t publicly report their four-year graduation rate.

Correct! In the transparency reports, Achieve looked at not only whether a state reported data at all, but also whether that data was broken down by student subgroups, released in a timely manner, and reported in a way that counts all students.

Nope. While there are small groups of states who report certain indicators the same way, only the adjusted cohort graduation rate can be compared across all states – and that’s because there is one mandated definition for how to calculate that number. Unfortunately, too many states collect data in ways that cannot be compared across states. Often the reason for this is that they only use data from a subset of students

That’s right. The 9th grade cohort is the best denominator to use when calculating college and career readiness outcomes because it counts all students who entered 9th grade together. Making calculations about 12th graders or high school graduates, for example, doesn’t account for students who have dropped out or fallen behind earlier in high school, leading to inflated figures.