The Missing Link:College Aspirations & the Common Core

By Watson Scott Swail , Ed.D. President and CEO, Educational Policy Institute

In 1988, approximately 27,000 8th-grade students took both a survey and test for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the US Department of Education. For some of us, 1988 doesn’t seem that long ago, but in educational research, it is an eternity. However, this study has stood the test of time and remains significant even after all these years. While the first cohort of the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) was originally surveyed in 1988, follow-up surveys were conducted in 1990, 1992, and 2000, providing a longitudinal prospective of life for our youth. There are more recent studies, but this is the one I still hang my hat on.

With complete abbreviation and little attention to detail, what we learned from NELS:88 is that all 8th-grade students are not equal. This is not a surprise, but let’s look at some specifics.

The chart below shows postsecondary aspirations for a nationally randomized group of 8th  graders in 1988, as well as followup data with the same students four years (scheduled high school graduation) and six years later (two years beyond scheduled high school graduation).

Take a minute to check the data. Particularly, notice that in column 2, “Planned PSE,” that at least 94 percent of all eighth grade students, regardless of race/ethnicity, family income, and educational legacy, thought they would go to college. Put another way, 19 of 20 students thought, back when they were 13, that they were headed for college. Conversely, only 1 out of 20 did not think they would go to college.

 

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