STATE

Education commissioner: Kansas isn’t providing enough post-secondary graduates for workforce needs

Angela Deines
Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson told members of the state board of education Tuesday there aren’t enough Kansas high school graduates earning post-secondary degrees to meet the state’s workforce needs. (Angela Deines/The Capital-Journal)

Kansas isn’t keeping pace with getting the number of students with post-secondary degrees to match the state’s workforce needs, members of the Kansas State Board of Education learned Tuesday.

Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson presented board members with data during their monthly meeting in Topeka that shows of the 64.5 percent of the cohort group of Kansas high school students who graduated in 2010 and immediately went to a post-secondary institution, only 24.3 percent graduated in four years, 35.2 percent graduated in five years and 39.3 percent graduated in six years.

Watson said the data shows more cause for concern when 2010’s 14 percent high school dropout rate is factored in. He said when that happens, only 25 percent of students of the cohort group earned a post-secondary degree six years after graduating. Likewise, only 10 percent of the total number of the state’s 2010 graduates earned a post-secondary educational degree after four years. He said 70 to 75 percent of the state’s workforce needs to have “some kind of skill beyond high school.”

“These are real numbers,” Watson said of the data that was pulled from the National Student Clearinghouse that stores data for 98 percent of U.S. colleges and universities in 40 states. “I think it will get people’s attention and we have to talk about the appropriate way to use it.”

Kathy Busch, R-Wichita, the board’s vice-chairwoman, agreed.

“This is such poweful data, but folks need to know how to use it,” she said.

The starkest data shows that of the 64.5 percent of 2010 high school graduates who immediately went on to pursue a post-secondary degree, only 49.4 percent stayed in school for a second consecutive year, 42.8 percent stayed for a third consecutive year and 24.4 percent remained at an institution for a fourth consecutive year. In the fifth year, the percentage dropped to 11.9 percent, and in the sixth year, the percentage dropped to 7.3.

After digesting some of Watson’s presentation, board members said the data was concerning.

“It appears to me we’re not doing a good enough job,” said Janet Waugh, D-Kansas City.

Jim McNiece, R-Wichita, said he hopes the data isn’t used to rank schools.

“This is a growth tool and not a way to pick winners or losers,” he said.

Another data point Watson presented Tuesday was the percentage of the 2010 high school graduates who didn’t go on to any kind of post-secondary or technical school. According to the data, 35 percent of the 2010 cohort didn’t pursue any kind of additional education the first year after graduating. However, that percentage fell to 30.1 percent the next year, then decreased again to 27.1 percent during the 2012-13 school year as 4.4 percent of the cohort group entered a post-secondary institution a year after high school graduation and 2.8 percent began pursuing a post-secondary degree two years after graduating from high school, respectively.

Watson said the 2016-17 academic year will be the last year of data gathered because the National Student Clearinghouse can provide only seven years of data for a cohort group. He said the state’s 286 districts will get their individualized 2010 cohort data late this spring.

“We’ll roll out the interpretation of it at the time we roll it out to everyone,” he said. “We won’t just throw it up on a website. We’ll have some instruction sheets, we’ll have some face-to-face meetings. We’ll do our best to help people understand it.”

Contact reporter Angela Deines at (785) 295-1143 or @AngelaDeines on Twitter.