Post-secondary Cohort

Highest Education Level Completed on Entry

The 'Highest Education Level Completed on Entry' field was not in LACES prior to the beginning of the 12/13 reporting year when the NRS reporting requirements made it necessary to add it.  There is a field in LACES called 'Highest Education Completed' that has always been available, but there was no consistency in how people used it.  Different agencies have different drop-down menus for it because the list is one they can modify themselves.

 

You can create a View that contains the 'Highest Education Completed' so you can then review this data.  You will need to first use the FY Data Search for two searches, first to find the students who were NRS Reportable last year, and then to find which of these left in the FY Since thost are the only ones eligible for Table 5.

 

Once you have applied the View containing the Highest Education Completed field, you will need to see how many of these students have a highest education that indicates that they completed high school.  Once again, agencies may have been using this field in a variety of ways so this will only give you a general idea on approximate numbers.

 

Passed the GED while enrolled

While you can find how many students obtained the GED and left the program last year by going to Find > NRS Table Searches > Table 5 Searches and then clicking on the number of participants who achieved the outcome, there is not a way to then find whether these students still had the status of enrolled at the time they passed the GED.  This was not necessary last year since it didn't factor into determining inclusion for Enter Postsecondary, and a search for this isn't available this year because the process is automatic so if the student passes the GED while enrolled, they are automatically in the Enter Postsecondary Cohort.

 

The best thing I can think of for this part of the inclusion in the Cohort is to look at the 12/13 data.  So far, 522 students are included on Table 5 as having obtained the GED this year (pulled using the NRS Table 5 Search).  Of those, 430 are also in the Enter Postsecondary Education Cohort.  This will at least give you an idea of what percentage of students obtain the GED while enrolled so they are then included in the Enter Postsecondary Cohort.

 

 

With the information from the Highest Education Completed and the approximation from those who obtained the GED while enrolled, you may have a general number of students who will be included in the Enter Postsecondary Cohort this year.  But, there is no way I can think of to then figure out how many of them may meet the objective because there is no data from previous fiscal years about how many of this population entered postsecondary.  In previous years, Enter Postsecondary was only tracked if the student set the goal so there is no supporting data regarding how many students who completed the GED or who had completed secondary school before entering the program went on to enter postsecondary.  If it wasn't stated as a goal by the student, the information wasn't entered in LACES and follow-up wasn't done to see if the student entered postsecondary.