John Wenders, Idahoans for Tax Reform
August 2002
Florida's Council for Education Policy, Research and Improvement (CEPRI, a state agency within the Office of Legislative Services) has been tracking Florida's high-school class of 1994. This report follows them through their seventh post-high school year. Lots of revealing data are offered here, including the fact that three-quarters of them had earned no college (or community college) degree. Of those who had, the strongest predictor was their high school academic record. Thus this report is both data source and partial analysis for one big state-and a model of the kind of longitudinal tracking of high school graduates that every state ought to be engaged in. It's also a glum reminder that, for all our pride in an open-access higher education system in America, a huge number of young people don't get college degrees. Indeed, as we recall from recent OECD reports, this is another education measure on which the U.S. long led the pack but is beginning to be outpaced by other countries. You can download the full Florida report in PDF format from http://www.cepri.state.fl.us/pdf/2002%20Cohort%20Report.pdf. You can also find an analytic tool for your own use at http://www.cepri.state.fl.us/bacompletion/index.cfm.
