By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Mark Tallman, Vice President for Advocacy with the Kansas Association of School Boards posted to his Tallman Education Report about several measures of student success, but one number, called the Five-Year Postsecondary Effectiveness Rate, may be unfamiliar, but it's pretty important these days.
"This is the culminating measure," Tallman said. "I think the state department would say, this is the single most important measure we are going to talk about, because it's saying, what percent of our kids, kind of two years out, are on path to get a credential that they are likely to need."
About three-fourths of future jobs are expected to require some type of postsecondary education. The measure looks at classes two years after they are supposed to have graduated.
"How many have either finished some type of postsecondary credential, like a technical certificate or a two-year degree, or how many are still enrolled in a longer program, like a four-year degree?," Tallman said.
In Kansas, that number is improving, from 44% of graduates having completed something from 2011 to 2015, to 48% meeting the same criteria between 2014 and 2018, but that still leaves more than half of a Kansas high school senior class not progressing toward the kind of credentials that will fill out the workforce that Kansas needs in the coming years. There is always a two-year lag on the data, as well, so data for the classes of 2019 and 2020 are not available yet.