Guilford County students and UNC performance
How well are Guilford County students prepared for college?
There are several measures you can use, including grades, SAT scores, performance on state end-of-course tests, college acceptance rates and scholarship offers.
The University of North Carolina puts out what I consider to be a very valuable measure -- and one you don't see very often.
It shows how well students do in their freshman year at UNC institutions.
Looking at this indicator, the answer for Guilford County students is, unfortunately, below average ...
Here's the UNC page that leads you to reams of statistical information.
It gives you numbers on freshmen performance broken down by school system and individual high schools for each UNC campus and for the UNC system as a whole.
For example, you can look up how well, on average, students from Page or Smith or Southwest did during their freshman year at A&T, UNCG or N.C. State.
You could spend all day looking at the numbers, but I'll try to save you some time. I've chosen a few numbers that I think are significant and am going to make some comparisons.
First, let me tell you that these numbers -- the latest available -- apply to the high school class of 2003. There's a lag time because included in the report is how many of those students returned to college for their second year in the fall of 2004.
The numbers I'm focusing on are: the percentage of students who earned at least a 2.0 grade point average (a C) during their freshman year; the percentage who earned at least a 3.0 (a B); the percentage who returned for their second year; and the percentage who returned for their second year with at least a 2.0 and 30 credit hours. That last statistic tells you how many were on pace after one year to graduate in four years. All the numbers I'm using are averages for the UNC system as a whole. You get into almost endless variations if you want to break it all down for each high school and each of the 16 UNC schools. I invite you to look that up for yourself.
My first observation is that the majority of students from all Guilford County high schools who go to UNC institutions do make it through their first year and return for their second year. That's good. At the same time, only about one-third or fewer of them do so with at least a 2.0 and 30 credit hours, which means a large majority will not graduate in four years, if they graduate at all. That's bad.
Also, in all the measures I've selected, Guilford County students perform below the state average and generally below the average for students from the state's other large systems -- Wake, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Forsyth and Durham -- with the exception of Cumberland, which was worse.
Also, as you would expect, there are large differences from one Guilford County high school to another. For example, only 19.4 percent of students from Andrews who entered UNC schools in 2003 returned for their second year with a 2.0 and 30 credit hours (the lowest figure among GCS schools), compared to 35.6 percent for students from Northwest (the highest). But even 35.6 percent wasn't so great because the average for all high schools in Wake County was 46.5 percent.
Here are some comparisons for school systems, along with state averages.
Percent of students earning at least a 2.0 their freshman year:
Guilford -- 75.0
Forsyth -- 75.3
Durham -- 75.1
Cumberland -- 67.9
Charlotte-Meck -- 77.9
Wake -- 85.5
All N.C. public high schools -- 76.6
All high schools -- 77.8
Percent of students earning at least a 3.0 their freshman year:
Guilford -- 37.1
Forsyth -- 37.0
Durham -- 32.4
Cumberland -- 25.9
Charlotte-Meck -- 40.4
Wake -- 51.6
All N.C. public high schools -- 37.3
All high schools -- 39.0
Percent of students returning for second year:
Guilford -- 79.9
Forsyth -- 81.8
Durham -- 86.3
Cumberland -- 77.8
Charlotte-Meck -- 84.9
Wake -- 86.5
All N.C. public high schools -- 82.4
All high schools -- 82.1
Percent of students returning for second year with at least a 2.0 and 30 credit hours:
Guilford -- 29.2
Forsyth -- 31.1
Durham -- 32.9
Cumberland -- 29.5
Charlotte-Meck -- 35.4
Wake -- 46.5
All N.C. public high schools -- 34.2
All high schools -- 34.5
Frankly, none of these numbers looks all that good. Altogether, only about a third of UNC freshmen start off on pace to graduate in four years. That indicates most are not as well prepared as they should be to meet the academic demands at our state universities.
It's more disappointing that Guilford County students seem to be falling below average. That could translate to lower graduation rates and fewer young people coming back to Guilford County ready to begin the professional careers we need to carry us ahead in the 21st century economy.
We have an excellent state university system in North Carolina, and we owe it to our young people to make sure they have a good chance to take advantage of it.
Comments (4)
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Very interesting data - thanks for bringing that to our attention.
What I think would be interesting is a comparison of states. In other words, how did students from Delaware, as a whole, compare with students from NC, as a whole? Certainly I would expect that the number of students from NC would be much greater than from any other state, but I also believe the comparisons would be interesting to analyze.
Posted on November 3, 2005 8:56 AM
Thanks for reading through all that.
I think numbers for other states might be skewed because admission standards are much higher for our-of-state students (except athletes). The 18 percent enrollment cap on out-of-state students creates intense competition for admission. My son at Wake Forest, which is pretty to tough to get into, knows students there from out of state who were rejected by UNC-Chapel Hill, for example.
All that said, you can see in the numbers I listed above that the performances of students from "all high schools" are generally better than the performances for "all N.C. public high schools." I assume that includes out-of-state high schools.
Posted on November 3, 2005 9:04 AM
Interesting that Wake County led all the categories given. It would seem to bear some investigating what they're doing "right" down there.
Posted on November 3, 2005 10:04 PM
Wake has been far and away the best of the state's large school systems in many measures of success. Charlotte-Mecklenburg's numbers are also better than ours. Those two metro areas already have healthier economies than ours, which may account for school superiority, and these numbers also could tell us that their young people are doing better in college and will contribute to even greater economic prosperity ahead. We could be in danger of falling further behind.
Posted on November 4, 2005 8:00 AM