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I read once that most breakthroughs aren’t marked by someone yelling “Eureka!”; they’re marked by someone tilting their head and muttering, “That’s weird …”
I noticed something weird this week, and I’m hoping that my wise and worldly readers can help me figure it out. There’s actually something at stake in this case.
In preparation for a presentation to the board on the academic master plan, I pored over data on our retention and graduation rates, disaggregated by race and sex. They’re both based on the IPEDS cohort, so I’ll grant the usual stipulations around IPEDS data and community colleges, but still.
The three-year graduation rate gap between Latinx students and white students has been holding at about 12 points -- roughly 32 to 20, with some squiggle from year to year. Both have been moving up, but at about the same pace, so the gap has stayed fairly constant.
Then I looked at fall-to-fall retention for the IPEDS cohorts, broken out by race and sex. The difference in fall-to-fall retention between Latinx and white students is down to less than three points -- basically, 73 to 70.5. And it’s narrowing.
So I’m seeing a steady double-digit gap in graduation rates, but a very small and shrinking gap in fall-to-fall retention rates. This elicited the “that’s weird …” that often precedes an actual idea.
Fall-to-fall retention means that a student returned for a second year. According to the usual assumptions, the major obstacles to completion tend to happen in the first year. But return rates are within shouting distance of even, while graduation rates are far apart.
Hmm.
Admittedly, the data draw from different cohorts. By definition, a three-year grad rate can’t reflect a cohort that started less than three years ago, whereas a fall-to-fall retention rate could reflect a cohort that started last year. But I don’t think that explains most of the difference.
Here’s where I’m hoping my wise and worldly readers can help me figure this out.
Surely mine is not the first college to see such seemingly incompatible numbers. I can come up with various post-hoc rationalizations, but what I’d really like to do is to close achievement gaps across the board. For those who’ve seen similar disconnects, two questions:
- What explained the disconnect in your case? And, relatedly …
- How could we use that explanation to help reduce gaps entirely?
Any constructive insights would be appreciated. Thanks!
