Indicator: Successful career transition after high school

Definition

High school graduates transition to training, military service, or employment in the fall after graduating high school (if they do not matriculate to credit-bearing postsecondary education programs).

RECOMMENDED METRIC(S)

Percentage of high school graduates enlisted in the military, enrolled in an apprenticeship program, enrolled in noncredit career and technical education (CTE) courses, or employed and earning at least the median annual full-time earnings for high school graduates ($35,000 per year) before October 31 following graduation

Type(s) of Data Needed

Administrative data or surveys

Why it matters

Students can follow multiple pathways after high school on a course to economic and social mobility, including apprenticeships or job training, military service, or employment. To present a complete picture of where students transition after high school, this indicator tracks data on alternatives to immediate enrollment in postsecondary education—an approach increasingly being adopted. For example, students in Chicago Public Schools are now required to have a “postsecondary plan” that can include college admission, acceptance into an apprenticeship or job training program, military enlistment, or employment. Of the 98 percent of seniors who submitted a plan in 2020, 17 percent were pursuing pathways outside of college. As noted earlier, Black and Latino students and those from low-income households are less likely to enroll in college immediately following high school.

What to know about measurement

Measuring this indicator would require either collecting self-reported data from students following their high school graduation or linking individual-level data across multiple systems, including K–12 graduation records, noncredit CTE enrollment records from postsecondary and vocational institutions, employment and earnings records and records of participation in state apprenticeship programs from labor and workforce development departments, and national military enlistment records from the Defense Manpower Data Center. Currently, 24 state longitudinal data systems link records from the K–12, postsecondary, and workforce sectors, and at least one state (Pennsylvania) has signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Defense to receive enlistment data for its students. Without these linkages, schools may have to rely on students’ self-reports, which may be burdensome to collect and less accurate than data from administrative records.

Source frameworks

This indicator appeared in eight source frameworks reviewed for this report. Our proposed measure draws on work by Education Strategy Group on the From Tails to Heads framework.

References

The framework's recommendations are based on syntheses of existing research. Please see the framework report for a list of works cited.