Students talk 'go on' rates

PONDERAY — Three Sandpoint High School students highlighted the evening Tuesday with a presentation on post-secondary comparison during the Lake Pend Oreille School District board meeting.

The students, SHS senior Alicia Stiefel, and SHS juniors Sarah Wilburn and Kaylauna Forell, talked about the rates of students from Sandpoint High School who go on to college, comparing them to different schools in the region and throughout the state.

The first slide introduced the most popular picks for post-secondary schools by Sandpoint students, including North Idaho College, University of Idaho, Boise State University, Montana State University, Lewis-Clark State College and Northern Arizona University. According to the "self report," which is based on what the seniors say they are going to do after high school, the group determined NIC had the highest number of interested students at 293.

"These numbers may or may not be correct, but we do know North Idaho College is the most popular since it's the closest and the most affordable for our students," Wilburn said.

Sandpoint High School's "go on" rates as self-reported by Sandpoint seniors in 2015 was 197, or 86 percent. Out of the last six graduating SHS classes, Stiefel said 1,134 students planned to go on to college and 236 students did not, according to the self-report. According to the state records, indicated on the following slide, the "go on" rate for 2015 was 137 or 60 percent — 26 percent less than self-reported.

"Possible reasons for these averages to be lower are if students go into the military, numbers are not reported to the state by the military, and some non-federally funded schools do not have to report any numbers to the state," Forell said. "Some other reasons that students may not go on are they go to work or they travel and take time off and they become part of the later numbers in later years."

Wilburn explained the numbers they presented only represented students who went to college their first year out of high school.

Forell said possible reasons for the discrepancy are that students went into the military and also, some non-federally funded schools are not required to report numbers to the state.

Stiefel said some students may self-report their plans to go off to college, but another reason why some may not go on is they fell into the "summer melt." The "summer melt" refers to students who committed to going to college, but after taking time off, possibly to work a full-time job for the summer, change their minds about going back to school.

"They can come out, though," Stiefel said. "A year later if they want to go to college and attend, they can go back to college, but they sometimes fall out."

Compared to other schools in the region, the "go on" rate of SHS students is slightly higher, even with the state's report of 60 percent. Lakeland High School, for example, had a "go on" rate of 55 percent in 2015. There is also a success rate for SHS when compared to all statewide 4A public schools that do not have a local college. In 2015, the statewide average "go on" rate for those schools was 45 percent. High schools that have a local college campus had higher "go on" rates than those that did not.

"Sandpoint's on the rise and trying to catch up, but this slide shows, basically, we just need a big college campus in our town," Wilburn said.

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee