February 12, 2009
National Student Clearinghouse® Receives Major Grant to Develop First Nationwide High School Research and Reporting System
Herndon, VA -- The National Student Clearinghouse will develop a groundbreaking high school research and reporting system that will allow participating high schools in all 50 states to better measure the academic success of their students after they graduate. A new $2.9 million investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help support the creation of the system, providing critical feedback for both high schools and postsecondary institutions. The Clearinghouse, a non-profit organization founded in 1993 in cooperation with the higher education community, acts as the agent for more than 3,200 U.S. postsecondary institutions and more than 1,600 high schools providing them with educational verification and research services.
This new Clearinghouse system-an expansion of its StudentTracker for High Schools system-will address the urgent need within the education community for a standardized method for measuring the actual educational outcomes of students once they finish high school. Currently, there is no universally accepted way to determine the postsecondary attainment of high school students. As a result, U.S. policy makers and educators are unable to uniformly assess the performance of the nation's secondary school system and make information-based decisions on policy and program improvements.