Minnesota SLEDS

What do rigorous course taking patterns tell us about high school grads?

The Rigorous Course Taking report offers you information about Minnesota public high school graduates who enrolled in rigorous courses or took rigorous exams at any point while in high school.

What are rigorous courses?

Rigorous courses refer specifically to Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO), Concurrent Enrollment, Advanced Placement (AP), or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses. Your high school graduates may have taken one or a combination of these courses and their data will show on the report, so you can look for patterns across programs. For example, how many high school graduates took concurrent enrollment and AP courses? Data shown on this report should correlate with your school's dual-credit offerings. You can even see how your students’ enrollment patterns in rigorous courses compare to other schools.

How do your students compare?

SLEDS features some key information on rigorous course data. Start by looking for your school or district to learn about the rigorous course enrollment rate for your students. Then filter your data by race/ethnicity, gender and special criteria to compare results among different demographic groups, like English Learners, Special Education, Free/Reduced Price Lunch, and Career Technical Education (CTE).

Additionally, you can view information on AP and IB exam taking patterns and intensity, and investigate the extent to which students are participating in multiple rigorous programs across their high school career.

Try this new report today! It may become a useful tool for your local data reporting needs. If you need further assistance, don't hesitate to get in touch with our regional coaching network for a training session.

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Introducing New Filters on High School Graduate Reports

Using filters allows you to look up data related to a particular school district or economic development region. Filters can also offer you richer information regarding educational outcomes, either by shining light on inequities or helping you identify possible predictors and pathways to success.

We have added two filters on most high school graduate reports that you should find quite interesting: Rigorous Course Taking and Career Technical Education, or CTE. Rigorous Course taking will allow you to view data on students who did one or more of the following:

• Took an AP Exam as reported by the College Board,
• Took a IB Exam as reported by IB,
• Enrolled in an AP Course per MN Common Course Catalog,
• Enrolled in an IB Course per MN Common Course Catalog,
• Participated in Postsecondary Enrollment Options in K12 Enrollment, or
• Participated in Concurrent Enrollment in K12 Enrollment.

The Career Technical Education filter will bring up data on students who successfully completed 100 course hours or more within one Career Field in an approved CTE program. For your convenience, definitions for the available filters can be accessed by clicking on the link at the bottom of the filter pane.

We hope these new filters improve your data experience. Let us know what you think.

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New Reports: Entering the Workforce & Top 25 High Schools

Do you ever wonder what high school graduates do once graduation is over, if they don’t go to college in the fall? According to our latest high school graduates report, approximately 23% of Minnesota’s 2015 high school graduates entered the workforce. In the 12 months following senior year, the majority (58%) were working less than 20 hours per week on average, earning $11.06 per hour.

The new SLEDS mobile report “Entering the Workforce” offers you a look at the proportion of high school graduates who are working, the number of hours worked, average wages and the industries in which they work. Using the filter tool, results for graduates from 2009-2015 can be shown by school district or economic development region, race, gender or special characteristic.

Try it yourself: http://sleds.mn.gov/#HSGraduatesToEmployment/

Also, in relation to understanding how high school graduates decide to follow their educational pathways, in Spring we are releasing a new report that allows SLEDS users to view the top 25 high schools of origin for new students enrolled in a selected college. As always, you can add several views for a comparison analysis and add demographic filters for a deeper exploration.

Look for the Top 25 High Schools report under College Students / New Student Enrollment.

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New Video Tutorial: Introduction to the Website

To allow SLEDS users learn by themselves how to explore the website and the reports published on it, we have a started producing a series of video tutorials specially created for SLEDS beginner and intermediate users. If you are new to SLEDS, or are recommending the website to someone else, our video tutorials are the perfect resource for learning how to navigate the website, find relevant information, and access all the reports available.

These video tutorials are intended to guide users through specific sections and reports, at the viewer’s own pace, to build their data skills and proficiency. We hope SLEDS video tutorials will allow new visitors learn quickly the capabilities of selected reports to inform their decision-making and feel comfortable enough to explore the data at length.

The first video tutorial released is Introduction to the Website, a guided tour for newcomers to SLEDS.

Download: MP4 | WEBM

The tutorial provides a general overview of the site, its navigation, and basic guidelines for accessing data reports. You can find it posted on the Outreach page, under the top right pane titled Video Tutorials. Make sure you check it out today.

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Latest Data Upload: Mobile Analytics and Secure Reports

We are excited to announce the completion of our Fall data upload to SLEDS. If you are currently exploring our reports, you will access and view data for 2017 high school graduates, fall 2017 enrolled college students, and 2016-2017 college graduates for selected public and secure reports, as followed:

New Video Tutorials: The Enrollment Report & The Completing College Report

Following the release of our first SLEDS video tutorial, Introduction to the Website, we are launching two new tutorials that explore the High School Graduates’ Enrollment Report and Completing College Report. Both tutorials offer step-by-step guidance on how to navigate the report using the filters for detailed data exploration.

The Enrollment Report video tutorial provides detailed instructions for viewing data on college enrollment, where HS graduates attend college, number of credits taken during their first term, and top 25 colleges attended. Viewers are shown how to select filters to view a specific graduation year data and compare results for a chosen high school with statewide results. Additionally, viewers can learn how to retrieve data for specific student populations.

The Completing College Report video tutorial explains how to interpret the data shown about students continuing in and persisting through college. Viewers can learn how to compare schools over time and how to compare schools to each other.

If you are a new to SLEDS, or are recommending the website to someone else, our video tutorials are the perfect resource for learning how to navigate the website, find relevant information, and access all the reports available. We hope SLEDS video tutorials will allow you to quickly learn the capabilities of selected reports to inform your decision-making and feel comfortable enough to explore the data at length.

SLEDS video tutorials are intended to guide users through specific sections and reports, at the viewer’s own pace, to build their data skills and proficiency. You can find them posted on the Outreach page, under the top right pane titled Video Tutorials. Make sure you check them out today.

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New Data Available for Selected Reports and SLEDS Publications Library

How many Minnesota college graduates are finding jobs and at what wages? Our most recent Employment report on SLEDS offers you information on the job status of recent Minnesota college graduates from 2014 and 2015, one and two years after graduation. View the Employment report.

In addition, we recently added a new report titled “Completions by Developmental Education Status.” This report shows the college completion rates of high school graduates who enrolled in developmental education within two years of high school graduation, by type of institution: University of Minnesota (all campuses), MN State Universities, MN public two- year, and MN private four-year. This addition provides a richer picture in regards to the persistence of students who required developmental classes at the beginning of their college education.

View the new report here or from the main menu, select the Developmental Education under High School Graduates. You will find the new report located on the fourth tab, under ACT Scores.

Get in touch with your local regional data coach (RDC) for an in-person demonstration of the Developmental Education Report and other reports you want to explore further. You can find your assigned RDC by using the interactive map tool on the Outreach page, located under the Network pane.

Finally, we invite you to visit the newly-designed SLEDS Publications Library. Located on the Data in Use page, the library offers SLEDS users an array of relevant research publications and reports that were created by using SLEDS data. Publications are classified and tagged into four categories (pathways, progress, predictors, and performance) located on the top left of the pane. For your convenience, a search engine is available to help you locate specific publications by subject, author, year, agency, etc.

Our library will eventually become a hub for SLEDS data-based reports and publications. The new design is intended to make it easier to browse through an ever-expanding catalogue of research-related content.

We hope these new features will enhance your data experience. Let us know your feedback, comments, or questions by sending us an email to sleds.support@state.mn.us.

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