A Case Study of the College Success Report

Unless significant advancements are made in closing existing gaps in educational attainment, America's current employment gaps will worsen as the student population becomes more diverse.

Introduced in 2015, Delaware's College Success Report (CSR) enables such advancements by connecting high school course outcomes in math and English to college remediation rates in these same subjects.

Delaware's analysis and use of the CSR provides a model for other states to follow to collect more accurate data about which high school courses in math and English are more likely to result in remediation in college—and to effectively intervene.

This report first provides an overview of the Delaware CSR, including its inception, findings, and enacted solutions. It then discusses how DDOE staff use the CSR to connect multiple types of data. The report concludes with recommendations that would allow other states to benefit from similar analyses.

Delaware's data-driven approach to understand more succinctly where students are failing to acquire knowledge and skills that are in demand is promising—and it is an approach that more states should adopt.