Number of college-bound seniors a guess in Douglas

More than a decade after the state founded the Millennium Scholarship to encourage students to attend college, the number of Douglas High graduates attending Nevada schools remains about the same, and how many Douglas County students actually go to college remains a mystery.

Douglas High School Principal Marty Swisher confirmed that slightly more than half of the school's graduates attend a Nevada community college or university in the fall after graduation.

That number has decreased over the last five years, dropping from a high of 55.5 percent in 2008 to 51 percent in 2009.

However, Swisher pointed out that the information comes from the University of Nevada system, and therefore does not include graduates who enrolled in and attended out-of-state colleges and universities.

"I can provide estimates per class, but because we have no external tracking, we can only estimate," Swisher said. "I would say conservatively, it is at least 15 percent of each class (go out of state for college) on average, but most likely higher than that."

According to figures discussed at a Dec. 3 Douglas School Board meeting, only 39 percent of Douglas High School students were requesting their transcripts be sent to some sort of college, vocational or other school.

School Board trustee Sharla Hales pointed out that 97 percent of Whittell students have their transcripts sent out. Swisher said that Nevada community colleges don't require transcripts, but the universities do.

Some of the difference between Whittell has to do with the difference in size and socio-economic status of the students at each school.

Board members said students with good grades but in lower income families tend to go to college at the same rate as students of families with higher incomes but average grades.

Superintendent Lisa Noonan is proposing contracting with a service that will track students after they leave the district's high schools to determine whether they go to college and their success rate.

"Clearly the difficulty for us is we don't have a formal way to track the students after they leave us," Noonan said. "Even their declared plan during 12th grade changes often within a year or two. There are companies that will try to track our grads after they leave us and I am looking into budgeting for this beginning with the Class of 2011."