Postsecondary enrollment patterns among recent graduates who received social and health services during high school

This report focuses on immediate (2009-10) postsecondary enrollment for 2008-09 Washington State public high school graduates who received services from the Department of Social and Health Services. This study is the latest in a series utilizing the INVEST cross-agency data set, linking individual-level data from DSHS with education data from the Washington State Education Research and Data Center. The results show that high school graduates who received DSHS services in high school were less likely than their peers to enroll in higher education in the year following graduation, regardless of their high school achievement levels. Among graduates who enrolled in postsecondary education, those who had received DSHS services in high school were more likely to require remedial coursework before advancing to college-level courses. These and other key findings point to the unique barriers to higher education that often accompany social and health risk factors, and highlight avenues for positive change.