“If you think
education is expensive, try ignorance.”
– Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University
Let’s talk about the proverbial elephant in the room: HA is
more expensive than our public and private school competitors in Dothan. Sure,
we’re almost half the average cost ($22,700) of independent schools, nationally[1],
and we are significantly less expensive than our peer schools in Montgomery[2],
Birmingham[3], and Huntsville[4].
Still, I understand where we are – we’re not in Montgomery, Birmingham, or Huntsville;
we’re in Dothan. Moreover, I certainly
understand that a Houston Academy education is a huge financial sacrifice for
our families.
So, the question is: “Is it worth it?”
Speaking solely in terms of finance, I think we can predict
some value with a Houston Academy education.
Over the last five years, our students have been awarded $16,874,012 in
scholarships. That’s an average of $73,686 awarded per HA graduate.
However, as we all know, getting into college and getting a
scholarship is one thing; keeping that scholarship and graduating from college
is quite another. So, that begs the question of how our students actually
perform once they get to college. Anecdotally, we always hear from our students
how well prepared they are for college, but recently I received some hard data
from Auburn University that should be very encouraging to our stakeholders.
Auburn sent us a report of how our graduates who attended
Auburn have done through the spring semester of 2013. What Auburn tells us is instructive.
Not to confuse you too much with statistics, but a common
statistic in educational research is Pearson’s r. Pearson’s r is a correlation
coefficient, which in layman’s terms, means that Pearson’s r measures the strength of a linear relationship.
Accordingly,
as the value of r moves in either
direction away from 0, the strength of the relationship gets stronger. Generally
speaking (and there is certainly academic debate about this), an r-value of .40 or higher is considered
to be a strong, positive relationship; an r-value
of .30 or higher is considered to be a moderately positive relationship; and an
r-value of .20 is considered to be a
weak, positive relationship. Any r-value
below .20 is of negligible strength.
In short,
research I find to be fairly reliable (Richardson, Abraham, & Bond, 2012), indicates (not
surprisingly) that two of the strongest predictors of college GPA are high
school GPA (r = .40) and ACT/SAT
score (r = .34). Academic
self-efficacy is also a fairly strong predictor of college success, but that is
a discussion for another time.[5]
In any
case, the data that Auburn sent us tells us three things:
1. Our students are doing MUCH
better at Auburn than the general student population;
2.
Our students are doing better at Auburn than either their high
school GPA or ACT would predict[6];
3.
The lower our students’ ACT/SAT scores and high school GPAs, the
larger the difference between our students’ GPAs and other students at Auburn.
Without betraying any confidentiality, the table below
illustrates that the cumulative GPA for HA graduates who are freshmen at Auburn
is 3.76, while Auburn’s average freshman GPA was 3.05. That means that our HA
graduates had GPAs that were .71 higher than the Auburn freshmen population,
at-large. For our students who had an ACT score in the 28-36 range, the
average, cumulative GPA was 3.91. For all other students the average GPA was
3.34 – a difference of .57. When comparing high school GPA to students’ GPA at
Auburn, you can see that our graduates are earning a GPA at Auburn that is
equal to or higher than the GPA they earned at HA. That is NOT the case for other Auburn
Freshmen. On average, most Auburn
freshmen are doing worse in college than they did in high school. What was most interesting to me in this
regard was that our students who had GPAs at HA between 2.50-2.99 had the
largest, positive difference from their Auburn counterparts (almost a full GPA
point!).
Certainly, HA graduates’ relatively higher college GPAs will
make a big difference when it comes time to apply to medical school, law
school, or graduate school. Likewise, a higher college GPA certainly can’t hurt
when it comes time for our graduates to get a job in an increasingly global and
competitive market.
Of course, any statistician will tell you that we should be
careful about extrapolating results like this to all our graduates or even
attributing causation. However, when combined with HA graduates’ stories of how
well prepared they are for college, we can reasonable assert that our primary
mission as a college preparatory institution is being met. Moreover, the ACT data would seem to contradict the notion that there is no benefit to the rigorous education provided at HA
and that “smart kids” at other public and private schools across the state will
do just as well as HA graduates. The fact is, on average (and in every single
individual case), HA students are performing better than their peers at one of
the nation’s premiere “Doctoral/research universities."
As an HA parent, I would classify that as good news!
Freshman GPAs at Auburn University
Auburn Freshmen/Houston Academy
Graduates
|
All Auburn Freshmen
|
|
ACT of 28-36
|
3.91
|
3.34
|
ACT of 24-27
|
3.34
|
2.92
|
ACT of 20-23
|
3.29
|
2.67
|
HS GPA of 3.5-4.0
|
3.79
|
3.22
|
HS GPA of 3.0-3.49
|
NA
|
2.57
|
HS GPA of 2.5-2.99
|
3.29
|
2.37
|
[5] My
dissertation dealt heavily with the concept of self-efficacy, which in this
sense is, basically, the belief that one’s hard work pays tangible results in
terms of grades.
[6]http://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/8/researchreport-2012-6-validity-sat-predicting-cumulative-gpa-major.pdf
