The standout number in the 2026 High School Benchmarks study is high-poverty high schools, where persistence climbed 1.7 percentage points to 76.0 percent, outpacing gains at low-poverty schools (up 1.2 points to 90.6 percent), urban schools (up 0.7 points) and rural schools (up 0.8 points). Suburban schools were essentially flat.
“The improvements in persistence are modest, but they point to more students enrolling and persisting in college,” said Matthew Holsapple, senior director of research at the National Student Clearinghouse. “What stands out most is that graduates of high-poverty high schools saw the largest gains in both enrollment and persistence.”
Overall enrollment told a steadier story. Immediate fall enrollment – students who head straight to campus the autumn after graduation – barely moved between the 2024 and 2025 cohorts, fluctuating less than a percentage point across every school type. But enrollment within two years of graduation, which captures the students who take a gap year or enroll a bit later, ticked up for high-poverty schools by 2.1 points, to 58.7 percent, the largest increase of any group in the report.
The persistence gap between high-and low-poverty high schools still stands at 14.6 percentage points. Four-year college attendance differs by 31.2 points between the two groups, and the six-year completion gap is a stark 34.2 points. STEM completion follows the same pattern, with poverty status driving a larger disparity (14.8 points) than school income status alone (8.4 points).
“We celebrate the acceptance letter, and then everybody moves on to the next senior,” said Denise Alvarado, a high school counselor in Las Vegas, who has spent eleven years advising first-generation seniors. “This data tells me we can't stop coaching kids the day they get in. Persistence is decided in October and November of freshman year, not in April of senior year, and most of us aren’t built to follow up that long.”
On a community college campus in Maryland, the same numbers read differently.
“A 1.7-point jump sounds small until you remember how many students that represents nationally,” said Marcus Whitfield, a retention and academic success advisor who works primarily with first-year students from under-resourced schools. “What it tells me is that whatever high schools are doing to prepare kids for that first fall is starting to pay off before we even get them. Our job is to not squander that momentum.”
Experts offered this advice for educators working in both K-12 and higher education.
For K-12 leaders
- Treat the Clearinghouse’s StudentTracker and High School Benchmarks tools as an extension of your own outcomes data, not a college-only resource. Most high schools are eligible to request a free feedback report on their own graduates.
- Build a light-touch check-in system – a call, a text thread, a peer mentor, that reaches graduates through the first semester, since the data suggests the gains are showing up in year two, not year one.
- Pay particular attention to two-year and part-time enrollment pathways. High-poverty graduates are 8.5 points more likely to start at a two-year institution, so partnerships with local community colleges matter as much as four-year pipeline programs.
For higher ed leaders
- Don't assume incoming first-year students from high-poverty high schools need identical interventions to those from low-poverty schools. The data shows different starting points and different momentum.
- Invest retention dollars in the fall-to-spring window of the first year, where national persistence gains are concentrated, rather than backloading support toward sophomore year.
- Share enrollment and persistence data back with feeder high schools. Counselors like Alvarado can’t close the loop on graduates they lose touch with; a shared dashboard changes that.
The report’s authors are careful to call the gains modest. But in a policy landscape where student debt, affordability, and completion rates dominate the conversation, modest movement in the right direction – especially among the students furthest from the finish line – they add, is worth a conversation between the counselor’s office and the admissions office, the two places closest to the student and furthest apart in how they use the same data.
Chera Watson is a freelance journalist and a community college educator.
