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High school graduation, outcomes, and more: How to find data on your school district

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Students at Nash Rocky Mount Early College High School. Molly Urquhart/EducationNC

As Countdown to College Month winds down in North Carolina, districts and their communities can view the plans and statistics of past high school graduates. 

Researchers at the Carolina Population Center (CPC) have provided instructions for how to navigate North Carolina public school data, including attendance rates and personnel for all of the state’s school districts. 

The North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile can give parents, educators, and the general public information about school populations, graduation rates, and intentions of graduates down to the district and school level.

As stated on the CPC website, the database is a resource for obtaining information on North Carolina’s public school students, personnel, and finances. It is also useful for looking at enrollment data in public and charter schools.

You can search for your district here to receive specific information. 

Screenshot of the percent of high school students intending to go to community college in Wake County by year from the North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile

By searching under the state summary section, North Carolinians can view and sort a report of high school post-graduation intentions as broadly as the state level, or narrowed down by school. There are also charts to identify students by race and gender.

The public can sort and search for indications by district. Options range from attending community college, attending public or private colleges and universities, joining the military, starting at a trade school, or going straight into the workforce. 

According to a report released earlier this year, fewer young men desire to go to college, particularly those who identify as Black or Latino. 

Nationally, the desire to attend community college diminished further for males, going from 23% in 2019 to 18% in 2023. There was a 16.2% drop in North Carolina.

“There’s this durable gap between aspiration and expectations that has not recovered through the pandemic,” Jennifer De Forest, the report’s lead author and director of organizational learning and communications at YouthTruth, told NBC News. “For kids who have less options, less capital … they’re the ones who are finding less opportunity.”

Overall, the national number of students expecting to attend a four-year college (46%) has held steady since 2019. However, the percentage of high school graduates who say that they expect to attend a community college has dropped from 25% for the class of 2019 to 20% for the class of 2023. North Carolina graduates have been following a similar trend, with a drop from 35% in the 2018-19 school year intending to go to community college to 32.2% in 2021-22.

In-depth tutorials about how to navigate state, district, and school level can be found on CPC’s website. There are also specific instructions for researching the amount of buses used in a district, amount of teachers employed, and the amount of students in advanced placement classes. 

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