Utah State analytics study links advanced-course taking to higher college enrollment, highlights gaps for students with disabilities and immigrants

Mark Dotson, presenter with the Analytics Solutions Center at Utah State, told the Cache County School District board that a multi-year study of advanced coursework found strong links between taking advanced courses and later college enrollment.

The study “is an investigation of advanced course work, specifically what is, what might be driving students to enroll in advanced courses,” Dotson said, adding the project also examined “what are the effects of taking advanced courses on college enrollment, and a little bit on graduation.”

Dotson said the team assembled five years of district data, anonymized student identifiers to avoid FERPA violations, and combined PowerSchool records with postsecondary data purchased through a clearinghouse to permit analysis of college attendance and (to a lesser extent) graduation. He said the final dataset covered “over 18,000 students” who had the opportunity to take advanced courses.

The analysis found that GPA had the largest positive association with enrolling in advanced coursework. By contrast, Dotson reported, students identified as having a disability showed the largest negative association; immigrant status also correlated with lower advanced-course enrollment. “If you have a disability, that has the greatest negative effect,” he said.

The presentation also showed school-by-school differences. Dotson said Green Canyon High had the largest proportion of students taking advanced courses, and that post‑COVID years showed an increase in advanced-course participation overall. He noted local factors — course offerings or school culture, for example — could explain differences between schools: “There’s definitely a culture there that people take advanced courses.”

The study’s second model treated advanced-course participation as a predictor of postsecondary outcomes. Dotson said students who took advanced business courses in particular were “significantly more likely to graduate college,” and that high schools with higher advanced-course participation tended to have higher college enrollment rates. He cautioned graduation measures carry more uncertainty because of the time lag between high school completion and college graduation.

Board members asked whether the analysis could capture parental or counselor influence. Dotson said the current data sources (PowerSchool and the clearinghouse) do not directly record parental influence and that counselor effects were only indirectly visible as school-level differences; he suggested future work could add surveys or panels to capture family and counselor inputs.

Dotson recommended further, school-level investigation of teacher influence: preliminary correlations indicated some teachers — even those who do not teach advanced courses — were associated with higher later advanced-course participation among their students. He said the next step would be to de‑anonymize specific teacher IDs, work with schools, and investigate whether prerequisites, encouragement or other factors explain the differences.

The board requested the full slide deck and discussed continuing the district’s relationship with the Analytics Solutions Center for further projects, including possible study of Dual Language Immersion (DLI) impacts.

The presentation was framed as an informational report; no board action was taken that evening.