Going to college

Many private high schools in West Virginia have a pretty good college-going rate among their students. But, for the graduating class of 2006, name the three public high schools that had more than 80 percent of their graduates enrolled in higher education that fall. You can name three of the four, because one barely missed the cutoff.

Then name the four public high schools that had college-going rates of less than 30 percent. This does not count that small school that had only two people graduating.

Then ask yourself what the four schools with the lowest rate in higher education had in common geographically.

Answers:

Top rates
Fairmont Senior, Marion County, 87.3 percent.
Williamstown, Wood County, 80.6 percent.
George Washington, Kanawha County, 80.3 percent.
Bridgeport, Harrison County, 79.7 pecent.

Lowest rates
Montcalm, Mercer County, 27.3 percent.
Iaeger, McDowell County, 27.2 percent.
Meadow Bridge, Fayette County, 26.8 percent.
Liberty, Raleigh County, 22.1 percent.

These numbers were supplied by the Higher Education Policy Commission. The HEPC does not track how many graduates went into vocational or apprenticeship programs, and it does not count how many went straight to the military. When you combine the low college-going rate with the dropout statistics, you can see that we have a problem in West Virginia getting our ninth-graders focused on the future.

Oh, the overall college-going rate in the state for the Class of 2006 was 58.3 percent. It probably will be a while before we have stats on the Class of 2007.