Corbin High School receives national College Success Award

Corbin High School was recently named among just 43 other Kentucky public high school as one of the nation’s leading schools for college preparedness and success.

GreatSchools.org, one of the nation’s leading non-profit organization for providing school information to parents and families, does yearly assessments that track how well students do once entering college and compile that data based on where the student went to high school. Specifically, the data represents if students are prepared for college-level coursework and persist into their second year. According to the organization’s website, “award-winners are determined by a methodology that evaluates school-level data on college preparation, college enrollment, and college performance.”

As part of their assessment, public high schools that excel at preparing students to enroll and succeed in college are recognized annually with the organization’s College Success Award.

CHS has been recognized with that prestigious award in this year’s crop of honorees.

Corbin Independent Superintendent David Cox said he was pleased to see CHS receive national recognition, praising the hard work of both the high school’s and the district’s teachers as a whole for the honor.

“We are very proud to consistently be considered for this award. Post-secondary success is really the end game for all of our students and it is nice to see their hard work pay off,” said Cox. “Whether it is college, career/technical or military, our teachers always emphasize the importance of continuing education.”

According to numbers from this year’s assessments, CHS had a college enrollment of 68 percent, while Kentucky has a state average of 56 percent. The number of students who needed some form or remedial classes once reaching college was just 26 percent and the schools’ persistence percentage—or the percentage of high school graduates who completed their first year of college and returned for a second year—was 88 percent.

This is the fifth year GreatSchools.org has compiled data for their College Success Award, with CHS being honored consecutively all five years.

Barbourville High School was also recognized as part of the 2022 honorees and was the only other high school within the Tri-County to be named.

Kentucky’s recipients are among 1,742 winners from 25 states that have demonstrated successful track records of graduating students who enroll in two- or four-year colleges, are ready for college-level coursework and persist on to their second year. Despite the many challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, these schools have continued to uphold many best practices to support their students’ college preparation and success.

The College Success Award is possible because Kentucky is leading the nation in both collecting and transparently sharing information on how students perform after high school, which is valuable information for families, educators and policymakers. Kentucky is one of only eight states to be included in the College Success Award since its inception, thanks to its transparency around K-12 data.