The 2019 NAEP High School Transcript Study (HSTS) describes the coursetaking patterns and academic performance of graduates from a national sample of U.S. public and private schools who also took the 2019 NAEP twelfth-grade mathematics and science assessments. This report uses data from the 1990, 2000, 2009, and 2019 NAEP HSTS for coursetaking results and from 2005, 2009, and 2019 for comparisons to NAEP.

The study of high school graduates’ academic performance and coursetaking patterns is based on an analysis of their transcripts and NAEP twelfth-grade mathematics and science assessment results. HSTS show trends from 1990, 2000, 2009, and 2019 in grade point averages, course credits earned, curriculum levels, and various coursetaking patterns. The 2019 HSTS uses a new course classification system, the School Courses for the Exchange of Data (SCED), to provide a more detailed breakdown of cross-disciplinary coursetaking programs such as Career and Technical Education (CTE) and Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) coursetaking.

The study also compares graduates’ average NAEP scale scores from the twelfth-grade mathematics and science assessments to the academic achievement reported in their transcripts. The linkage of the NAEP twelfth-grade mathematics and science assessments to HSTS provides the opportunity for school leaders, policy makers, and researchers to analyze student performance by a rich set of HSTS and NAEP contextual factors.