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State test scores just don't tell us all we need to know about how our students are doing. Students' Success in college has to be a part of the picture.

Two new reports support this claim. A few weeks ago, a report by Education Sector found that states could improve their systems for grading high schools by taking college data into account. The success of a high school's graduates in college, it turns out, is more reliable than that same school's "Adequate Yearly Progress" in test scores is.

Less than two weeks ago, a report from the Center for Public Education (CPE) found a "silent achievement gap" in college preparation. Students from families with low incomes are much less likely than wealthy students to have the credentials they need--courses, grades and scores on entrance exams--to get into a good college. This gap isn't "silent" because it is in any way surprising. It is silent because state tests don't directly measure it. Can we be sure our policies will address it?

Test scores alone can be a shaky foundation for major decisions about reform. Take, for instance, the case of Feinstein High School, one of several Providence, RI schools slated for closure. "At 59 percent," the Providence Journal reports:

Feinstein has the second-highest rate of college enrollment, after Classical High School, the district’s jewel in the crown. And 40 percent of its graduates remain in college four years later, a rate only exceeded by Classical. (Hat tip to Tom Hoffman.)

If those numbers are right, there might be something good going on at Feinstein, despite its abysmal test scores. This is not to say that we should discount the scores. No one can argue with a straight face that all's well at Feinstein or any other school that posts low scores. But perhaps we could learn from and build on what is going well--if we had the tools to measure it.

The CPE report reminds us that students who want to go to a selective college would do well to take challenging courses in high school. Simply raising their GPA's or even their ACT scores won't give them the same leg up. On many state tests, high scores obscure these important distinctions.

What predicts success in college after enrollment? That picture is even more complex. Challenging courses on a high school transcript still have pride of place. But two recent studies have found that grades are better than college entrance exams. Good old fashioned grades, which don't get much respect in policy circles, measure motivation, perseverance and work habits, the theory goes.

The CPE report includes one finding that complicates things further. Poor students who are qualified for competitive colleges are still much less likely to enroll than their wealthier peers are. The report's author, Jim Hull, puts it this way:

While there was almost no difference between low and high-income qualified applicants’ chances of getting into college in 1992, by 2004 high-income students were over 20 percent more likely than their low-income classmates (80 and 66 percent, respectively) to get admitted to a competitive college.

That's an explosive finding. Things have actually gotten much worse for qualified low-income students in the past two decades. So there's more to this story than just credentials. As need-based aid dries up, we can hardly expect the picture to get much better.

So let's cast a much wider net when we measure school quality. Perhaps we should take into account students' readiness for--and success in--college. But let's not penalize schools for injustices--such as the impact of high college costs--they cannot control.