Once students graduate from high school, they often disappear into that massive place we call the real world.

Teachers who spent so much time preparing them for college success usually don't learn whether their efforts paid off.

It's a frustrating reality for educators, including those in the Houston school district, who must carry out Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra's recent promise to create a "college-bound culture" in the city's schools.

"Districts, while they realize this is a worthy goal, they have very little information regarding what's going on with their students once they leave their schools," said W. Lee Holcombe, a researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Holcombe hopes to help change that. He and other researchers with the Texas Schools Project have partnered with the Houston, Fort Worth, Garland and Plano school districts to create a database that tracks high school students after they graduate.

Holcombe plans to design the specifics with the districts. At the most basic level, he will have the ability to show the percentage of students from a given high school that enroll in any college, in Texas or elsewhere.

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