By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, Data and Strategic Initiatives
Reading time: Seven minutes
Earlier this spring, the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) shared the good and long-awaited news that the rollout of
the National Student Clearinghouse’s (NSC) StudentTracker 3.0 platform had begun. NCAN members and other data-focused
individuals and programs in the field know that StudentTracker (ST) is of the most valuable tools we have for understanding students’ postsecondary outcomes, including enrollment, transfer, stopout, and attainment.
The NSC held webinars in June and July, the NSC’s Clearinghouse Academy webinar series held webinars titled, “StudentTracker 3.0 101: A Beginner’s Guide for K-12 Districts and Consortiums.” In these webinars, Michele Gralak, Product Manager for ST for High Schools, illuminated some of the new features of ST 3.0, many of which are responsive to feedback offered from NCAN members about how to improve the platform’s experience.
After watching the webinars, I jotted down the things that caught my eyes and ears that I think NCAN’s audiences will also find interesting.
One important overarching caveat:This webinar was aimed at school district and “consortia” subscribers using the StudentTracker for High Schools (STHS) service. All StudentTracker subscribers
haven’t been migrated over yet, and it may be some time before community-based college access programs using, for example, StudentTracker for Educational Organizations (STEO) or StudentTracker for Outreach (STOR) get to use ST 3.0. The NSC’s FAQ notes,
“We are evaluating the timeline for moving other services. Our current priority is to move all secondary subscribers to the new platform before we begin to migrate other StudentTracker users.”
The “Analysis-Ready Report” Delivers on a Big Wishlist Item
ST offers valuable data on student-level postsecondary outcomes, but the detail file in which that data has typically been delivered has been a stumbling block for far too many users. That’s because the data come in a “long” “student x enrollment”
data structure that is tricky to work with for all the savviest analysts and systems. In focus groups and ad hoc feedback, users have long asked for a “wide” file that includes one student per row, which is a format with which far more analysts
are used to working.
ST 3.0 delivers that “wide” file with its “Analysis-Ready” report. This file includes one student per row and the key enrollment, persistence, and completion indicators that we’d expect in such a file. For example, there will be first fall, first year,
and first two years enrollment indicators, the names of the institution at which that enrollment occurred, and even an indicator for whether a student was retained in year two, which is a new data point that does not appear in the current ST. There
will also be fields by student representing the number of institutions they’ve attended and one showing their enrollment pattern.
A screencap from the webinar is below.
This is going to make analyzing the data included in the detail file much easier for a lot of programs to work with. It’s a big win.
Interactive Dashboards Make Quick Insights More Accessible
One of the most highly-touted features of ST 3.0 are the interactive charts that appear on a subscriber’s main dashboard. These display the NSC’s usual top three key performance indicators (KPI) of enrollment, retention/persistence, and graduation. Even
better, the dashboard allows user to dive in and “use the filters and breakdowns available on the page to view more granular outcomes,” according to the NSC’s website. This data currently appears in the 40+ page PDF that STHS subscribers receive,
but those charts are obviously static, and a dynamic, filterable data visualization allows for easier exploration.
There Are New Data Elements in StudentTracker 3.0
In addition to the usual postsecondary outcomes with which subscribers are familiar, ST 3.0 also adds a few more new elements to the detail file and analysis-ready report. Namely:
Dual enrollment and credentials earned: See how many of your students enrolled in college while attending high school and received a credential during this time.
Persistence/Retention: Learn whether your students remained at the same postsecondary institution in the second year (retained) OR moved to a different institution (persisted).
More credential information: See the number of students who earned certificates, the total number of credentials and the highest credential earned.
The Current StudentTracker Most Users Are Familiar With Isn’t Going Away Yet
One of the questions on the ST 3.0 FAQ,
is “When will the current StudentTracker for High Schools service be retired?” and the answer is, “The Clearinghouse expects to have the majority of subscribers on StudentTracker 3.0 before the spring 2025 effective date* and will determine when after
that date we will retire StudentTracker for High Schools.” On the webinar, Gralak noted that they hoped to have a better sense of that date at the end of July 2025. Stay tuned!
Programs Will Have to Adjust to “On-Demand Reporting”
Current STHS subscribers know that their data releases revolve around three “effective dates” (roughly November, March, and June) each year at which new data from the preceding semester is pushed to their accounts. These effective dates represent the
point at which the NSC has a critical mass of data from postsecondary institutions.
Notably, ST 3.0 is doing away with effective dates. The platform is moving more toward “on-demand reporting” such that when subscribers request reports, the platform will populate them with the latest available data from postsecondary institutions.
I’ll have more to say on this in a future blog post, but this is likely to be a little complicated for subscribers. By the “effective dates,” subscribers could be pretty assured they were getting data from a critical mass of institutions. Under the new
system, it will be a little tricker to know whether that’s true about the data they pull. On the webinar, Gralak noted that the NSC will report, by state, the percentage of two- and four-year institutions from which they have data, but notably this
report will not show which individual institutions have reported.
The TLDR here is that data based on “on-demand reporting” will probably have to be footnoted with the date the data was pulled. Subscribers sending a lot of students to a given institution will want to look at their detail file data carefully to see if
they’ve got data from that institution or not.
More to come on best practice in this area as it develops.
Sharing With Individual High Schools Still Being Worked Out
District and consortia subscribers currently receive an “individual high school packet,” the aforementioned 40+ page PDF, for each high school in their service agreement. Gralak, on the webinar, noted, “We want to make it easier for high schools to get
their outcomes.” Consequently, the NSC is trying to facilitate data sharing with high schools through ST 3.0, although that process is yet to be determined. Hypothetically, district-/consortia-level contacts could provide high school-level contacts
access to their high school’s data specifically. There’s no further information than that at the moment, and the NSC may have more to come soon on what that might look like.
There’s Still Functionality to Be Added
The NSC is making good and welcomed progress with ST 3.0, but they note there’s still functionality forthcoming. The aforementioned FAQ lists a few outcomes reports that are “not yet ready”:
Aggregate reports for individual high schools (the academic data elements and enrollment within first two years)
Trends showing eight years of outcomes
Longitudinal view of a high school cohort
Top 25 Colleges First Attended report
Outcomes from your request file submissions (aka “ad hoc”)
The Upload/Submission Process Hasn’t Changed Yet
The upload/submission process for the ST platform hasn’t historically been a fan favorite, but subscribers will have to wait a little longer to get a new experience on that front. The ST 3.0 FAQ notes, “The timeline for this functionality is being determined.”
Data will still be submitted through the FTP, but with ST 3.0 instead of being returned through the FTP it will populate into the StudentTracker platform.
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The ST 3.0 webinar and materials that the NSC released have been very illuminating for understanding the added functionality in the new platform. I encourage subscribers to check out the User Guide and FAQ as great resources and to keep an eye out for future webinars related to ST 3.0.
As always, NCAN will continue to keep you apprised about new developments on this important tool. Have questions or want to talk more about tracking postsecondary outcomes data? My inbox is always open at debaunb@ncan.org.
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