By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director, Data and Strategic Initiatives at NCAN; and Angela Jubinville, Stakeholder Engagement Specialist at Quality Information Partners
Reading time: Six minutes
States must do better on sharing postsecondary outcomes data with district and school professionals and the public. Last fall, the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) analyzed how state agencies are using their National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) contracts to get critical information in the hands of school leaders, school counselors, and other adults with an interest in students’ postsecondary pathways.
NCAN has previously highlighted the work of Quality Information Partners (QIP), which in addition to case studies of promising postsecondary outcomes data sharing, maintains a community of practice on the topic and has established an Action Fund to support promising projects to spur greater data access and usage at the
local level.
Proposals came in a wide variety of scopes and approaches from an equally varied mix of local, regional, and state nonprofit and agency stakeholders. After a three-phase process, 10 projects were selected to move forward to the award phase, and awardees
now have an approximately 18-month window to fulfill their scope. Administration of the funds is being managed by the Council of Chief State School Officers.
The Arizona Department of Education will create a Student Success Dashboard that will offer a cohesive view of data from many different systems, including AzEDS, Arizona’s agency student data collection system, the Career and Technical Education (CTE)
Portal, NSC, and workforce attainment data. The dashboard will unify data across grades 9-12, CTE, postsecondary, assessment, and workforce systems, creating a single, actionable interface for those working most closely with students
Education Forward Arizona will begin development and delivery of three-to-four asynchronous College and Career Advising Professional (CAP) Training courses. These courses will build the capacity of at least 150 Arizona school counselors, educators, administrators,
and college access professionals, particularly those serving under-resourced communities. The content will be designed to help educators
Understand existing postsecondary data sources and what they measure;
Recognize the value of these data for improving student outcomes;
Develop skills in analyzing and interpreting data;
Apply data insights to create more meaningful, equitable, and intentional postsecondary advising structures and career and college readiness (CCR) programming; and
Establish and strengthen school-level data tracking systems to inform ongoing CCR efforts.
CT RISE will develop and deploy new data tools, built on the RISE Data Hub, to help educators identify and support seniors who intend to enroll in two-year colleges. The tools will match student intentions with NSC enrollment records and present cohort-
and student-level views to close visibility gaps. The tools will aggregate intention and follow-through data (e.g., college applications, Free Application for Student Aid (FAFSA) submission, enrollment records), enabling counselors and administrators
to better target interventions in a timely manner.
When schools are introduced to new data sources, they often struggle with translating the information into actionable and sustainable changes. ETEP has developed the Education Through Employment Data System, which will allow the district to understand
for the first time how education and workforce programs impact long-term student outcomes, and which supports are most effective in placing students on pathways to economic mobility and disrupting patterns of inequity. To maximize this new information,
ETEP has partnered with EmpowerK12, a DC nonprofit with a history of working closely with schools. This project proposes developing data tools paired with training for local education agencies (LEAs) and schools to learn about the new information
available and how it can inform their work.
This project aims to create a virtual infrastructure that supports the analysis of pathways Delaware students take and, importantly, the identification of actionable barriers that limit students’ progress toward long-term college and career goals. To
meet these aims, DHEO will direct the integration of siloed data, the expansion of PowerBI dashboard capability, the development of technical materials (e.g., data entry manuals, data codebooks, PowerBI guides), the rollout of training workshops and
communication toolkits to support LEA administrators and high school staff in the use of the dashboard to generate local insights and to distribute information targeted to the unique needs of various stakeholders and student populations.
Iowa currently provides FAFSA completion data to schools through its Google FAFSA Distribution System, delivering weekly student-level reports to all public and participating private schools in Iowa. This project will build on that infrastructure by integrating
additional key postsecondary outcome data, providing a unified, automated platform that delivers real-time, student-level reports directly to school counselors and administrators. By expanding beyond FAFSA completion data, the platform will offer
a more comprehensive view of students’ postsecondary trajectories—helping schools better support students throughout the transition to higher education.
The Postsecondary Attainment Institute will work with the Iowa Department of Education’s research and data teams to integrate high school enrollment and NSC data into the reports. It will also build on current agreements with Iowa high schools that already
actively participate in the weekly FAFSA data reporting system
CPE will enhance its Futuriti.org platform by integrating a Kentucky-specific living wage calculator that allows users to explore the relationship between career choices, education levels, income, and cost of living.
The new feature will be built using Kentucky postsecondary outcomes and wage data from the Kentucky Longitudinal Data System (KLDS). It will include location-based calculators that allow students to “predict” earnings and understand how education
affects income potential.
The MLDSC will develop the Maryland Postsecondary Academic and Workforce Explorer (MD-PAWE), a data-driven tool aimed at supporting high school students, particularly those not pursuing a traditional college path, in making informed career and education
decisions. This initiative will leverage existing infrastructure, technical capacity, and governance structures, including data such as wages for graduates disaggregated by academic or calendar year, as well as by industry in which the graduates are
employed. The tables in the explorer may be further disaggregated by institution, degree attainment, major, race, ethnicity, gender, and residency at the time of enrollment in college.
This project will develop a Postsecondary Outcomes Dashboard that will translate NSC data into actionable insights at the school building level; be piloted in partnership with Kansas City (MO) Public Schools and later expand statewide; include training
and convenings to build capacity among school counselors, administrators, and community partners; and support evidence-based planning aligned with ICAP and other state and district priorities.
VTEC will launch the first secure, interactive data dashboard disaggregated by tribal affiliation. This tool will empower the seven federally recognized Virginia tribes with real-time, student-level insights into postsecondary success patterns; support
tribal consultation, school staff training, and family engagement to boost advising and postsecondary planning; and increase data sovereignty by placing access and interpretation power directly in tribal hands.
Five of the awardees above, those marked with an asterisk, are NCAN members (and of course, NCAN would love to earn the remaining five awardees’ membership). NCAN will continue to partner with QIP to share findings and highlights from this important body
of work and to push for more states to think creatively about, and lean into, more effectively sharing postsecondary outcomes data with practitioners and the public and spurring that data’s use by the same.
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