Connecting Education and Workforce Data: The Institute for College Access and Success recently published a report analyzing the importance of linked education and workforce data. The report examined Kentucky and Tennessee’s integration of education and workforce data sets to identify best practices and lessons learned. It notes the importance of the Kentucky Center for Statistics, which facilitates the integration of Kentucky’s education and workforce data and shares its findings with agencies within the state to respond to specific and relevant research questions that can inform policy. Similarly, Tennessee links education and workforce data in a system that receives contributions from a variety of partners and assists many agencies in their policy process. This system provides answers to policy questions in a centralized manner, and the state plans to expand access in the future.
The report highlights the importance of integrating education and workforce data and the need for adequate federal funding through the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant Program to bring these centralized, integrated data systems to every state. The newly introduced Data for American Jobs Act in the Senate, supported by ACTE, aims to better support state longitudinal data systems and build stronger connections between education and workforce data, including CTE.
Linking Postsecondary Education to Jobs: Harvard University’s The Project on Workforce explores the ways in which postsecondary education connects to job outcomes. The initiative recently released a College-to-Jobs Map that visually illustrates the connection between regional workforce trends and availability of college graduates. The tool’s College Graduate Data map looks at graduate demographics, fields of study and degree attainment against the backdrop of regional growth rates in number of college graduates, including an economic mobility rate for different communities. The Labor Market Data map compares college graduate supply to worker demand for various occupations. Both tools can be filtered by a number of variables.
A companion report describes educational interventions that postsecondary institutions can implement to assist students in accessing quality, good-paying jobs. These include career coaching, experiential learning, industry-recognized credentials, apprenticeships and other programs that orient students towards success in the workforce. Studying the existing research and current implementation of these interventions, the report found that colleges and the job market needed further alignment and that interventions were often not equitably accessible to all students.
Implementing a Student-level Data Network: A recent report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy explores design options for a future national student-level data network (SLDN) that incorporates data from postsecondary institutions and federal agencies to provide greater insights into postsecondary student outcomes. Teams of experts developed plans for hypothetical SLDNs to identify potential benefits and anticipate problems around student identifiers, data storage, revising submitted data and adding new data elements.
The teams all emphasized the importance of a network that would decrease the burden on institutions through the use of state systems that collect and report data on behalf of institutions. As a result, institutions would only need to report data to one place, and the burden on the federal data collection help desk would be reduced as it would now interact directly with states. In addition, the panelists agreed that institutions should have access to their own data within an SLDN to analyze it for internal use.
Comments