The Coleridge Initiative recently announced the winners of its first round of the Democratizing our Data Challenge, which will build on the progress made by state and federal governments to better connect education and workforce data systems to support more equitable educational outcomes. The winning teams will collaborate on projects that use data and evidence to inform education and workforce policy. The projects were selected because they are expected to have a real, practical impact on successful education-to-workforce transitions.

The Heldrich Center is the recipient of two of these awards and a partner on a third award:

• The New Jersey Education to Earnings Data System will develop a publicly available data model for state K-12 data submissions to the Administrative Data Research Facility, outline use cases, describe existing data models, and create technical documentation detailing tables, elements, options set, and entity relationships.
• The Eastern States Longitudinal Data Collaborative, led by New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia, will collaborate with Kentucky to bring the Multi-State Postsecondary Report to the eastern states. The dashboard will use postsecondary and workforce data to provide insight into education and employment outcomes and improve cross-state policymaking.
• Led by the Kentucky Center for Statistics, this collaboration will expand the Multi-State Postsecondary Reportdashboard to include Indiana and Tennessee postsecondary completers, view regional student flow patterns, and gain greater insight into the relationships of state policies on postsecondary and workforce outcomes, with breakdowns by various demographic groups and measures of “quality” employment.

The other winning projects can be viewed here.

Those interested in learning more about this work are encouraged to attend the online Multi-state Data Collaboratives: From Projects to Products to Practice convening on March 30 and 31 to hear more about each project.