How Are Students In Your Area Doing Post-Graduation? See CA's New Tool

CALIFORNIA — A new tool from California is set to give the public new access to data tracking how students move through the state’s education system, college and into the workforce.

The Cradle-to-Career Data System (C2C) dashboard, dubbed “Pathways to College in California”, which is now live, allows users to explore trends in college enrollment, completion and earnings after graduation.

"Californians can visualize their futures by seeing disconnected data from across sectors and previously unavailable insights, all in one place," Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday.

Explore data on school districts and student outcomes in your area here.

The interactive platform is designed to answer questions about how public school students progress through higher education and which groups may face barriers along the way.

For example, when selecting Murrieta Valley Unified, a chart shows multiple pathways for students who graduated from district high schools in 2014-2015.

Data can also be filtered by student population. For example, by selecting the Asian student population, one data set shows that 43% of Asian students enrolled in a four-year college worked in 2022 and 2023.

Launching the data system has been a key goal for Newsom's administration but it has faced multiple delays. The Cradle-to-Career system was first launched in 2019 and the public was meant to have access by the spring of 2024.

“We have people who’ve been calling for this (data system) for 10 years, for 20 years,” Mary Ann Bates, executive director of the Cradle to Career Data System, told CalMatters. “The effort the state is making now to bring this together is so that students, families, educators and policymakers can have this information at their fingertips.”

The dashboard features data visualizations and guiding questions centered on access, persistence and outcomes. It draws on records from K-12 schools, community colleges, California State University, University of California and workforce data sources.

Users will be able to explore data by race, gender, age, foster youth status and homelessness status, among other factors — making it possible to identify where disparities exist and what interventions may be needed.

Before this dashboard, the state's source for parents was the California School Dashboard, which was launched in 2016 to measure academic achievement, chronic absenteeism, graduation rates, suspension rates, college and career readiness and more.

But parents and experts alike have long criticized the way California publishes educational data. Previously, data and information was made available for the state's 5.8 million students through at least five different websites.

“I have a Ph.D. in education policy and I can barely navigate these sites,” said Morgan Polikoff, a USC professor, told CalMatters. “How do we expect a typical parent to access this information and make sense of it?”

That's why Newsom hopes the state's new centralized data hub will improve access to information about student outcomes.

“In my quest to find basic information on college-going rates, outcomes or employment prospects, it felt like trying to find a needle in a haystack because of all the different resources. With this tool, I feel that students like me will have the chance to have everything available at their fingers,” said Mike Nguyen, student, University of California, Berkeley and Cradle-to-Career Advisory Board Member.

But some remain skeptical about the new tool.

“If the dashboard doesn’t start the cohort at 9th grade, then the dashboard is useless,” Alex Barrios, president of the nonprofit Educational Results Partnership, told CalMatters.

According to Barrios, the tool lacks information about high school dropouts, which makes it look like students attend college at higher rates than they really do.