A new report from Complete College America aims to help states and institutions use national and homegrown data and measurement tools to improve completion rates, close institutional performance gaps, and increase economic mobility for historically excluded students.
Specifically, the report provides step-by-step guidance and tools that state and institutional leaders can use as they work to build internal data teams and create national and homegrown measurement systems to increase student success.
The study comes at a time of declining enrollment and retention across much of the higher education landscape, as colleges and their students continue to grapple with the far-reaching implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on access, persistence, and equity in higher education. To help sustain progress and eliminate completion gaps, the guidebook and its accompanying tools provide a framework for faculty, staff, college leadership, and policymakers to collect, share, and act on data to improve student outcomes.
The guidebook also includes specific recommendations for how colleges can identify key performance indicators of student success, source data, and use the National Student Clearinghouse’s Postsecondary Data Partnership to track student outcomes. Specifically, it outlines the four cornerstones of strong measurement systems: measuring what matters, sourcing the data needed, using the PDP, and having regular conversations about data. The publication draws on CCA’s efforts to implement and scale data-informed student success practices over the past decade across its alliance of states, systems, and organizations aligned working to improve college completion in the United States.