(Washington, DC) – Today, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) and the Office of Education Through Employment Pathways (ETEP) unveiled a new website, interactive dashboards and a set of research briefs that provide new insights into the education-to-employment pathways of DC public and public charter school graduates.
“For the first time, DC can follow a student's full path, from the classroom, through postsecondary education and training and into the workforce,” said Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn. “Education and employment have too often been treated as separate systems that don't talk to each other. The Education Through Employment Pathways (ETEP) Data System connects these separate sources and the dashboards reveal insightful findings from this unified data source. This is a living tool that families, educators and policymakers can come back to again and again as new data comes in. It's how we hold ourselves accountable to Compact 2043, our commitment that every child born in DC today will graduate prepared for higher education and ready to excel in a good job.”
Four new dashboards examine how DC students move from education into the workforce, showing how different educational pathways and levels of completion are associated with postsecondary and employment outcomes, including earnings and wage growth over time.
Users can explore the pathways taken by DC Public Schools (DCPS) and public charter high school graduates through three dashboards based on high school graduation status, post-high school path and CTE involvement.
The fourth dashboard set extends this picture to the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), tracking employment outcomes for UDC bachelor's degree graduates, including earnings by field of study and time to employment after graduation.
Alongside the dashboards, ETEP released a set of ten research briefs that dig into specific findings from the data, offering context and analysis that the dashboards alone don't capture, such as which CTE focus areas are most closely linked to strong wage outcomes and where gaps in postsecondary enrollment persist across student groups.
Together, these dashboards and briefs illuminate system-level trends and patterns of potential inequity to help inform policy across the District. They are intended to help families, educators and partners make informed decisions for their students and communities and to help policymakers and program leaders translate the findings into targeted recommendations for investment and program design.
Behind the dashboards, ETEP matches records across seven government agencies to understand how residents are being served by programs throughout their lives. Collaboration across DC agencies is critical to the success of this project. Data is merged from:
- Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE)
- University of the District of Columbia (UDC)
- Department of Human Services (DHS)
- Department of Employment Services (DOES)
- Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA)
- Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS)
- Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection (DLCP)
Looking ahead, ETEP plans to launch “School Tools” dashboards for Local Education Agencies (LEAs) later this year. The School Tools dashboards will allow school leaders to track postsecondary and workforce outcomes for their graduates dating back to 2016, including college enrollment and completion, time to degree, employment outcomes and industry placement, while comparing their results with citywide trends. ETEP also plans to release initial research findings on youth workforce programming, adult education, foster care, as well as a deeper analysis of citywide CTE programming.
All resources can be found at etep.dc.gov.