The State Higher Education Executive Officer Association’s (SHEEO) Postsecondary Data Partnership Assistance to Community Colleges work support Jobs for the Future (JFF) Student Success Centers and their colleges with data-use technical assistance related to the National Student Clearinghouse’s Postsecondary Data Partnership (PDP). The PDP is a national partnership to support system-and institution-level data use and reduce reporting burden. PDP institutions provide the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) with additional data files, have access to key performance indicator (KPI) reports and interactive Tableau dashboards, and have the ability to easily share data with colleagues. As well, there are decreased data reporting requirements for institutions participating in multiple initiatives. SHEEO’s activities focus on assisting with data submission and utilizing PDP results, reports, and Tableau dashboards to improve student success. The project began in January 2019 and will continue through December 2020.
SHEEO’s work focuses on five primary outcomes:
- “Communities of Practice” convenings designed to encourage cross-network collaborations, allowing participating Student Success Centers to discuss the implications of the KPI results, share emerging practices across centers, and include novel analyses that highlight new areas of inquiry with the PDP data.
- Research papers that describe the “state of play” among early PDP adopters and highlight the differential effects of JFF services on institutions and, in turn, student success.
- A toolkit that enables institutions or systems with an established capacity to report to the NSC to do so more efficiently, and to help other institutions or systems develop that capacity. The toolkit will also provide best practices for analyzing and using PDP key performance indicators to evaluate institutional performance and the effectiveness of interventions.
- Providing solutions for ad hoc data requests from institutions regarding KPI outputs and advising institutions regarding how to measure the effectiveness of particular interventions.
- Conducting webinars with participating institutions to facilitate the development of targeted content addressing various levels of technical assistance.
This project was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Project Contact: Christina Whitfield, senior vice president and chief of staff
