In this newsletter, we announce a new way to explore P20W data, share numerous data updates (new dashboards, reports, and more), celebrate last year’s accomplishments, and look forward to the year ahead.
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Student pathways: A new way to explore P20W data
At ERDC, we are often asked about how our P20W data can be used to follow students over time. To demonstrate this, we constructed a cohort of about 77,000 students who were kindergarteners in 2006 and traced their trajectories up to 2024. The visualization above is the result, and it shows many possible student pathways. To explore the visual and learn more about what it means, visit our new Student Pathways page
Refreshed dashboards, new publications, & more
📈Four refreshed dashboards. Over the last quarter, four ERDC data dashboards – Earnings for Graduates, Financial Transparency, High School Graduate Outcomes, and Statewide Public Four-Year – were updated. These updates include adding the latest year of data, new data subsets and views, improved visualization design, and updated documentation.
Of particular note, our High School Graduate Outcomes dashboard now displays fall first year enrollment, providing a provisional glimpse into Fall 2025 enrollments, based on National Student Clearinghouse data. In addition to breakouts by gender, race/ethnicity, GPA, and program participation, this view can be filtered by area (including school district, educational services district, county, and legislative district), allowing for local understanding of where students go right after high school. Plus, this dashboard now shows more granularity for postsecondary completions, with new filters by cohort and years' post-high-school-graduation.
Read more about these updates, plus some of our findings resulting from the latest dashboard update (for example, graduates attending public in-state institutions is at a 10-year high!), in our newest data digest.
Visit ERDC’s newly updated dashboards.
❓Have you ever wondered what ERDC dashboards can tell you? In our latest news post, we answer questions using our dashboards, questions like:
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How do postsecondary graduate earnings compare to high school graduate only earnings?
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What do postsecondary graduates earn?
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What are postsecondary persistence rates across student populations in my area?
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How do dual credit programs in my school district compare to statewide averages?
💵 Annual report on state aid extension now available. Created together by ERDC and Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC), this report provides information on the first academic year, 2024-25, of aid extension, a program that allows students more time to receive financial aid to complete education after high school. One key takeaway is that students using the extension were more likely to be low-income, older, and enrolled at public four-year institutions
Celebrating 2025 accomplishments
In 2025, in addition to our core functions, ERDC:
- Published 10 reports and updated all 6 dashboards, which also fulfilled reporting requirements
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Improved our data request process and updated these supporting documents:
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Executed 78 DSAs (including amendments) for data coming into ERDC
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Received 94 data requests and delivered data for 63 requests
- Launched a postsecondary data strategy
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Prepared to modernize and migrate our P20W data system to the cloud, with leadership and technical support from Office of Financial Management’s Forecasting Systems team
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Supported partners by:
- Assisting with National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data distribution to school districts
- Collaborating with Council of Presidents (COP), State Board of Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC), and Office of the Superintendent of Public Schools (OSPI) on a College in the High School Alliance grant
- Providing data to the State Board of Education (SBE) to support Future Ready
- Supplying data for other agencies’ legislative reporting
- Presented and participated at more than two dozen conferences, webinars and other events (read about some of those activities in this news post)
Thank you to our many data contributors, collaborators, and supporters for another year of maintaining trusted education-to-workforce data for the state of Washington.
What’s Ahead in 2026: A Note from the Director
Greetings, all:
In 2026, OFM’s Forecasting Systems team officially launches the P20W migration project, a major initiative to move ERDC’s data systems into a cloud environment. This migration will significantly improve data accessibility and expand our analytical capabilities.
Supporting the success of this project is ERDC’s top priority for 2026. To do so, we are ensuring our data scientists and researchers have the dedicated time needed to focus on this effort. As a result, ERDC will continue to prioritize data requests and other work to maintain sufficient capacity to support migration.
If you have questions about this prioritization or the P20W migration project, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
– Katie, ERDC Director
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