The Student Pathways Data Story is the first of C2C’s dashboards, which are designed to be the most guided of our analytic tools. Dashboards are designed to be used by wide audiences including families, educators, administrators, policymakers, advocates, researchers, and more. 

The Student Pathways Data Story shows the educational pathways from high school graduation to postsecondary education and employment. Users can learn about the outcomes of students at the statewide level or in their own community. The goal for this Data Story is to foster greater awareness about the relationships between education, employment, and earnings.

Click here to learn more about C2C’s planned dashboards.

The students included in the Student Pathways Data Story graduated from a California public high school in any year between 2014-2015 and 2022-2023. Some of the data required to generate relevant outcomes and measures were not available in earlier years. Data before 2014-2015 may be available on data providers’ websites.

The first version of the Student Pathways diagram (Sankey diagram) includes enough years to see student outcomes through the postsecondary education system and into the workforce. As the C2C data system grows, future releases of the pathways diagram will expand in both directions – it will cover longer-term outcomes and will incorporate K-12 experiences and early childhood education.

The “Never Enrolled in Public College” category includes students who graduated from a California public high school in the 2014-2015 academic year but did not enroll in a California public 2-year or 4-year college within eight years of graduation. This category currently excludes students who enrolled in out-of-state colleges or universities, as well as those who attended private postsecondary institutions.. Data for non-California and private college enrollments will be included in future dashboard updates.

Students in the “Bachelor’s – Transferred” category are students who transferred from a California Community College and then earned a Bachelor’s Degree at a California 4-year public university. Students who transferred between 4-year institutions are not included in this definition.

The Data Story focuses on the transition from high school to postsecondary education. We anticipate that future dashboards will include information beyond the postsecondary education level shown in this Data Story.

We expect the Student Pathway Data Story to grow as the C2C data system grows. For this Data Story launch, the inclusion of data points was based on several factors, such as data availability and ease of interpretation. The Student Pathways Data Story is focused on questions related to the transition from high school graduation to other career outcomes. Future dashboards will display more in-depth data about other topics, like financial aid and early childhood.

Some districts are not visible in this first iteration of the Student Pathways tool because the focus of this first release is on how graduating high school seniors navigate to and through college. Districts that primarily serve TK-8th grade will not be reflected in this first version. As the C2C data system grows, future versions of the Student Pathways tool will expand, incorporating earlier experiences of the K-12 journey.

The data sources that power the Student Pathways Data Story come from the following Data Providers: CDE (California Department of Education), CDSS (California Department of Social Services), CCC (California Community Colleges), CSU (California State University), UC (University of California), and EDD (Employment Development Department). C2C receives data from its partners annually.

There are a few reasons why data in the Student Pathways Data Story may be slightly different from reporting from an individual data provider.

First, the process of linking different data providers’ files can introduce differences between how a data provider sends data to C2C and how C2C represents it in the Student Pathways Data Story.

Second, the Data Story follows students from their high school graduation, starting in 2014-2015. This affects year-over-year comparisons (such as award counts) where data from students who enrolled in higher education before the 2014-2015 academic year are not included in the Data Story. 

Third, metrics in the Data Story are defined in different ways from other public reporting. For example, the Student Pathways Data Story includes a chart on first-time enrollment in college, while the California Department of Education’s (CDE) College-Going Rate (CGR) report uses a different methodology. 

School districts and legislative districts do not fully align. C2C uses individual school zip codes to approximately map schools to legislative districts, following the mapping of zip codes to legislative districts used by the State Legislature. In many cases, this means that a school district is split across multiple legislative districts. For the Student Pathways Data Story, we use the most recent district and zip code coverage from the State Senate and Assembly. For more information about how zip codes are matched to legislative districts, please refer to the Senate Office of Demographics Zip Code Directory. Note that districts can change over time. Schools that list a PO BOX as their physical address are not included in the mapping to legislative districts, because these zip codes do not map cleanly.

During the planning process, the definitions subcommittee focused on using Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) definitions as a common grouping of race/ethnicity and gender definitions. C2C uses these definitions to bring consistent reporting across the distinct data partners. 

Each data provider has distinct race/ethnicity categories based on their own reporting needs. To align these distinct definitions, the C2C data system will occasionally group race/ethnicity categories differently than some of their data providers.

For the Student Pathways Data Story, race/ethnicity data is observed at the time of high school graduation, based on data provided by CDE. This means that a student’s race/ethnicity is categorized as the race/ethnicity they reported during the year of their high school graduation.

Data about people who are non-binary is not shown in the first version of the Student Pathways Data Story to comply with our privacy policy for student groups that do not meet the minimum counts for displaying. The nonbinary student population filter is grayed out, rather than hidden, because the Student Pathways Data Story is laying the foundation for future dashboards and datasets. For more about the business rules C2C applies to protect identities of students in small groups, read our blog post about the topic.

To protect student privacy, C2C follows a Data Suppression Protocol, which says that summary data should not be reported when there are 10 or fewer students in a specific group. In our exploration of the data, we found that selecting more than one demographic characteristic resulted in many instances where users would not be able to view data in a visualization. To minimize these situations, the first release of the Student Pathways Data Story does not allow the selection of more than one filter condition at one time. The ability to select multiple filters will be explored in future dashboards.

Wages are defined as reported on a W-2 to the Employment Development Department (EDD). Earnings from individuals who are self-employed are not included in these calculations. Wages are inflation adjusted using the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Please refer to the Office of the Director Consumer Price Index Calculator for more information.

Median wages for students who work while enrolled in college are calculated for those who have non-zero earnings in at least three quarters of an academic year (July 1st – June 30). If a student is enrolled in school full-time, this definition means that a student is likely working during the academic school year. The median is the number that divides the group in half, so that half of students earn the median wage or more money every year, and half of students earn less than the median wage. 

Post-graduation earnings are calculated for students who have four non-zero quarters of earnings. Earnings are annualized by taking the sum of earnings across the four quarters during an academic year (July 1st- June 30th).

C2C is committed to protecting confidential records of all Californians. For details on our data privacy policies and practices, see the C2C Data System Privacy FAQ.

Data is hidden when it has been suppressed to protect student privacy. C2C uses the Cradle-to-Career System Data Suppression Protocol for Summary Data to protect individual data within the P20W system. The suppression policy is based on requirements in the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and California’s Information Practices Act (IPA). HIPAA and IPA requirements align with (and exceed) those required for Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). According to this policy, we do not show information about groups of people if 10 or fewer are represented in that population. Additionally, the Data Story employs “complementary suppression”, following the rule that if there are more than zero but less than 11 people in any category, the next largest value will be suppressed until there are at least 11 people in the pool of suppressed categories. In the Student Pathways Data Story, values are reported as “*****” when there are too few individuals in a cell for C2C to be able to report.

No. We use high school enrollment records from CDE and the addresses of the school to map it to a legislative district.

These are the data points that are included in the Student Pathways Data Story. For more details, please see the full Data Dictionary. 

Academic Year: A twelve-month period defined to start on July 1st and end on June 30th.

Award Type: The type of educational degree(s) an individual earned from California public college(s). It could be a Community College Certificate, an Associate Degree, a Bachelor’s Degree – Did Not Transfer, or a Bachelor’s Degree – Transferred.

Award Year: The academic year an individual earned the educational degree from a California public college.

Enrollment Year: The academic year an individual enrolled in a California public college for the first time.

First College Attended: A variable indicating whether an individual first enrolled in a California public 2-year college, a California public 4-year college, or did not enroll in a California public college, after graduating from a California public high school.

Foster Status: A yes or no variable indicating whether an individual has ever been identified as a foster youth in the Department of Social Service’s data while enrolled at a California public K-12 institution between 2014-2015 and 2022-2023.

Gender: The gender of an individual as reported in the year of high school graduation. It can be Male or Female. Nonbinary individuals are proportionally distributed across Male and Female categories to reduce the frequency of complementary suppression.

High School Completion Year: The academic year an individual graduated from a California public high school.

Highest Degree Earned: The highest educational degree an individual earned between 2014-2015 and 2022-2023, ranging from “Attended but Did Not Complete College at a CA Public College” to “Completed a Bachelor’s Degree at a California Public College”.

Homeless Status: A yes or no variable indicating whether an individual has ever been identified as homeless while enrolled at a California public K-12 institution between 2014-2015 and 2022-2023.

Institution Type: The type of public college an individual attended. It could be a California public 2-year college or a California public 4-year college.

Median Annual Earnings for College Graduates: The median annual (inflation-adjusted) earnings for a cohort of individuals who received their highest educational degree from a California public college in the same academic year.

Median Earnings for Students Enrolled in College: The median (inflation-adjusted) for all individuals who worked while attending a California public college in a particular academic year.

Race/Ethnicity: The race/ethnicity of an individual as reported in the year of high school graduation. It can be American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Two or More Races, or White.

School District: The name of the California public school district an individual graduated high school from.

State Assembly District: The California’s State Assembly District that an individual’s high school zip code falls under. It ranges from 1 to 80.

State Senate District: The California’s State Senate District that an individual’s high school zip code falls under. It ranges from 1 to 40.

Works in College: This indicates whether an individual worked while attending a California public college. Students who generate earnings data in and least 3 out of 4 quarters during an academic year are considered to be working.

Years to Degree: The number of years an individual took from first enrolling in the awarding public college to earning the educational degree from that college.

Years Since Award: The number of years elapsed since an individual earned their highest educational degree from a California public college.