Alaska consistently ranks near the bottom in educational performance measures. Why isn’t Alaska doing better?
 
The Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education (ACPE) - in partnership with the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the University of Alaska, and ACPE’s research advisory body - seeks not only to answer that question, but also aid in finding ways to improve Alaska's performance.

Alaska is ready to take action to address education data system needs.  Alaska will leverage its capability to collaborate with state and local agencies and entities to develop cost-efficient, sustainable systems to inform address policy and program design.

Specific Alaska goals include a five-stage long-term proposal to increase the capabilities of Alaska’s P-12 education data system and expand linkages from the P-12 education data system to postsecondary data, workforce, and other social outcomes data. This will enable the state to track student progression, completions, and outcomes through Alaska’s education system, establishing a true P-20 education data system, and beyond. The five stages are:

1. P-12, Postsecondary, and Department of Labor Data Matching
2. Expansion of P-12 Program Outcomes Data Collected
3. SLDS Data Audit System
4. Data Mart/Data Reporting and Analysis System
5. Student Transcript/Teacher Information Inclusion

The overarching project framework is a set of critical policy questions that were identified via statewide stakeholder collaboration. The project goal is to provide answers to those critical policy questions without duplicating efforts or adding unnecessary administrative costs, and thus enable the state to improve the condition of education in Alaska, transforming those who successfully complete an educational program to be productive contributors to the economy of Alaska.  Information from this research data system will help education and workforce administrators at the state level see more clearly where valuable state resources can best be utilized and subsequently be accountable for the outcomes related to the investment of both state and federal dollars.

1. How many and which students are progressing through an education program/system to achieve college, workforce, and life readiness?
Related data includes: performance on periodic assessments, high school completion rates, college‐going rates, remediation rates, credential achievement rates, workforce participation rates, wage and hour information, social services participation rates, and incarceration rates. 

Goal: Track student progression through the education pipeline, distinguishing between the program areas of success and those areas which need improvement.  Student progression will also be traced through academic completion, via degree, certificate or diploma, and into the workforce, or other outcomes, such as, participation in public assistance programs, incarceration or enlistment in the military.

2. What are the migration rates and patterns for Alaskans accessing postsecondary programs outside of Alaska and subsequently returning to Alaska?
Related data includes: credential achievement rates, workforce participation rates, wage and hour information, social services participation rates, and incarceration rates.

Goal: Measure by tracking students who leave the state and determining if they return to the state and are subsequently employed here.  Additional characteristics will be associated with the student, such as those receiving financial aid grants or those participating in peer mentoring programs that will enable determining specific outcomes for these student subgroups. 

3. Of those Alaskans who receive education services from Alaska secondary and postsecondary institutions, how many remain in the state and contribute to the economy?
Related data includes: secondary and postsecondary enrollment and completion data, workforce participation rates, wage and hour information, and rates of employment relative to field of study/training.

Goal: Follow cohorts through Alaska’s education system and subsequently into the workforce.  Other potential outcomes will also be measured, such as incarceration rates, enrollment in public assistance programs and enlistment in the military to determine degrees of contribution to the state’s economy.

4. Of those Alaskans who participated in but exited from Alaska secondary or postsecondary institutions without credentials, how many are within three or fewer semesters to completion and what are their employment status and income?
Related data includes: secondary and postsecondary enrollment and exit data, workforce participation rates, wage and hour information, and rates of employment relative to field of study/training.

Goal: Linking employment and wage data to these ‘early exiters’ will help demonstrate the limitations for exiting school early before the successful completion of a diploma, certificate or degree program.

5. What is the impact of financial aid on college access and success?
Related data includes: credential achievement rates, time‐to‐degree information, workforce participation rates, wage and hour information, and rates of employment relative to field of study/training.

Goal: This effort will be a cohort based study, monitoring and reviewing a class of high school graduates and distinguishing those who receive financial aid and comparing to those who do not to determine if these factors influence continuation into postsecondary, persistence in postsecondary and completion from postsecondary.

6. How effective are specific interventions and strategies to increase the rate at which students/citizens, particularly those from low income families, progress through an education program/system to achieve college, workforce, and life ready?
Related data, specific to intervention/strategy participants, includes: performance on periodic assessments, high school completion rates, high school course-taking patterns, college‐going rates, remediation rates, credential achievement rates, workforce participation rates, wage and hour information, social services participation rates, and incarceration rates.

Goal: Expanding the amount of program data collected by the Alaska SLDS, specifically exceptional student educational data and free/reduced priced lunch data, will facilitate the state’s ability to evaluate its responsiveness not only to the student population as a whole related to varying interventions, but also to drill down into the detail relating to specific program areas.

7. How do Alaska’s postsecondary institutions’ educational program productivity and capacity align with Alaska’s current and anticipated workforce needs? 
The primary focus of this question is analyzing the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs to educate and produce an adequately trained teacher workforce while meeting the educator needs in the state. 

Goal: Results from this evaluation will not be limited to teacher preparation programs, but will include other disciplines and their ability to produce a prepared workforce to be responsive to Alaska’s anticipated workforce needs.  This effort will not only require postsecondary completion data and workforce participation rates, but also P-12 educator data.

8. What is the private/public return on private/public investment in education?
Related data includes: credential achievement rates, workforce participation rates, wage and hour information, social services participation rates, and incarceration rates.

Goal: Measures for this question will include:  calculating a Return on Investment (ROI) based on the number of students completing high school with a standard diploma; and the rate of residents hired by industry.  This analysis can also benefit from the unique aspect of Alaska’s workforce data which includes not only industry data but occupation information as well.  An examination of the public cost of providing social services and corrections services can also provide an ROI measurement when related to the percentages and numbers of students who failed to successfully complete high school and are subsequently consumers of those services.