FEBRUARY 2025 - Data Sharing to Help Students Succeed After High School - The Why and How for Education Leaders

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Callum

FEBRUARY 2025 resource explains how education leaders can use data to support smoother transitions for students after high school, including college, workforce training, military pathways, and apprenticeships. It outlines streamlined admissions initiatives that notify eligible students and reduce paperwork, while also addressing institutional and state benefits. The document analyzes FERPA-related challenges in safely and legally sharing select data between K–12 and postsecondary systems and describes practical options for implementing compliance.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages4

Reading Time10 min

AccessFree to download

Data Sharing to Help Students Succeed After High School

The Why and How for Education Leaders

The Challenges

The How

FEBRUARY 2025 Data Sharing to Help Students Succeed After High School The Why and How for Education Leaders State leaders have a responsibility to use their data systems to help students seamlessly navigate transitions from high school into college, workforce training programs, the military, and apprenticeships. Many state leaders are meeting this responsibility with initiatives through which public postsecondary education institutions or providers of nondegree credentials proactively notify high school students who meet certain academic or other criteria that they are eligible for admission. These initiatives include automatic admissions and other programs sometimes called streamlined admissions. They help create a more streamlined transition from high school to postsecondary for all students by: © Directing students to high-quality, low-cost programs by making understanding and opting into higher-quality state options easier for students—ultimately making vulnerable students less susceptible to predatory businesses. © Supporting students through postsecondary application processes by reducing the number of forms and applications they need to complete. Students with the least access to postsecondary preparation resources are often less aware of their post-high school options and more harmed by complex application processes for colleges, apprenticeships, and other nondegree programs. © Reducing administrative burdens for institutions. Traditional admissions procedures require a substantial amount of processing, review, and staff capacity. © Giving states critical information to support education and workforce goals by ensuring that state leaders understand students’ postsecondary opportunities and decisions. Establishing secure, timely, and effective data-sharing processes to make enrolling in postsecondary education and workforce programs simpler for students isn’t always easy, but schools, districts, postsecondary institutions, providers of nondegree credentials, and states have clear pathways to move this work forward. Because using data to support postsecondary transition initiatives requires exchanging select data between K–12 and postsecondary institutions, state leaders must design data-sharing processes that put legal compliance, ethics, and transparency at the forefront. This resource addresses the benefits of using data to help students pursue postsecondary education or workforce training, the challenges of implementing these initiatives, and how state agencies and institutions of higher education can navigate Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) compliance when implementing them. The Challenges FERPA articulates when and how personally identifiable student data can be shared for legitimate educational purposes. The law includes few express prohibitions on that use, especially if a parent or an eligible student (a student who is age 18 or a student of any age who is attending a postsecondary institution) consents. Still, many institution, state, and local leaders have difficulty navigating the parameters around safely sharing student information between K–12 and postsecondary systems for the purpose of easing the transition from high school to college. Reasons for this difficulty include: © FERPA was written in 1974 and does not explicitly address the use of technology for data management or how the law’s data-sharing exceptions apply to data use for automatic admissions to postsecondary institutions. © The US Department of Education (ED) issued regulations in 2008 and 2011 clarifying that education records within a statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS) could be shared under certain conditions with state agencies without being considered a redisclosure of data. But many education leaders and lawyers aren’t clear on how these conditions apply to automatic admissions. © ED has not provided additional legal clarity on this aspect of FERPA, leaving institution, state, and l

FAQs

What is the purpose of data sharing in postsecondary transitions described in this resource?

It supports a smoother transition from high school to postsecondary pathways by helping education leaders guide students toward appropriate programs and by enabling timely, legally compliant data exchange between K–12 and postsecondary institutions.

What key FERPA limitation contributes to implementation challenges for education leaders?

FERPA was written in 1974 and does not explicitly address technology for data management or how its data-sharing exceptions apply to automatic admissions programs.

What are two general approaches states can use to share student information for these initiatives?

States can either obtain direct consent to share student data or securely exchange basic directory information of eligible students.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Callum