This semester American River College announced in a Facebook post that the Los Rios Community College District will be participating in a data-sharing agreement with other public education institutions in northern California. These include the Elk Grove Unified School District, the Sacramento County Office of Education, Sacramento State University and UC Davis.

“This partnership will streamline education-to-career pathways, ensuring our students have the support they need to transition seamlessly through our educational systems and into high-demand STEM careers,” the Facebook post says. 

This agreement is a pilot that was created as a result of a $18 million grant awarded to these institutions by the state of California. A data-sharing agreement is an idea that had been in the works for a while and with this grant the opportunity to bring it into fruition had presented itself.

“One of the issues that we face in higher education, and in the K-12 partner space as well, is that we’re all separate institutions with separate data systems, and our systems don’t always talk to each other, which means it’s difficult to identify how successful we are,” said Gabe Ross, chief strategy and communications Officer at ARC. “Having the ability to share data across multiple institutions is a really important step in building that educational ecosystem in our region to make sure that we’re setting up students to be successful.”

This program will help to get better outreach with students as well as to help students from local high schools enroll in Los Rios colleges. It will also track how students from particular high schools are performing at the colleges in this district. As a result, the schools can determine where students need the most help and how to support them. In addition, this system tracks the program of study the students are taking and the classes they are enrolled in. Essentially, this tool is meant to follow students throughout their educational journey to track how they are doing before entering the Los Rios community colleges and how they do after they transfer or graduate. 

“We have attorneys who have looked at it to make sure that we’re not sharing any confidential information so there’s no FERPA or HIPAA protected data that’s shared,” Ross said.

The data points that will be shared from institution to institution will differ depending on what specific information is needed in order to ensure that no more data is shared than necessary, according to Ross.

This $18 million grant is especially focused on supporting engineering and healthcare pathways, as these are currently the most in demand careers in the state of California. Providing extra support to students pursuing these avenues will help with the demand for engineers and healthcare workers amongst employers. However, since all students’ data is being shared across institutions, all students will benefit.

As this is a pilot, it is meant to be an initial experiment to see if the initiative works. The schools selected were chosen so that there is at least one of each level of institution in the system—an elementary school, a middle school, a high school, a community college and a university. If this pilot proves successful, it might expand to include other institutions within the state, and possibly even out of state. 

“The goal is to expand and invite other schools, colleges and districts into the agreement with the goal down the road of making it as big of a reach as we serve,” Ross said.

While not many students will be able to see the positive results of the data-sharing agreement in the immediate future, it will benefit them in the long run, according to Ross. Through sharing the data, the faculty can personalize academic programs based on the students’ strengths, interests or needs. It can help to identify which students will benefit most from specific programs, those that the student might not even be aware of today. Additionally, in tracking how students are doing after they leave the Los Rios district, it can help the colleges refine and improve their program for future generations of students.