Are Your State’s Young People on Track for Opportunity? How Do You Know?

Penny Schwinn (Tennessee Department of Education) and Anne Wicks (George W. Bush Institute) discuss Are Your State’s Young People on Track for Opportunity? How Do You Know? at the 2021 ASU+GSV Summit.Education and the workforce are closely linked. But too often, state data systems and policies focus on one element of that opportunity pipeline instead of making connections across workforce, higher education, K-12, and early childhood. How, then, do we know who is on track for opportunity? And what policies are working? The Bush Institute’s State Pipeline Tool organizes state level outcome data from workforce to higher education to PK-12 education to help state leaders more clearly see who is on track – and who is being left behind. Our panel will discuss why robust state level outcome data matters, what metrics serve as key gateways in the path to opportunity, and what strong policy and investment across this opportunity pipeline should incorporate.