Tracking Eighth-Graders' Post-Secondary Outcomes in Harris County

Higher education is becoming increasingly more in demand as it's predicted that by the year 2020, 65 percent of all jobs in the U.S. will require some post-secondary education and training beyond high school. Knowing this, the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC) used the Houston Community Data Connections platform to track hundreds of thousands of Houston-area students' educational and professional careers for 17 years. 

Using data from the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), and Texas Workforce Commission (TWC), HERC tracked the postsecondary and workforce outcomes of more than 267,000 students who started eighth grade in fall 1998 in a public school within the State of Texas for 17 years. With the data, HERC created data dashboards to review and compare student outcomes in Texas, Harris County and 20 school districts in Harris County.