Every year, nearly a million students attend classes in New York City public schools—the country’s largest school district. But how well are those students doing? Are they on track to graduate? How many will enroll in college, and how many will finish?
The data to answer questions like these exists, but it’s scattered among different databases that aren’t talking to each other. That’s where #DegreesNYC comes in.
“We’re trying to democratize data so decisions aren’t made for us, but instead we make decisions for ourselves, about ourselves,” said #DegreesNYC Director LaKisha N. Williams.
#DegreesNYC was co-founded by Goddard Riverside in 2016. It serves to make New York City’s education system more equitable for all students and is jointly led by young people and education professionals.
Early on, they realized they needed more numbers to better understand how the public education system was working. They partnered with the Research Alliance for NYC Schools at NYU to produce an eye-opening study showing that a student’s likelihood of finishing college was strongly correlated to their standing in 9th grade, as well as to their race—a result that suggested the education system was failing large numbers of students, particularly Black and LatinX students.
They wanted to know more, so together they founded the #DegreesNYC Data Co-op and Learning Network to link up data-sharing among participating nonprofits, the NYC Department of Education and the City University of New York.
“The point of the system is not to collect more data but to create connections among institutions so we can get a more complete understanding of student experience—where students are struggling and where programs are successful,” said #DegreesNYC Data and Research Coordinator Rachel Bork.
These connections will help create what’s called a Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS), to broaden the sharing across all of New York. Many states already have SLDSs. The effort to create one here is getting key support from the woman at the top: Governor Hochul. This year in the supporting materials for her State of the State speech, she said a data system would enable the state to “improve its ability to answer pressing policy questions … and better support students.” She pledged to introduce legislation to establish and define the SLDS, and has created a governance board to ensure data collection meets the state’s privacy obligations. #DegreesNYC Data Fellow Calvin Zhou is a junior at Brooklyn Technical High School. He hopes the system will one day give students a clearer picture of their own educational journey.
“Sometimes in school you feel lost; you wonder how you compare to everyone else,” he said. “With a system like this you can see where you are and how it can affect your future, and you can do better in the future.”