Using Data to Drive Student Success: Highlights from Our August Webinar

States for the Future on August 25, 2025

At our August 21 Virtual Community Discussion, the States for the Future community explored how states can use data to improve outcomes in education and workforce policy. MDRC experts Melissa Wavelet, Dan Cullinan, and Colin Hill shared powerful lessons from their work across states

Multiple Measure Assessment: Institutions across the country are rethinking how they evaluate student outcomes and readiness for postsecondary coursework. Instead of relying solely on standardized tests, the Multiple Measures Assessment (MMA) model also uses high school GPA and other indicators.

ASAP model: First developed in New York, this model gives community college students more structured support, like advising and transportation help, and has shown positive academic and wage outcomes for students.

Cross-state Collaboration: States like Mississippi and Ohio are part of the IMPACT Collaborative, where agencies get hands-on coaching to test new policies using real data. These efforts help states better connect services and improve employment outcomes.

Click below to view the presentation slides and a recording of the Virtual Community Discussion. The views and opinions expressed by presenters are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of States for the Future or any participating organization.

Presentation Slides

VCD Recording

August VCD: Using Data to Drive Outcomes with MDRC

States for the Future on August 6, 2025

Data is more than numbers: it’s a catalyst for improving student outcomes and shaping effective policies. On August 21 at 2:00 p.m. ET / 11:00 a.m. PT, States for the Future invites you to a Virtual Community Discussion featuring the research and policy experts at MDRC, a nationally recognized organization that produces rigorous evidence on pressing education and workforce challenges. During this session, MDRC will highlight a series of state-led programs they’ve studied and supported, sharing how data-informed evaluation and research have led to meaningful improvements in program implementation and outcomes such as academic achievement. At States for the Future, we believe that evidence-based decision making is essential for driving progress at the state level. Those interested in harnessing data to improve education policy and practice should plan to register and join.

Click here to register for our August 21 Virtual Community Discussion

RECAP: Better Budgets, Better Outcomes – Help Your State Lead with Evidence | A Presentation by Results for America

States for the Future on June 17, 2025

For our June Virtual Community Discussion we dove into Evidence-Based Budgeting with experts from Results for America. As federal budget priorities shift, states across the country could soon be facing tough fiscal choices. Now more than ever, it’s critical for states to ensure every dollar counts.

Speakers Patrick Carter and Sarah Needler from Results for America described best practices for evidence-based budgeting, and offered examples from states like Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, and Tennessee. These include creating a shared definition of evidence, building instructions and templates for budgeting processes, and using evidence indicators to monitor implementation. Adopting evidence can improve programs and program impact, and evidence can provide a competitive advantage for the states that use these practices. 

Click here to view a recording of the presentation and click here to view the presentation slides. 

And please mark your calendars and plan to join us on Thursday, August 21 at 2:00pm ET/10:00am PT when MDRC for our next Virtual Community Discussion on Using Data to Drive Outcomes.

Better Budgets, Better Outcomes: Help Your State Lead with Evidence | A Presentation by Results for America

States for the Future on May 27, 2025

As federal budget priorities shift, states across the country could soon be facing tough fiscal choices. Now more than ever, it’s critical for states to ensure every dollar counts. Join us for our June Virtual Community Discussion on June 11 at 11:00 a.m. ET/8:00 a.m. PT, where we’ll dive into Evidence-Based Budgeting with experts from Results for America. In this high-impact session, we’ll explore how states can use data and evidence to identify high quality programs and guide strategic investments of state dollars to maximize the return. We’ll also examine how governments can drive effective outcomes through grantmaking, purchasing, and procurement strategies rooted in what works. If you care about making budget decisions that stand up to scrutiny and deliver real results that address the needs of communities most in need, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

Register to join at this link.

Recap: Federal Fiscal Policy Update with Bipartisan Policy Center

States for the Future on May 7, 2025

States for the Future was glad to host Rachel Snyderman of the Bipartisan Policy Center on the April 2025 edition of our virtual community discussions. Rachel covered current federal fiscal policy issues related to the 2025 fiscal cliff, the budget resolution for fiscal year 2025, and related issues. She specifically discussed fiscal policy impacts for states across policy areas including education and the workforce, childcare, and health.

Thank you to those that joined for this timely and engaging discussion.

You can view the slides from Rachel’s presentation using this link, and view a recording of the presentation here.

Federal Policy Update with Bipartisan Policy Center – Virtual Community Discussion

States for the Future on April 22, 2025

Hear about the latest in Federal policy updates from the Bipartisan Policy Center at our next States for the Future Virtual Community Discussion on Wednesday, April 30 at 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT. Rachel B. Snyderman, BPC’s Managing Director of Economic Policy, will discuss how changes in funding and fiscal policy at the Federal level could impact state services, programming, and budgets. Our conversation will cover focus areas for many organizations in our network, including education and health.

Click here to register and join us on April 30.

Storytelling with Data: our January virtual learning opportunity

caryn.barretta@ajah.ca on January 22, 2025

This month, Irena Asmundson from Practical Idealism Economics and Mark Benak from Imagine New Mexico partnered to host our January virtual learning opportunity. This session featured a new format that was a first for our network wherein Irena and Mark Benak hosted a live consulting session, exploring how to leverage data and storytelling to advance the mission of the newly formed organization. Through spectating and participating in the session, attendees saw how to apply storytelling best practices to their own work.

Key takeaways from this session:

  • Storytelling can offer a common, data-based starting point: When a political or ideological divide makes it difficult to talk to each other, storytelling with data can bring us back to our shared problems and options to build empathy across partisan divides.
  • Considering your audience is an essential part of creating your storytelling: Your organizational goals and KPIs are important, but when storytelling with data, considering your audience is equally important. Who will consume each artifact you publish? What is their familiarity with this issue? What are their motivations and goals? Tailoring your messaging to these considerations can maximize the impact of your story.
  • Data means more with context: Numbers alone may not indicate the scale, trend, or impact of an issue to your audience. Building narrative around your data can help your audience answer key questions like is this number big or small? Does it indicate a change from the past, or a direction we want to move in for the future? 
  • Presenting data requires a viewpoint, and transparency keeps it non-partisan: When policy organizations choose what data or indicators to track and publish, we are showing what issues and groups of people we focus on. When defining the problems in our communities, we are implicitly defining the problem and what success looks like. Being explicit and transparent helps us stay open to discussion, which is what makes it non-partisan.
  • Narratives can catalyze the audience: As a best practice, showing the audience how they can be the hero in the story can move them towards policy changes that improve the lives of your state’s residents. 

Slides from this session can be viewed here.

Have an idea for a learning opportunity that you would like to attend or host?
Please reach out to us at infor@statesforthefuture.org to explore further. 

Preparing for the Big Shift: our July Virtual Community Discussion

caryn.barretta@ajah.ca on July 24, 2024

This month, we welcomed Karthick Ramakrishnan and Akil Vohra from AAPI Data to discuss Statistical Policy Directive No. 15, the latest set of federal standards for maintaining, collecting, and presenting data on race and ethnicity.

AAPI Data began the discussion with the case for the need for disaggregated data, and gave examples of how outcome disparities between the subgroups contained within the term “Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander” can only be understood when the data is presented on the appropriate level. Karthick and Akhil also provided a glimpse into how they inspire action from policy makers by engaging their curiosity through a quiz that tested attendees.

In the discussion portion of the session, attendees were curious about protecting the utility of data when disaggregating, stakeholder engagement, and the pros and cons of representing diverse peoples in a single group.

The key takeaways from this discussion are:

  • Disaggregated data is a must for understanding the issues: Aggregated data can obscure the experiences of subpopulations and hide the need for policy change, while disaggregated data can reveal the impact of current policy or social factors. For example, it has been widely reported that Asian American populations experienced less COVID deaths per capita compared to other ethnic groups in the US. However, data by disaggregated by ethnicity shows that some AANHPI populations were disportionately impacted by the virus. 
  • Data alone isn’t enough: AAPI Data’s three pillars are Data, Narrative, and Action. Narrative is what makes the data feel “real” and helps move the policy process forward to “Action.” AAPI Data shares the narratives of its community through its recommendations and press-ready  reports.
  • Engage curiosity to inspire action: AAPI Data presents data to stakeholders through traditional means such as reports and charts, but will also use playful methods such as quizzes to grab legislators’ attention. This inspires policy makers to learn more, and ultimately understand the need for change.
  • Be part of the change to be well positioned for future work: If you can be part of the change at the state level, you can advocate for the data your organization needs and build relationships with key stakeholders for other projects. AAPI Data has campaigned for many years for the need for disaggregated data, and are starting to see change in data collection standards through Statistical Policy Directive No. 15. The result will be huge swaths of data that was previously unavailable, further enabling AAPI Data’s work. 

To review AAPI Data’s presentation slides, please click here. A recording of the presentation portion of the session is viewable here.

Creating & Launching the North Carolina Resilience Index – our June Virtual Community Discussion

caryn.barretta@ajah.ca on July 19, 2024

On June 20, 2024 our colleagues at the North Carolina Pandemic Recovery Office (NCPRO) shared their forthcoming tool, the Resilience Index and accompanying dashboard. Natalie Garrett and Kiel Kinkade discussed the challenges their community faced after the pandemic, and the data needed to understand the key issues faced by their community.

During community discussion. attendees were curious about the adoption strategy for the tool, how NCPRO approached communicating about the data sources used to make the Index, and stakeholder management on the scale that the Index required. Key takeaways from the session include: 

  • The problem your data tool is solving is your north star: Use cases are the foundation from which all decisions related to your tool’s features, data, and design should be made. The Resilience Index was built in direct response to a lack of data necessary for local decision makers to fully understand key social, economic, and environmental issues in their communities.
  • Build data tools with your audience in mind: NCRPO learned what their key users wanted from their index and prioritized those features to their roadmap to build buy-in on the tool and adoption. An example feature in the Resilience Index allows users to parse the data in different views that reflect their interests, such as county or council of government.
  • Educate stakeholders about the considerations, strengths, and limitations of your data product to create the right expectations and usage: NCPRO has created multiple versions of documentation to provide to users based on their familiarity with or desire for details on the statistics behind their indices.
  • Build with what you have, with the plan to improve over time: Sometimes the data that exists at the time of development is less than perfect, but you can always plan to improve sources in the future.
  • Collaborative design can build trust: The process of developing a useful data product in close collaboration with decision makers and/or funders can build trust and relationships. Even if you are a newer organization, doing this well can help stakeholders  see you as a responsible partner capable of becoming a trusted source of information.

Slides from this session are accessible here. If you prefer a recording of the presentation portion of this virtual community discussion, you may view one here.

Analyzing and Communicating About State Budgets – May 2024 Virtual Community Discussion

caryn.barretta@ajah.ca on May 30, 2024

Our May Virtual Community Discussion spotlighted how two data-driven policy organizations analyze and communicate about their respective state budgets. To kick off the session, our speakers, Mandy Spears of The Sycamore Institute and Jason Stein of Wisconsin Policy Forum, shared the many ways their organizations engage in budget analysis. Though both the Sycamore Institute and Wisconsin Policy Forum create different types of reports and analysis, they share the approach of “zooming out” to provide context and implications of their state’s budget.

The Sycamore Institute achieves this through publishing deeper dives on bigger initiatives, mid-fiscal year trackers and budget recommendations, and a “primer” (a textbook on the budget) every gubernatorial election.

Wisconsin Policy Forum publishes reports that compliment the exhaustive analysis that similar organizations in their state produces, and focuses on interpreting the implications of their state’s budget on “big ticket” line items through visuals and simple language.

Key Takeaways:

  • Creating fair, non-partisan budget analysis builds trust with policymakers and the public alike, and can get your organization invited into new conversations. Offering budget analysis that is both helpful to and at times critical of both sides of the aisle builds trust in your organization and a reputation for being truly non partisan. This helps maintain your organization’s influence regardless of who is in office. In other words, don’t be afraid to ruffle feathers on both sides of the aisle.
  • Compelling storytelling and visuals are the most effective means of communicating with stakeholders. Providing just the numbers of the budget will not create the impact your organization is looking for – instead take your audience by the hand and explain what the budget means, and the implications that policy makers can learn from and use in their own efforts.
  • Tailor your organization’s budget work around what is already available in your state. Creating work that is duplicative to what is already available will not help you make an impact. Instead, offer analysis that is unique. For example, if another organization in your state writes comprehensive budget analysis, try creating complementary work that translates the key facts into shorter and/or more accessible language.
  • If you want to get involved with budget work, you can start small. Most of a state’s budget dollars are allocated toward just a few major budget categories. You can focus on just those few items to cover most of your state’s budget, and may spare you from engaging in policy areas your organization doesn’t otherwise wish to tackle.

Slides from the virtual community discussion may be viewed here. To view a recording of the presentation portion of the VCD, please use this link.