Leveraging STEM for Social Change

Washington students have big dreams for their future.

In fact, almost 90% of Washington high school graduates want to continue their education, whether that’s through an apprenticeship, a 2- or 4-year college, or a certificate program. Yet by age 26, only 40% of graduates have earned a credential that leads to a family-sustaining career. Without a stronger postsecondary preparation system, this gap between student aspiration and credential attainment will persist.

From 2022 to 2025, our High School to Postsecondary (H2P) Collaborative brought together regional network partners, school administrators, educators, and students. Collectively, we tackled a big question: How can we reimagine and design a postsecondary preparation system that is inclusive of aspirations, lights up possible pathways, and fosters a sense of belonging?

“We knew from previous work that the adults in high schools—not limited to counselors—play a huge role in preparing students for what’s next,” says Tana Peterman, Senior Program Officer at Washington STEM. “The problem is that those adults rarely have the up-to-date information or capacity to help students understand financial aid, dual credit, or what pathways exist. The Collaborative worked to elevate student and staff perspectives about what they most needed for schools, districts, and even whole regions to change that paradigm.”

From one school to a collaborative

In 2019, a career counselor from Eisenhower High School (EHS) in Yakima reached out to Washington STEM and the South Central Washington STEM Network with a hunch: he suspected that Hispanic students were not enrolling in dual credit courses at the same rate as their white peers. Together, we dug into course-taking data and engaged the school community, confirming the counselor’s hunch—and prompting schoolwide changes.

We also uncovered a larger truth: Students, educators, and families were struggling to navigate our state’s disjointed postsecondary preparation system.

Our work with Eisenhower High School served as a pilot for the H2P Collaborative, which was established in 2022. From 2022 to 2025, the Collaborative grew from five schools across four regions to 40 schools across seven regions—ultimately serving nearly 30,000 students.

Guided by student voice and data

With a focus on financial aid, dual credit, student advising, and adult mindset and bias, participating schools evaluated their own postsecondary preparation system with critical support from regional leads. Here’s what our process looked like:

• We coached regional leads and partnered with Degrees of Change to help schools access and visualize demographic, course-taking, financial aid, and postsecondary enrollment data. Through facilitated conversations, school teams confirmed their gut feelings, challenged biases, and revealed patterns about how students accessed postsecondary supports.
• Through surveys, students and staff shared their experiences and perceptions of the postsecondary preparation system. Students also shared their aspirations for life after high school. These surveys were conducted in both English and Spanish, with a sample size of 26,000+ students and 2,000+ staff. We visualized the data and coached regional leads to facilitate analysis sessions with school teams.
• School teams co-identified solutions through collaboration with the school community, including students, staff, and sometimes families.

With insights gained from data, surveys, and listening sessions, school teams implemented changes at both the school and district levels. This often included peer advising, deepened relationships with local colleges, and professional development for educators.

What we know now

Almost 90% of Washington high school students aspire to pursue some form of postsecondary education.
This statistic remains consistent across our survey results, regardless of geography, gender, race, or first-generation status. Yet we see gaps across these same demographic groups when it comes to actually completing that postsecondary education.

Structural challenges keep schools from accessing and using their data.
School leaders have a deep interest in student outcomes after graduation. Yet fees and technical barriers have historically hindered their ability to examine postsecondary enrollment and completion data. (See below how our advocacy efforts have shifted this status quo and increased communication between the K-12 school system and higher education.)

Adult mindset is critical to student success.
Our survey results show that school staff believe only 71% of their students aspire to some form of postsecondary education. Understanding this gap between student aspiration and staff perception helped educators meet students where they are.

Our impact

Schools and districts

From 2022 to 2025, the H2P Collaborative worked with nearly 30,000 students from 40 schools across 33 districts. Changes in policy and practice at the school and district level will continue to serve students for years to come—including just-in-time professional development for classroom teachers, coordinated efforts to increase financial aid completion, and commitments to examine postsecondary enrollment data.

Read about how Richland School District’s survey results inspired staff to reimagine professional development for teachers.

Regional

Regional leads helped build relationships between high schools and postsecondary institutions, allowing them to more easily share enrollment data and creating smoother transition pathways for students.

Read about how enrollment data helped Quincy School District develop a partnership with Big Bend Community College.

Statewide

We have used the findings of H2P to advocate for legislation that will smooth postsecondary transitions across the state. This includes:

• A 2023 law (SB 5048) that eliminated fees for the dual credit program College in the High School, leading to a 46% jump in enrollment in just two years.
• A 2023 law (HB 1316) that expanded the dual credit program Running Start to include a summer session.
• A 2023 pilot program that increased CTE dual credit enrollment in the northwest region. A 2025 law (HB 1273) expanded this program.
• A 2022 law (HB 1867) that requires the publishing of publicly-available dual credit completion and equitability measures.

Historically, school and district leaders have had no straightforward way to look for patterns across students’ high school courses and their postsecondary outcomes. In working with the Collaborative to test processes and technical solutions to this problem, we elevated the need for these data sets to be more accessible and interconnected.

This resulted in two major changes to how schools can access their data:

• In 2024, Education Research & Data Center (ERDC), which houses postsecondary data for the state, and OSPI, which houses K-12 data for the state, agreed to bridge the data gap by allowing districts to access postsecondary enrollment data through the OSPI data platform, which is what they normally use.
• In 2025, the Gates Foundation funded WSIPC to take on and expand the platform we piloted with the H2P Collaborative. This platform visualizes high school and postsecondary data together, which is exactly what district and school leaders need to better understand where their students go after graduation, and how their pathways correlate to their high school experience.

What’s next

Although the H2P Collaborative sunsetted in May 2025, its insights and processes continue to shape our work.

The design and results of the Collaborative informed two initiatives from the Gates Foundation that are dedicated to improving high school to postsecondary transitions and postsecondary enrollment.

• The Limitless Learning Network is a peer learning network made up of 26 partnerships across Washington for the purpose of helping school districts and higher education institutions share information, explore new ideas, and develop best practices to improve transitions from high school to postsecondary.
• Four Horizons Regional Partnerships are receiving targeted technical assistance to strengthen alignment, improve communication, and provide equity-driven support to help improve student postsecondary outcomes.

The core goals of both the Limitless and Horizons initiatives are to:

• Improve partnership and intermediary capacities.
• Improve regional data literacy, capacity and use.
• Increase awareness and improve access to strategies and approaches to increase postsecondary enrollment (i.e., high-quality advising, financial aid completion, and dual-credit enrollment).