PAST PROJECTS

Over the course of our organization's 25-year history, ERP has created and championed numerous groundbreaking initiatives and programs that have transformed the educational landscape. From designing the Broad Prize for Urban Education which paved the way for the development of the annual Honor Roll list to utilizing predictive analytics and data science to chart the course for remedial education reform at all 116 California Community Colleges, ERP has been a trailblazer in developing creative and innovative solutions to some of the educational system’s most pressing challenges. Below is a summary of some of our past projects.

Cal-PASS Plus

In 2012 when the disconnect between high school and college data became an obstacle to measuring how many students matriculated and persisted in college, ERP developed California’s first robust system of intersegmental data linkages. The program, known as California Partnership for Achieving Student Success (Cal-PASS Plus), is a free statewide clearinghouse of longitudinal data following students from K-12 into the workforce. ERP collected over 700 data sharing agreements from K12 school districts, all the data from California Community Colleges and 4-year universities, to determine how many students were getting to and through college. By creating an innovative 4-point matching formula to find and match students in these disparate data sets, ERP was able to perform the state’s first ever throughput analysis. The Cal-PASS Plus website has received over 1 million unique page views and had thousands of users and research partners using the platform to measure the effectiveness of various programs on improving college matriculation, throughput and persistence. ERP transferred ownership of Cal-PASS Plus to the state in 2023.

LaunchBoard

Leveraging the Cal-PASS Plus platform, ERP created the LaunchBoard for the California Community College system. The LaunchBoard, is a statewide data system that provides data on progress, success, employment, and earnings outcomes for California community college students. It contains six unique dashboards that contain over 250 metrics and 10 years of data. It provides the system with all the student success metrics necessary to report on community colleges performance to the State Legislature, Governor and State Department of Finance. The LaunchBoard is unique as ERP utilized its data science and data management expertise to develop some of the most complex student success metric calculations in the nation. ERP transferred ownership of the LaunchBoard to the state in 2023.

Equity Intelligence Platform

ERP developed the Equity Intelligence Platform (EIP) for the Obama Foundation. The EIP is a powerful data tool that helps local leaders make data-informed decisions to improve the community and conditions for historically underserved populations. The EIP safely and securely combines education, health, and community safety data, disaggregated by age, gender, race and ethnicity, and geography, to identify local population trends and actionable insights that would not otherwise be known.

Multiple Measures Assessment Project (MMAP)

From 2016 through 2019, ERP championed improvements in community college placement through multiple measures placement pilots, utilizing predictive data to accurately assess student capacity and place more incoming students in college-level courses. We partnered with high schools, community colleges and four-year universities to map effective pathways to accelerate degree or certificate completion. Reducing the number of students in unnecessary remedial classes puts more students on a faster path to graduation, while saving millions in taxpayer dollars and student fees.

One of the early ERP multiple measures pilots conducted was at Bakersfield College. Nearly 80 percent of Bakersfield College’s entering freshmen were being placed in remedial Math and English courses. ERP worked with the college to adopt a multiple measures assessment algorithm that utilized factors beyond the standard placement exam. In an initial pilot study, 68 percent of students placed higher and avoided taking courses they had already completed in high school. The result: more than 500 semesters of unnecessary remedial courses were avoided, translating to $550,000 in savings to students and the state in one year alone.

ERP conducted 80 similar multiple measures pilots. Today, all California Community Colleges utilize ERP’s multiple measures solution when placing incoming students, resulting in a significant annual increase in the number of students completing entry-level math and English courses and persisting in college.

Designing the Broad Prize for Urban Education

In 2002, ERP played a pivotal role in designing the prestigious Broad Prize for Urban Education, awarded to public school systems demonstrating exceptional performance and improvement in student achievement while narrowing achievement gaps among low-income students and students of color. We achieved this by:

Identifying Excellence: We identified the highest-performing large urban school systems in the nation by collecting and analyzing comprehensive data, including NAEP scores, graduation rates, and standardized test scores. This was the first time anyone systematically measured and addressed achievement gaps, ensuring no school system with significant equity gaps could win the award.
Leveraging Data: With the advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), we utilized newly available data to measure and compare outcomes across various subgroups, setting a precedent for data-driven educational assessment.
Creating a Rubric: We developed a detailed rubric to evaluate school systems, ensuring a rigorous and fair assessment process.
Presenting to a Jury: Our findings and assessments were presented to an esteemed jury, culminating in the annual awarding of the $1 million prize.
Founding Co-Director Role: ERP served as a founding co-director, guiding the prize’s creation and ongoing implementation.