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Learn how to use the framework

The Education-to-Workforce Indicator Framework (E-W Framework) is designed to help organizations and individuals advance educational and economic opportunity for all. How you use the framework may depend on your organization’s goals, its capacity to collect and use data, and your individual role.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to using the E-W Framework. You might use all five of the framework’s components together or select those that are most relevant to your work:

Essential questions help you set goals and identify what data are needed to answer important questions for individuals and communities. They can help establish learner-centered priorities, organize teams, and find collaborators.
Indicators help you identify and gather useful data to improve student outcomes and promote systems change. Choose from 99 recommended indicators to measure what matters most and decide on next steps.
Disaggregates help you assess disparities, understand trends, and make decisions to improve outcomes for all learners. Use suggested characteristics to guide your data collection and analysis.
Evidence-based practices help you find and use methods to improve student outcomes and supports based on opportunities and needs that data reveal.
Data equity principles help you use data in ways that include community insights for more effective and sustainable solutions. These principles are foundational for all data-related work, whether you use the entire E-W Framework or just parts of it.

Although the E-W Framework recommends 20 essential questions and 99 indicators, you should select and tailor those most relevant to your work.

Improving connections across education-to-workforce sectors will take time, and the E-W Framework can help. Progress might be incremental, but each of us has a role to play. For example, policymakers will have different goals and may use the E-W Framework differently than advocates, practitioners, researchers, or funders.

Here are some examples of how different types of individuals or organizations might use the framework to achieve their priorities:

A state education agency seeks to understand how students progress from early education to the workforce by focusing on career pathways. Agency staff use the framework’s workforce-related essential questions to help clarify their priorities and take a student-centered approach to data collection and use.

A local district aims to improve K–12 students' well-being. Administrators take stock of the available data on school climate and social-emotional wellness, and then refer to the framework’s suggested indicators and metrics to prioritize which additional data to collect and how.

An advocacy organization is concerned about the lack of disaggregated data, as it believes that current analysis practices are masking disparities. Organization staff use the framework’s disaggregates as a starting point for messaging efforts around improving data collection and disaggregation.

A funder wants to invest in new research on defining and measuring “culturally responsive curricula.” They use the framework as a starting point to better understand this construct and its existing evidence base before making their next strategic funding decision.

A researcher is evaluating an early learning initiative, but resources for new data collection are limited. They use the framework to understand which indicators related to their research design are well established and can be collected with minimal cost and time.

Next, explore how to apply the E-W Framework to achieve your goals to advance educational and economic opportunity for all.