CareerWise Colorado has long been at the forefront of integrating youth apprenticeships into K-12 and higher education systems, providing students with hands-on experience in high-demand industries. But as they expanded their programs, a critical question emerged: Were these opportunities truly reaching all students? Understanding and addressing racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in apprenticeship outcomes became a top priority, but without a strong data system in place, pinpointing the exact gaps—and how to fix them—remained a challenge.
In 2022, CareerWise Colorado partnered with the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC) to deepen their data analysis and evaluation capacity. Through technical assistance (TA) sessions and one-on-one strategy meetings, they began refining their approach—moving beyond simply collecting data to using it as a tool for systemic change. A key realization emerged: apprenticeship programs need to be tailored to the unique needs of each community. By working with local partners, they strengthened their ability to gather, interpret, and share data that more accurately reflected the lived experiences of students.
With a clearer data strategy, CareerWise Colorado developed a logic model—a framework that outlined key inputs, activities, and long-term goals to align programming with measurable outcomes. This model didn’t just help them internally—it became a national best practice, laying the foundation for apprenticeship programs across the country. Now, armed with new evaluation tools, CareerWise is not only identifying where disparities exist but also developing data-driven solutions to close those gaps.
“A big lesson from this year and past years is really about the unique nature of each community, its context, and the way that their apprenticeship programs need to respond. We’ve made a lot of progress fleshing out that structure and will continue to refine that over the coming year.”- Mandana Nakhai, CareerWise Colorado
One of the biggest takeaways from this journey? Data needs to flow in both directions. Traditionally, apprenticeship data has been collected at the state or federal level, but CareerWise saw the value in ground-level data sharing—incorporating insights directly from students, employers, and educators. By centering data in decision-making, they are strengthening not just their own program, but the entire youth apprenticeship ecosystem.
For CareerWise Colorado, data isn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet—it’s the key to unlocking a future where every student, regardless of background, has access to meaningful career opportunities.
Learn more about CareerWise Colorado here.