For students in Delaware, choosing a career path should be an exciting opportunity—not an overwhelming challenge. Yet for many the system felt unclear. Questions about postsecondary education value, career pathways, and equity in opportunity remained unanswered. The Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) knew that without better data-driven insights, students and educators alike would continue to struggle with decision-making in Career and Technical Education (CTE).
Determined to bridge these gaps, DDOE’s Office of CTE partnered with the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC) to refine how data could improve career readiness and equitable access to high-value CTE programs. Jon Wickert, Director of DDOE CTE, led efforts to integrate student participation data with labor market insights (LMI)—a move that would inform state-wide CTE policy and help ensure students were being prepared for in-demand careers.
“A big win is our data organization matrix that we put together. It is an internal tool that we created to take all of our data points and put them in one place. From there, we can figure out where those data points are going to be used and who they’re used for, who’s the audience, how they are aggregated, and how they are disaggregated.” – Bart Gill, DDOE
With guidance from CREC’s technical assistance (TA) sessions, DDOE recognized the power of existing data rather than reinventing the wheel. They implemented the Inclusive Goal Builder, a tool that tracks enrollment and completion rates across demographics, giving educators a clearer picture of where equity gaps persisted. At the same time, they developed an internal data organization matrix, allowing them to track who was using data, how it was aggregated, and where it could be best applied to improve programming.
The impact was clear: DDOE shifted from simply collecting data for compliance to leveraging it as a decision-making asset. By strengthening stakeholder engagement and documentation practices, they not only streamlined policy improvements but also created sustainable systems that will continue guiding students toward successful career pathways for years to come.
Learn more about Delaware’s Department of Education here.