Examination of Data Usability Options for Assessing Eligibility for Higher Education in California

This report examines data similarities and differences across four data sources: CALPADS, UC admissions files, CSU admissions files, and raw transcript data files that were provided by a sample of California high schools in the Silver et al. (2017) study. The analysis looks at the student-level records across the different sources for the four school years between the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2015 to examine the patterns of discrepant information (e.g., different A-G course names and/or grades). It also examines both the availability and the alignment across sources of credits during this period.