Overview & Methodologies

Updated 04/15/2026

Overview

Use of this interactive tool allows users to explore trends and compare student outcomes for systemwide student success metrics for college. The data tools are designed to help community college faculty, administrators, and partners explore how student populations are performing across programs and colleges in the Los Angeles region.  Comparative benchmarks for the college, LA region, and statewide are provided to aid interpretation and place the data in a broader context. Please review the Data Caveats and Disclaimers before analyzing and drawing any final conclusions based on the data displayed.

The views display metrics for colleges in the LA region from DataVista, California Community College Chancellor's Office (CCCCO) metrics platform, which is populated by LA colleges' MIS data submission and other CCCCO data sources. Metrics are available for all 19 LA colleges by sector or program (TOP4, TOP6) and by student demographics with benchmarks provided for the LA region and statewide. Data is from the DataVista 2.4 Release for the Snapshot view of General Admit Students with the data sets delivered to the Centers of Excellence in February 2026.

Metrics are organized into three groupings: Progress, Students & Success, Employment & Earnings. For the April 2026 release, four metrics are available for Progress and Employment & Earnings, and six metrics are available for Students & Success.  Drilldowns on the data are available for Age, Economically Disadvantaged, Ethnicity, and Gender.

Three views of the metrics are provided to accommodate different uses of the data: 

1. Explore Time Trends & Equity for Programs at a LA College: 3-year trends and equity gaps are apparent in this view for programs at a college.
   This data tool provides 3-year time trends for student populations by age, gender, ethnicity and economically disadvantaged status. Equity is highlighted in this view by adding a line for all students metric outcome to the vertical bar graph allowing users to quickly see which student populations are experiencing outcomes below or above all students outcome.
   Note: The line for all students is not available for metrics displayed as counts in the Students & Success section since adding it would impact visibility by increasing the y-axis scale. However, it is available for Progress and Employment & Earnings metrics.

2. Compare Programs at a LA College: Compare outcomes for all students or specific student populations for top 15 programs or sectors at a college.
   This data tool provides a 3-year average or latest year for all students or individual student populations for the top 15 programs (TOP4, TOP6, TOP6 CTE, TOP6 Not CTE) or sectors for a college with benchmarks.

3. Compare a Program across LA Colleges: Compare outcomes for all students or specific student populations for a program or a sector across all colleges in the LA region.
   This data tool provides a 3-year average or latest year for all students or individual student populations for a program or sector for all colleges in the LA region with benchmarks. 
   
   

Methodologies

FERPA Suppression: In accordance with the CCCCO Guidelines for Suppression on DataVista for Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the data  provided by the CCCCO for inclusion in the LA dashboards are already suppressed, and no further FERPA suppression is needed. In order to provide actionable student population data, generated or manufactured categories for gender and ethnicity have been removed including: All Masked Values, Multiple Values Reported, Unknown/Non-Respondent, and Unknown. 

3-Year Averages: Depending on the metric, averages and weighted averages are used for the calculation of 3-year averages displayed on the two Comparison views.  When summing the data for values and denominators across the three years, students are not deduplicated. Therefore, a student may be counted more than once in the 3-year average displayed if that student met the metric outcome or was included in the metric denominator in more than one of the three years included. Since student level data from DataVista is not provided to the Centers of Excellence for Labor Market Research, then there is no way to deduplicate students for these averages.

For all Progress metrics, Attained the Living Wage, and Job in Field of Study metrics, where percentages are displayed as the value divided by the denominator, the sum of the values is divided by the sum of the denominators for the latest 3 years of data available to calculate and display a 3-year average. If any of the latest three years are missing for a metric, then a 3-year average is neither calculated nor displayed. 

For Students & Success metrics, where values are displayed, the sum of the values is divided by three to display a 3-year average. If any of the latest three years are missing for a metric, then a 3-year average is neither calculated nor displayed. 

For other Employment & Earnings metrics, Median Annual Earnings and Median Change in Earnings, the denominator for each year is multiplied by the value and also divided by the sum of the denominators for the latest 3 years of data available to calculate and display a weighted 3-year average. If any of the latest three years are missing for a metric, then a 3-year weighted average is neither calculated nor displayed.