Massachusetts High School Graduate College and Employment Outcomes by District

EducationToCareer.data.mass.gov provides counts of high school graduates by district and their subsequent postsecondary enrollment or employment status. The data links graduate records with wage information from the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance. Updates for certain graduate cohorts are currently paused due to a data linkage issue identified in 2023.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in postsecondary enrollment types (OUTCOME_TYPE) by school district (DIST_NAME) over multiple graduation years (HS_GRAD_YEAR).
• Compare the proportion of graduates employed (OUTCOME_TYPE 'Total Employed') versus enrolled in college across different districts using OUTCOME_CNT and GRAD_CNT.
• Investigate annual changes in outcomes for specific graduation cohorts by filtering on HS_GRAD_YEAR and OUTCOME_YEAR.
• Assess potential data gaps by identifying districts with high counts of 'Total Missing' outcomes in the OUTCOME_TYPE field.

Strengths

• Data is linked with official state wage records from the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance.
• Includes seven distinct outcome categories (OUTCOME_TYPE) for detailed analysis of post-graduation pathways.
• Provides data at the school district level (DIST_NAME, DIST_CODE) for geographic comparison.

Limitations

• Earnings data is incomplete for graduates from the 2017 cohort onward who did not attend a Massachusetts public college, due to a known linkage issue.
• The dataset's row count and total coverage of graduates are unknown.
• Updates for impacted cohorts are paused, limiting analysis of recent trends.

Provenance

Source

EducationToCareer.data.mass.gov, utilizing data from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

Collection Method

Graduate records are linked with wage data from the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance via an anonymized matching process.

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated March 2026, but with a pause on updates for certain data since a 2023 issue.

Geography

Massachusetts, United States, aggregated by school district.