Financial Aid Data, Tools, and Coordination to Promote College Access for All Students
WestEd’s Center for Economic Mobility provides data-driven support, customized toolkits, and student-focused evaluation to help education agencies and community organizations ensure that every low-income and first-generation student can access college and financial aid.
The Challenge
Too many students, especially from low-income and first-generation backgrounds, can’t afford college—even though billions in financial aid goes unclaimed each year because of uncompleted aid applications. While many states now require high school seniors to fill out the federal financial aid form (FAFSA), schools often lack the resources to provide the proper support and guidance that students, families, and caregivers need.
The bigger problem? Everyone works separately. School districts, college access programs, and state agencies use different systems and approaches, making it hard to track who needs help or share what works. Even though digital tools and nonprofit interventions exist, they don’t connect well with school counseling processes or state strategies.
Without better coordination, promising students will continue to miss out on college opportunities because the support system is fragmented.
How We’re Taking Action
Building a Statewide Financial Aid Data System: In partnership with the California Student Aid Commission and the California Student Opportunity and Access Program (Cal-SOAP), we have been partnering since 2021 to develop a data system to unify Cal-SOAP project reporting to support continuous improvement. We created a data repository and dashboard that collects student and program activity, giving local Cal-SOAP consortia real-time insights into their services and outcomes. To ensure that data lead to action, we provided monthly professional learning communities with project directors, where the professional learning communities analyzed data to identify program improvements. We also engaged students directly to identify effective practices and unmet needs and helped Cal-SOAP’s directors integrate those insights into program design.
Launching the FAFSA for All Toolkit: The Center was an integral member of the Financial Aid for All California coalition, a public–private partnership funded by College Futures Foundation and led by uAspire to support school districts with implementing a new state law requiring all students to fill out the FAFSA. During a 2-year span, we worked together with state and nonprofit partners, developing a practitioner-focused toolkit and resource hub to take the guesswork out of implementation. The coalition toolkit features a self-assessment that allows schools and local education agencies to gauge their current practices and develop a customized action plan. Counselors and leaders immediately get access to a curated library of resources—from data dashboards for tracking FAFSA completion, to multilingual family engagement materials, to student-facing advising tools. The Center supported high schools across urban and rural districts to adopt these strategies, providing coaching and capturing lessons learned.
Evaluating and Enhancing DecideED for Informed Choices: Recognizing that completing aid applications is only one step in the college access journey, the Center has also helped to ensure that students make wise college-going decisions with their financial aid in hand. We partnered with Moneythink, a nonprofit edtech organization, to amplify the impact of DecideED—a mobile tool that helps students compare college costs, financial aid offers, and return on investment. We designed an impact evaluation framework, establishing a clear theory of change and data collection plan to measure how the tool influences students’ college decision-making to prepare for deeper learning and impact.