2025 has been an eventful year for Craft’s Data and Research Team. Between May and July, we added three new members: Stephanie Quinn, a data wiz who brings her technical savvy to our business analytics; Jorge Ugaz, who brings a wealth of experience leading large-scale health, workforce development, education, and social policy research; and Nell Williams, who specializes in education research with a focus on public finance policies. Together with our fearless leader, Patricia Saenz-Armstrong—an expert economist who has 15 years of experience studying teacher labor markets—we have:

• Created dashboards that visualize workforce development programs and teacher labor supply in five states, 
• Won funding for and have started work on a large project to study the design and components of apprenticeships in Indiana to evaluate their effectiveness, 
• Streamlined Craft’s internal data tracking, and
• Worked with the engineering team to build a data infrastructure that will allow Craft to study key metrics that will drive new knowledge and evidence on workforce development and labor supply.

State Dashboards

We combined two key public datasets on teacher preparation programs to illustrate where new teachers are being prepared in states. We visualized this information in state dashboards that will allow states to see what districts have ready access to newly-minted teachers and to identify “teacher prep deserts”—counties where few or no teachers have been prepared over five years. Our state dashboards also give breakdowns of teachers certified in different subjects to show how many new teachers can step in to fill shortage subject areas. Armed with this information, states and programs can gain a fuller understanding of the degree to which teacher supply is meeting demand and target areas for launching new pathways into the teaching profession or offering online certification programs. 

We also built dashboards of WIOA-funded programs in the state of Colorado. They show where programs are located, which have the highest completion rates, and which offer the highest wage premiums for completers. We demoed these dashboards at a webinar with over 200 registrants representing local workforce staff; state staff from Labor, Education, Adult Education, Higher Education, and Vocational Rehabilitation agencies; state agency staff from other states; Colorado nonprofits and foundations; and national nonprofits and foundations. We’re excited to provide insights on labor supply to more states in 2026!

Studying Apprenticeship Programs in Indiana

Our team secured a grant from Arnold Ventures for the first of a two-phase project studying, mapping, and evaluating apprenticeship programs in Indiana—a leading state in workforce development. In this first phase, we will work with our partners at Upskill America at the Aspen Institute to gather data through focus groups and interviews to map all apprenticeship programs in the state, develop a framework of different programs in terms of the way they structure elements like on-the-job learning, technical instruction, hours of required training, and the types and strength of wraparound supports. To complement these qualitative data, we will link quantitative K–12, postsecondary, and workforce data and early employment outcomes to analyze which program components lead to better job placement, retention, satisfaction, and wages. We’ll use our findings from phase 1 to design a research agenda for phase 2 of the project, whose main objective will be to assess the impacts of program intensity and program components on learners' employment outcomes.

Streamlining Internal Data Tracking

Craft Connect allows learners to log their progress through on-the-job training programs, mentors to evaluate their work, and administrators to monitor and support enrolled learners. All these users generate data. As Craft continues to build and refine capabilities in our tool, the Data and Research Team has focused on streamlining internal data tracking and reporting, ensuring our metrics and definitions are consistent across teams and that internal reporting is frequent and efficient. Working closely with the Product & Technical Operations, Sales, and Workforce Development teams to align definitions, initiate automated reporting, and strengthen validation practices, we have developed systems for continual validation of data collected in our tool and laid the foundation for standardized, automated executive reporting across Craft. As data analysts and researchers, we are especially excited about refining this data infrastructure to be ready to pull data for secure analysis in the coming months.

Forward-Looking Data Infrastructure

Among the greatest contributions Craft can provide is reliable, systematic data on work-based learning. Partners across the space agree that the apprenticeship and work-based-learning data ecosystem lacks consistent definitions and categories, and data reporting varies across both states and industries. Current data systems don’t have systematic or consistent information on program components or requirements, reported or calculable completion rates, or industries and occupations. The lack of dependable public data limits our ability to learn from the programs already in place nationwide. This has made it challenging to create effective policies for work-based learning and reinforces the need for systematic, large-scale data.

Craft can fill a critical need here. With learners and programs logging their own progress, step by step, towards completing their programs, our tool can collect more granular and reliable data on a large scale than is yet available to study work-based learning. Armed with these data, we will be able to fill crucial knowledge gaps and push the evidence base to answer key questions about barriers to completion, program effectiveness, beneficial policies, and meaningful supports.

One of the Data and Research Team’s initiatives this year was to map a data infrastructure that will allow us to analyze these vital questions. We developed a list of data components that will provide critical information on program design and learner characteristics to be integrated into Craft Connect immediately and in the medium term. We evaluated these with the Engineering Team, which has already built out substantial capacity and privacy protections, and we have begun secure data collection on key learner and program metrics.

What’s Coming in 2026

In 2026, we will build on our progress in these areas and launch exciting new initiatives that will bolster Craft’s reputation as a thought leader and trusted partner driving knowledge and evidence in work-based learning.

Building On Our Progress:

• We’ll continue to position ourselves as a trusted partner to states. Building on the collaborative work we did to launch dashboards visualizing labor supply in Colorado and Pennsylvania, we’re planning to expand this work by developing new partnerships and provide more insights to inform state policies for workforce development.
• As our research in Indiana gets underway, we will work with our partners at the Aspen Institute to understand which elements of apprenticeship programs are most critical for driving learner success.
• We will continue to streamline internal data reporting, ensuring consistency and efficiency.
• With the Engineering Team, we will keep building out Craft Connect’s data infrastructure to collect reliable and detailed data, which we’ll use to generate new insights while protecting user privacy. We’ll also issue surveys to supplement Craft Connect data to be able to study questions about mentorship in work-based learning, what on-the-job learning looks like in different industries, and the types of support built into work-based learning programs.

New in 2026:

• We’re looking to conduct more grant-funded research on work-based learning, including in apprenticeships, student teaching and educator prep, the healthcare industry, and what workforce development looks like for younger learners, like Career and Technical Education programs in high schools. 
• We’ll be forging new partnerships with other research organizations and thought leaders focused on work-based learning. We’re aiming to conduct research with trusted partners and publish joint articles and reports.
• As Craft Connect collects more and more data, we’ll ensure all necessary protections are in place and begin conducting analyses that use internal data to study learners’ progress through work-based learning programs, providing insight on Craft Connect usage, time to complete programs, and barriers to completion.

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