The Gaps We Can't Stop Talking About: What DC's Practitioners Told Us at the 2026 Summit
DC Postsecondary Success Collaborative
Amelia Hogan, Senior Advisor
For the third year, the DC Postsecondary Success Collaborative brought together the ecosystem of DC's postsecondary success professionals—counselors, advisors, nonprofit leaders, workforce practitioners, researcher and policy partners, and more—to connect, share ideas, consider what's working, and explore what isn’t at our annual Summit. This year, Resiliency in Action welcomed 250+ professionals, and opened with a brand new “unconference” concept: the Community Connections & Data Walk Session. We asked approximately 200 participants, over half of whom are direct service providers, to engage directly with data on DC alumni outcomes and career-oriented youth programming, drawn from the Deputy Mayor for Education’s Office of Education through Employment Pathways (ETEP).
To guide this new session, the Summit Planning Committee provided each attendee with thought-provoking discussion questions around the data (see the data here). Split into six breakout rooms in Trinity Washington University’s Payden Academic Center, participants were asked to reflect and react in small groups, capturing observations, questions, and action items together.
These conversations were deep and rich and we were so grateful for our attendees’ commitment to the exercise. As we reviewed the thoughts collected after the Summit, what surprised us wasn’t the ideas we saw. Rather, it was their consistency across all six rooms where participants named the same themes, the same urgencies, and the same calls to action. It reinforced what we suspected: that, in addition to building connections and validating ideas, this session served as a timely discussion to grapple with systems that aren't working for DC's learners, and to explore what changes need to happen.
What the ETEP Data Showed
One data point dominated nearly every breakout room:
43% of Black alumni in DC are earning a living wage, compared to 86% of white alumni.
Participants described this as "shocking," "urgent," and "alarming" — and they were quick to name the reality that even when Black alumni do everything that’s expected of them (earn a degree, get a “good job”, etc.) they continue to face a persistent wage gap between themselves and their white peers. It’s clear that the systemic inequity that begins in K12 education follows DC’s Black alumni into the labor market.
The second striking finding:
DC has 121 workforce programs, and yet only about 1 in 5 high school students participates in one. Of those programs, fewer than half are aligned to high-wage, high-demand careers. And nearly half of students who don't continue their education cite financial barriers as the reason.
This reminds me of the phrase I’ve heard time and time again from my colleagues in this work: DC is a city that is resource-rich but systems-poor. We have a plethora of career asset-building opportunities, but we still haven’t figured out how to best understand and make sense of what programs exist, who has access to them, and what their outcomes are.
As our attendees engaged with one another, five themes showed up consistently:
Expand the definition of success. There was a resounding message that we must move away from the four-year degree as the only postsecondary path. That we should celebrate career training, skilled trades, apprenticeship, workforce, and community college postsecondary pathways equally. To do this, we need to ensure students understand the range of options available to them and have full autonomy to make their own informed choices.
We need better educator-facing and learner-facing navigation tools. Many participants identified the same need: there is no centralized, accessible DC system that helps professionals, students, and families understand what postsecondary-related programs exist, where they are, and who is eligible. Several participants called for a database or shared tool that the whole city could use, because practitioners can't connect students to opportunities they don't know about themselves. This is an idea that has surfaced within the Collaborative time and time again, and we are actively exploring funding and partnerships that can help create a resource like this. (Let us know if you have an idea or would like to support on this effort!)
Start earlier. Participants consistently called for career exploration and financial literacy to begin in middle school, not 11th grade. Postsecondary navigation including college visits, career pathway exploration, and financial planning, was seen as essential to giving students the time and knowledge they need to make informed choices.
Strengthen financial advising and financial aid literacy. Financial barriers are the top driver of stop-out, and participants were clear that one-time FAFSA help isn't enough. Students and families need multi-year financial planning support, guidance on awards and letters, and ongoing advising that contextualizes all the true costs and needs of both postsecondary education and life.
Enhance wraparound, learner-centered support. Academic and career readiness interventions alone cannot support students who are navigating housing instability, food insecurity, caregiving responsibilities, or mental health challenges. Participants named the need to build ecosystems that include organizations addressing foundational needs, and related funding structures as well. This is where strong partnerships play an important role.
What This Means for Our City’s Leaders
This session primarily highlighted the voices of those practitioners closest to this work. The participants in this session are not policymakers, but their observations carry a clear charge for those who are. Here are three places to start.
Name and address structural racism explicitly. The persistent gap in living-wage outcomes between Black and white alumni — even among those with similar credentials — makes clear that inequities are not incidental; they are systemic. Racial equity must be embedded at the core of this work. Program availability is not the same as quality, access, completion, and career success. We need to ask sharper questions: Who is able to enroll, and who is not? Who completes these programs? Are programs equitably distributed across Wards? Do programs provide high-quality learning that leads to economic mobility and career satisfaction? And just as importantly, are we examining the structures and cultures within our own organizations that may be reinforcing these disparities?
Invest in the educators and advisors doing this work. The data is only useful if the people closest to learners — counselors, navigators, advisors, community-based staff — have the knowledge, training, and capacity to implement it. Practitioners in this session shared a major gap: they often don't know the full landscape of programs and pathways available to students and how best to coordinate. Empowering them with ongoing professional development, shared tools, and community connection is a prerequisite for everything else. That’s why the Collaborative was founded!
Support and fund collaboration & knowledge infrastructure. No single organization, sector, or system can solve this alone. This session, like our findings each year at the Summit, made clear that the field is hungry for spaces to connect, discuss, and strategize. The DC Postsecondary Success Collaborative exists precisely to be that connective tissue, and it is one of the only spaces in the city where K12, higher education, workforce, community-based organizations, philanthropy, and government are in the same room. City leaders and funders should recognize and invest in organizations building these kinds of spaces, in addition to those implementing direct service programs.
What Now?
The voices captured in this session (YOU!) are so valuable to us at the Collaborative, and we hope they are useful to your organization, as well. This feedback provides a useful cross-sector view of what our ecosystem can do to progress toward better outcomes for DC’s young people and residents.
The Collaborative will continue to draw on this input as we shape our work in the months ahead — including support of DC’s Compact 2043, a city-wide strategy to improve outcomes for DC’s students and residents.
None of us can do this work alone. If you're a city leader, a funder, a systems leader, or a practitioner with ideas about how we can drive this work forward collectively, I would love to hear your thoughts on what the Collaborative can keep, stop, or start. As an advisor to the DC Postsecondary Success Collaborative, I'm eager to hear from you and continue this important work together. Please reach out to me: amelia@dcpostsecondarysuccess.org.
Sources:
DC Alumni Early Career Outcomes Survey: Understanding alumni employment, finances, and well-being
