A three-year, $600,000 grant will allow Colorado school districts to continue tracking students who have applied for college financial aid and those who need help.
The Colorado Department of Higher Education and the Colorado Department of Education announced Monday they received the grant from the to continue the work of the earlier this year.
The departments have been preparing federal government data that allowed school districts to access names of students who have completed their FAFSA — Free Application for Federal Student Aid — and alerted officials to which applications were incomplete or had errors.
Armed with the information, school counselors then could target students who need additional support.
The grant also will allow officials to scale the model to share with 24 other states.
“Colorado, an early adopter and leader in terms of FAFSA completion data sharing, will develop and provide the necessary technical tools for partner states to implement and sustain their own FAFSA Completion Projects,” according to a news release from the department of higher education.
More than 30 Colorado school districts have agreements with the state to receive the student data.
“In districts in which high school seniors participated in the FAFSA Completion Project, 85 percent enrolled in college within 12 months of high school graduation,” the department of higher education states.
