Application Deadline: April 24, 2026

Strengthening Prison Education Program Insights and Post-Release Outcomes

Coleridge invites state agency staff, researchers, and cross-agency partners working in corrections, postsecondary education, and workforce development to apply for this fully funded, project-based training. Participants will build practical analytical skills, collaborate across agencies, and develop insights to evaluate Prison Education Programs using a newly developed data infrastructure.

What You'll Do

• Work with Linked Administrative Data Access and analyze a newly developed data infrastructure linking corrections records, postsecondary education data, and UI wage data. You'll load, inspect, and join datasets across systems while maintaining analytic integrity and navigating real-world data quality challenges.
• Investigate PEP Access, Equity, and Effectiveness Construct standardized measures of PEP participation, educational attainment, employment, wage growth, and employment stability. You'll use these measures to formulate and answer a policy-relevant research question focused on how Prison Education Programs affect post-release outcomes across demographic groups.
• Design a Reproducible Dashboard Design and develop a dashboard that integrates narrative text, code, tables, and visualizations to communicate your team's findings clearly and responsibly to policymakers and agency leadership.
• Collaborate on a Team-Based Research Project Work within a small, cross-agency team to divide tasks, share and review code, and synthesize results. You'll receive ongoing guidance from Coleridge staff and subject matter experts in corrections, education, and labor economics throughout the process.
• Share Your Findings Present your team's findings to an external audience and produce a written summary documenting your research question, data sources, methods, findings, and limitations — all drawn directly from your dashboard workflow.

Application Information

You're welcome to apply as an individual or as part of a team, but priority will be given to team submissions, especially those representing cross-agency collaborations.

Applying as a Team

States benefit most when they send a team of 4–6 participants from multiple agencies or partner organizations, representing a balanced mix of policy, research, and technical expertise. Two or more team members should have programming skills in R, Python, and/or SQL to support the hands-on data work.

Teams submit a single application. As part of the application, the following information will need to be provided for each applicant:

• A recent resume or CV, including current organization and job role information
• Work email address for each team member

Apply for the Prison Education Programs (PEPs) Applied Data Analytics Training.

Those applying as individuals will be placed with a team as space allows. Individuals or state teams with questions about requirements are encouraged to email pep-training@coleridge.us noting their interest.

Live, Online Session Schedule

14 live, instructor-led sessions complemented by self-paced exercises and team collaboration between sessions

Hosted weekly on Tuesdays from May 19 through Sep 22 (excluding 5/26, 7/7, 7/14, 9/8)

A detailed schedule of classes is available on the application website.