Occupational Profiles launch on Illinois Postsecondary Profiles website


The Illinois Postsecondary Profiles (IPP) website originally launched in October 2019 with the first of three major elements available to the public at the time of its launch – Institutional Profiles. Learn more about the original phase of the IPP website from October 2019.


Today, the Illinois Postsecondary Profiles website rolls out a number of major features as the second major phase of the site’s development.

  • Occupational Profiles, which provides users with opportunities to explore occupations and/or postsecondary areas of study (i.e., topics in which students major in college) by the 7 Illinois Career Pathways or by a keyword search or area of interest. Data about occupations is linked with both data regarding related areas of study and the postsecondary institutions in Illinois that offer these areas of study. Together, this provides a rich set of easy-to-access data that is unique among tools of this kind.
IPP Occupation Profiles Home
  • Regional Profiles, which utilizes an interactive map (also known as a choropleth) that is currently organized by Illinois’ community college district boundaries, to display completion, enrollment, and population data. In the future, additional data sets and geographic boundary regions will be available for website visitors.
IPP Choropleth
  • IPP Data Center – A centerpiece of the IPP website since its debut has been the ability to download data presented on the website in its entirety. Given that this data comes directly from Illinois’ state agencies responsible for postsecondary education, being able to easily access these complete data sets is a great benefit to researchers in Illinois and around the world. With this release, the IPP Data Center has been significantly expanded with additional data available for download.
IPP Data Center

In a future release, the final major originally planned component of the Illinois Postsecondary Profiles will launch – Equity Profiles, which will support the exploration of data from postsecondary education across Illinois based on student demographic information.

January 2021

Dual Credit Think Tank – Update

We are pleased to announce that, in collaboration with ILACEP, we are restarting the Dual Credit Think Tank. We are currently working to identify meeting dates and times, and we will be emailing specific information to everyone who was involved with the Dual Credit Think Tank last spring as well as those who have already reached out to express interest in participating in the Dual Credit Think Tank moving forward. 

If you or someone in your organization is interested in participating in the Dual Credit Think Tank, please email us at: p20network@niu.edu 

Continue reading below to learn more about the next steps for the Illinois P-20 Network Dual Credit Think Tank.

ILACEP Illinois Dual Credit Report
Read the complete ILACEP Illinois Dual Credit Report

Plans for the Dual Credit Think Tank moving forward over the remainder of 2021 include:

  • Focus on one sub-committee at a time – The Teacher Credentialing Sub-Committee remains critical and is identified as a key area in the ILACEP Illinois Dual Credit Report under the header, Instructor Capacity. This group will begin meeting in the coming weeks and will meet monthly through June. Then, beginning during the summer, attention will shift to the Communications Sub-Committee, which will meet through much of the fall. At the moment, we will hold off on restarting the Finance Sub-Committee, but if conversations in either Springfield or Washington, D.C. necessitate that Sub-Committees work, we will quickly spring into action and potentially pause the work of the other Sub-Committees.
  • Co-Facilitators – As we re-launch each Sub-Committee, we will seek two co-facilitators within each group to partner with Jason Klein in leading the Sub-Committee.
  • Consistent Meeting Times – While this is always difficult and complex with the busy schedules of educational leaders across institutions, as each Sub-Committee re-starts, it will lay out a schedule of monthly meetings for the anticipated period of its work.
January 2021

Transitional Math ISBE SIS & Portability Code Information


The Illinois P-20 Network is pleased to share the following information on behalf of the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Community College Board.


In order for students to receive the full benefits of Transitional Math, the correct Illinois State Board of Education Student Information System (SIS) course code and Illinois portability codes must be utilized.  The Transitional Math SIS codes can be found below and are also within the provided portability document templates as well as the policies document, which can be found on the Illinois Transitional Math website.

Please note that there are different ISBE SIS course codes and portability codes for each of the distinct Transitional Math courses that are offered.

As always, school districts should ensure that they are uploading the correct course codes in ISBE SIS to accurately report students’ course completions.

Additionally, portability codes should be placed on the high school transcripts of students who have successfully completed a Transitional Math course. Community Colleges across Illinois utilize the portability code from the high school transcript to identify students who should be correctly placed in college credit-bearing mathematics courses.

  • STEM Pathway
    ISBE SIS Code – 02055A001
    Portability Code – TM001
  • Quantitative Literacy and Statistics Pathway
    ISBE SIS Code – 02201A001
    Portability Code – TM002
  • Tech Pathway
    ISBE SIS Code – 02153A001
    Portability Code – TM003

Implementation of Transitional Math is now entering the second semester of the second year of implementation.  We currently have over 200 approved courses across the state of Illinois.  We are excited to see the progress that school districts and students are making with the implementation of Transitional Math. Approved courses can be found on the Illinois Transitional Math website.

As a reminder, the next opportunity for Transitional Math portability submission is due on March 1, 2021, and those submissions will be considered at the Spring Portability Panel meeting on April 14, 2021.

If you have any questions regarding transitional courses, please e-mail TRInstruction@isbe.net.

January 2021

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads – Yvonne Boose – Radio Journalist

Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads logo

Since students cannot be engaging in face-to-face or on-site work-based learning experiences, we’re bringing people from a wide range of occupations to students remotely. These videos will allow students to learn about their work, the skills that are most important in their work, and to benefit from the advice that these professionals have to offer students.


In this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode, we interview Yvonne Boose, who today is a radio journalist at WNIJ, a public radio station that is based at Northern Illinois University. During her senior year at Bogan High School, Yvonne took her grandfather’s advice. She went on to study Speech Communication at Chicago State University, where she learned radio and television production.

After graduating with her Bachelor’s Degree, Yvonne began working in customer service for Ameritech, a large telecommunications company in the Midwest at that time that was formerly part of AT&T and remain connected to AT&T in a number of ways. While Yvonne continued to earn promotions for her work, she also continued to desire a career in journalism. During this time period, she was able to begin an internship with AT&T Cable where she covered local stories on a television show called Hometown Edition. This internship confirmed for Yvonne that she did want to pursue journalism, so she went to Roosevelt University and earned a Master’s Degree in journalism. With her Master’s Degree, she obtained another internship at Beacon News in Aurora before moving into her current role at WNIJ.

Yvonne’s work as a journalist is part of the Arts & Communication Career Pathway.

In this video, Yvonne shares how her customer service skills have helped her make connections as a journalist with sources that are critical to telling honest and complete stories. She also talks about the need for students to be willing to take up volunteer and internship positions in order to build their experiences. Yvonne emphasizes that the following skills are critical to have success as a journalist: integrity, the ability to build honest and positive relationships with others, strong listening skills, robust organizational skills, the ability to accept feedback with a positive attitude, and having a hunger for new knowledge.

Watch this Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads episode with journalist Yvonne Boose.

To keep up-to-date as new Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads videos are released:

January 2021