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What is the return on investment for a university education? Current and prospective learners, as well as the broader community, want a clear picture of the value of postsecondary education and training. 

State longitudinal data systems (SLDS) are increasingly helping answer this question. One strong example, with a particularly informative regional higher education use case, is Maryland. The Data Quality Campaign recently released a “Funding What Matters” brief, which highlighted Maryland’s diversified approach to funding its SLDS, ensuring long-term sustainability and flexibility. For making good use of the data system, Maryland was also recently recognized with an “Invest in What Works State Standard of Excellence” Gold Certification from Results for America.

So, how are higher education leaders taking advantage of a longitudinal data system like this? One exciting use case comes out of the Universities at Shady Grove (USG), a regional higher education center in Montgomery County (MD) that offers industry-driven undergraduate and graduate degrees and certificates from nine of the 12 University System of Maryland institutions. As recently highlighted by Forbes, USG provides a 2+2 pathway: students complete two years at a community college, then transfer to a top public university on the USG campus—saving as much as $95,000 and often graduating debt-free.

This year, USG has ramped up the work of its READY Institute, what Strada Education President and CEO Stephen Moret described as “a really visionary and impactful effort that - with sustained support - is really going to help ensure a system-level response to equitable pathways for learners that also meets the workforce talent needs of employers.” 

The READY Institute draws on data from the MLDS, as well as a host of additional databases, to make public Education-to-Employment dashboards. These dashboards, developed in partnership with USG learners and graduates, are informed by ongoing conversations with regional employers. The READY dashboards give insights on in-demand skills, along with education, employment, and earnings outcomes, in high-demand industry sectors. The USG team is also actively engaging with stakeholders to provide program-specific resources to help users make best use of the data, as a precursor for highly personalized tools for navigating the rapidly changing workforce landscape.

Their empowering approach is demonstrated in this new video, created to increase awareness and use of the data, featuring recent graduate Lulua Shahmalak. Shahmalak is continuing to build out the dashboards, now as a USG success story and team member. This work is already helping add a regional and state perspective to accepted national benchmarks including those of the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce. National College Attainment Network (NCAN) members and other stakeholders in the college access and attainment field know that connecting students with a career following postsecondary attainment is critical. The thoughtful, applied use of data helps to make those connections, and READY is demonstrating how in a way that other institutions and states can follow.

Read More:

• Equitable and Road to Hire are Closing the FAFSA Gap
• How to Execute a Statewide FAFSA Summit: Lessons Learned from Four States
• CBO & Higher Ed Partnership Case Studies - Part IV: Achieve Atlanta & HBCU Partnerships

With the generous support of the Scheidel Foundation, the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) has been studying community-based organization (CBO) and higher education institution partnerships.

The fourth installment in our series of CBO+ higher education institution case studies, it is our hope that these resources will help our members and external partners form and maintain meaningful partnerships and increase positive postsecondary outcomes for all students.

Organization: Achieve Atlanta
Location: Atlanta, GA
Students Served: 800-900 annually
Interviewee: Dr. Susanne Diggs-Wilborn, Executive Vice President, Programs
Number of Partnerships: 11
Focused Partner Institutions: Spelman College, Savannah State University, Albany State University

Partnership Length

Spelman College was one of Achieve Atlanta’s five original institutional partners in 2016. Savannah State University and Albany State University’s partnerships began in 2017 and 2019, respectively.

Overview

Since their founding in 2015, in partnership with Atlanta Public Schools (APS), Achieve Atlanta is on a mission to help APS students access, afford, and complete a postsecondary credential. 94% of Achieve Atlanta students identity as Black or Latino, and 96% are Pell grant eligible.

Through partnerships with the College Advising Corps (CAC) and OneGoal, Achieve Atlanta provides college search and college and financial aid applications support to students during the school day. Their scholarship offers APS graduates who have been continuously enrolled since the 11th grade, have at least a 2.0 GPA, and meet the Federal Student Aid Index’s financial need requirements a renewable $5,000 award per year for four years for eligible bachelor’s programs and $1,500 award per year for two years for eligible associate or technical programs.

Deliverables

Achieve Atlanta has embedded FERPA release forms into their scholarship application so that they can receive student level data. Some partners will accept this FERPA form method; other partners require their own form.

The organization has partnered with Scholarship America to provide both emergency grants of up to $500 per year for needs like transportation or medical expenses, and completion grants of up to $2,500 per term for students who have exhausted their Achieve Atlanta scholarship but are within two terms of graduating.

The organization's “cascading leadership model” requires entrenched and demonstrated commitment from their in-state institutional partners. These multi-level relationships, from the president’s office to direct student-facing staff, are codified at the institutional level into the Campus Support Team.

Over the summer, student enrollment is supported by Achieve Atlanta’s Summer Squad. These interns, many of whom were CAC Advisors within APS, help students navigate the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), admissions, housing, and other enrollment barriers. The College Success team manages the paid upperclassmen Campus Ambassadors over the summer, connecting freshmen to campus resources including their advisors and community building tools.

By facilitating the campus resource connection, Achieve Atlanta lessens students’ desire to reach back to familiar high school supports over time. Staff meet with the Campus Support Teams and Campus Liaisons each term and over the summer to monitor student progress and implement action plans in case management meetings. Achieve Atlanta’s President and Executive Director and College Success staff also support campus events year-round to build community and reinforce the slogan that Achieve Atlanta is “more than a scholarship.” At some partner institutions, faculty often serve as mentors to students, pairing them with faculty in their respective fields. This model ensures that students fully engage with the supports in their new environment.

These Campus Ambassadors are screened and hired by both Achieve Atlanta and the institution in the spring. Campus staff and the ambassadors participate in summer orientation. Ambassadors develop campus resource guides and plan quarterly persistence events. Per the MOU, ambassadors are managed and paid over the summer by Achieve Atlanta. In August, Ambassadors are managed the institution’s Campus Support Team and paid through federal work study or campus employment programs as stipulated in the MOU.

At Albany State, students are placed in learning communities to establish study groups and provide opportunities for social connection. At other institutions, the Campus Support Team connects to resources like residence life to ensure Scholars are engaging early and often. In one specific case, a resident assistant began taking their floor to the organization fair to sign up for clubs and activities.

Renewal and Evaluation

Achieve Atlanta receives data from the district and the CAC Advisors to perform a persistence likelihood analysis to determine incoming Scholars’ readiness for college and highlight additional supports they may need to succeed before midterm exams in their first term.

Students are surveyed when they enroll and at the end of each term when they renew their scholarship. The survey inquires about the effectiveness of social supports, the presence of a growth mindset and resilience, sense of belonging, how many hours students work or study, and their campus living status. Students can also disclose basic needs insecurity like transportation, housing. Tying the survey to the scholarship application took their response rate from ~30% to ~98%. Once the persistence likelihood rating is shared, the survey data is shared with the respective institutional partners every term so that incoming Scholars receive the appropriate interventions based on their scores.

Both Achieve Atlanta and their partners share Tableau licenses to triage active student caseloads. The organization meets with postsecondary partners year-round to share organizational updates, support student case management and strategize toward persistence and completion goals. An annual partnership evaluation is completed to determine the focus partnership areas for improvement. These meetings include representatives in critical student-facing offices including campus advising, enrollment services and student success.

Achieve Atlanta holds partner learning forums with all institutional and nonprofit partners who serve their Scholars. “Sharing macro-level data and creating the environment to share and learn about successful practices and collective challenges, strengthens the program overall, places the student at the center, and deepens relationships across the ecosystem,” Diggs-Wilborn said.

Maintaining Institution Partnerships

Achieve Atlanta’s cascading leadership model ensures continuity of service by requiring that institutional staff at levels below and above the departing person commit to keeping organizational abreast of staffing developments.

Achieve Atlanta writes transition procedures into its MOUs. When possible, a simultaneous off-boarding meeting with the departing person and an onboarding meeting with the new person are held.

Institutional Impact

Institutions value the direct line to work with their prospective students through Achieve Atlanta's data sharing agreement with Atlanta Public Schools for workshops, information sessions, and other resource sharing opportunities beyond the traditional college fair.

Because of the support they provide, as of 2023, 77% of Achieve Atlanta Scholars advanced to their sophomore year, 62% to junior year, and 52% to senior year, compared to 67%, 51% and 44% of non-supported peers, respectively. “Achieve Atlanta serves as a learning collaborative where our partner institutions can deepen their understanding of persistence barriers and success factors and then take those learnings and scale them to address the larger Pell-eligible populations at their institutions,” Diggs-Wilborn said.

Lessons Learned

Alumni can be your biggest advocates. “We made connections with people who went to Atlanta Public Schools. They have the passion for forming these partnerships,” Diggs-Wilborn said.

You still need to choose your players wisely in a cascading leadership model. “Our goal is to look for someone with the passion and the power to make a change, to reduce barriers on campus, and get the work done,” she said.

Customize your partnership model to each institution. Is your prospective partner institution resource rich and relationship poor? An institution that characterizes themselves as relationship rich but resource poor will require a different approach.

“Framing asks in a way that’s honest and direct but also polite was a learning curve. Secondary and postsecondary cultures are very different navigating seldom-tread territory between and within functional areas that have been traditionally siloed.  We become that connective student-centric tissue who finds common ground and leverage that to set partner goals and achieve persistence targets. I’ve also learned the ability to talk about what’s going wrong without placing blame,” she said.

More in this Series:

• CBO & Higher Ed Partnership Case Studies - Part I: Onward We Learn
• CBO & Higher Ed Partnership Case Studies - Part II: College Beyond
• CBO & Higher Education Partnership Case Studies - Part III: NCCPC & State/Regional Collaboration

With the generous support of the Scheidel Foundation, the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) has been studying community-based organization (CBO) and higher education institution partnerships.

The third installment in our series of case studies, it is our hope that these resources will help our members and external partners form and maintain meaningful partnerships and increase positive postsecondary outcomes for all students.

Organization: Northern California College Promise Coalition (NCCPC)
Location: Oakland, California
Interviewee: Meredith Curry Nuñez, Executive Director
Focused Partner Institutions: California State University - East Bay, San José City College, and the University of California’s Office of the President partnering with NCCPC’s CBO members Oakland Promise, KIPP Northern California, Stockton Scholars and Richmond Promise

 Overview

NCCPC’s journey to partnership explores facilitation on the macro level, working with its members as a collective and partnering with both individual institutions and university systems. Rather than being one organization itself, it’s a group utilizing a collective impact model, comprised of college promise programs such as Oakland Promise, and K-12 organizations like KIPP Public Schools Northern California. Several NCCPC members were struggling to cultivate partnerships individually, so they brought the challenge to NCCPC within eight months of founding the coalition – if they work together, can they facilitate partnerships between postsecondary for the collective benefit of all of their students at those campuses?

Each of these organizations, Oakland Promise, KIPP Public Schools Northern California, Stockton Scholars and Richmond Promise, entered into data sharing agreements with NCCPC, as NCCPC served as the pass through for data sharing agreements with the institutions. To enable regional coordination, these four members had to examine and streamline their internal data sharing practices to be acceptable for partnership.

NCCPC sought to strengthen members’ data on student persistence and degree attainment. They also understood the importance of knowing students’ needs before they take an end of year/term survey. Facilitating partnerships with the colleges at the coalition level was the best way to get this data, but it also meant strengthened relationships with and between their members. Members could learn from each other and make more progress faster by utilizing their collective power.

Deliverables

All three partnerships have strong access and success provisions, ensuring students receive wraparound support from both their NCCPC member organization as well as the institution to ease their transition to college. Together, NCCPC and each institution collaborate on 1) direct fall application outreach efforts toward NCCPC Scholars (e.g., visiting NCCPC schools, inviting NCCPC Scholars to campus recruitment activities, hosting NCCPC Scholars on campus, identifying NCCPC Scholars in CalStateApply, etc); 2) hosting a welcome event for all newly admitted NCCPC Scholars at the beginning of the fall semester for NCCPC matriculates and families; 3) ensuring NCCPC Scholars enroll in the campus’ first-year experience program for their first two semesters.

California State University – East Bay is a five-year partnership, whereas San José City College is a three-year partnership.

Additionally, the three-year University of California Office of the President partnership has a strong focus on eliminating scholarship displacement (per the California Ban on Scholarship Displacement Act of 2021, which NCCPC advocated tirelessly for since 2020.) NCCPC members like Richmond Promise and Stockton Scholars provide advising to their scholars such as reviewing award letters to ensure students’ aid packages represent the maximum of federal, state and local aid they are eligible for. The UC Office of the President has committed to working with the Coalition to provide training related to financial aid packaging and how UC treats outside scholarships at least once every academic year.

While the data-coordination in fighting scholarship displacement is strongest for NCCPC through its members, they launched an open access “ Report a Financial Aid Issue” form in spring 2023 so that any student across California can submit scholarship displacement cases. Since launch, NCCPC has received 22 cases.

Evaluation

NCCPC hosts the communities of practice throughout the year to evaluate the progress of each partnership. But the implementation of annual meetings between NCCPC, its member organizations and the campus is a crucial element of evaluating the partnership. Cal State East Bay piloted a dashboard to present NCCPC Scholars that the NCCPC team could review during our meetings.

The campus and NCCPC worked with the Campus Partnerships Committee to schedule and develop the agenda for the two-hour virtual meeting. For the first two years, these meetings were attended by over 20 people representing the campus and different NCCPC staff and members.

Maintaining Institution Partnerships

By approaching partnership at the university system level, NCCPC was able to avoid reestablishing buy-in from new university leadership on individual campuses each time there was a personnel change. These partnerships became an integral part of the university system culture. Members utilizing their combined student populations became a strong selling point, especially when students are from the same high schools in the same districts. Regional, multi-organization partnerships streamline event planning and execution of programming, as well as lower the university staff’s needed capacity.

Partnership Expansion Plans

NCCPC is moving toward equipping members to facilitate their own partnerships. Having student data pass through a middle entity increases risk and privacy concerns, so members who’ve done this successfully will be paired with other members to glean replicable practices. This change of role, from pass through to self-sufficiency assistance and technical support, will be crucial as NCCPC adds more members to the collective partnerships, and more campuses reach out to NCCPC to enable new opportunities.

Institutional Impact

NCCPC’s strategy of approaching partnership with university systems as a coalition allowed them to begin exploring partnerships with many of the 116 schools in the California Community Colleges system. This macro level blueprint saves both the coalition and the institutions time, as they work to align goals, deliverables and achieve shared outcomes.

San Jose City College acknowledged that this partnership with NCCPC on behalf of their CBO members helps them to achieve goals laid out in their strategic plan. The UC partnership “aligns with UC Regents Policy 3201 which states that the University’s goal is ‘maintaining the affordability of the University for all the students admitted within the framework of the Master Plan.’”

Lessons Learned

Visibility is important long before agreements are signed. Go to the president’s luncheon, invite schools to your events and attend theirs, move beyond emails. Utilize every opportunity for face time with the people you’re trying to connect with. Find ways to keep yourself relevant before seeking and throughout partnerships.

Stay encouraged, this is a marathon. Curry Nuñez notes, “A no is a no now. Leadership changes and timing is everything, so be gently and strategically relentless. Strive to be better at ‘friend-raising’ and ‘partner-raising.’ Seek to build relationships before going right for the signed agreements. And don’t cancel all your visibility efforts after the no. Keep going.”

Once you’ve established connections, be sure to familiarize yourself with the administrative and executive assistants of those same leaders. These employees can be your guide to anticipating what’s coming. Be sure to nurture your relationships with people doing the boots on the groundwork of your partnership like program managers, advisors, etc.

Explicitly state in your MOU, ensure there is at least one institutional staff member and one person in the CBO dedicated, in their job description, to maintaining and overseeing this partnership. Someone has to own the relationship, or it will fizzle out.

Use your college fair invitations as an in! Instead of repeatedly inviting schools that aren’t sufficiently supporting your students, utilize the opportunity to share your concerns with admissions staff.

Be ready to share how their data (and strategic plan!) aligns with yours. “Be very clear about the value-add you can provide the university. Outline the value you’re already bringing to the university. Simple math here but if you ‘only’ have 12 students at a school and eight are African Americans, and the school only has 30 [African Americans], that’s leverage! Approach this the same way you would when approaching a funder. Know your data and as much of their data as you can to see where the overlap is,” Curry Nuñez says.

More in this Series:

• CBO & Higher Ed Partnership Case Studies - Part I: Onward We Learn
• CBO & Higher Education Partnership Case Studies - Part II: College Beyond
• CBO & Higher Ed Partnership Case Studies - Part IV: Achieve Atlanta & HBCU Partnerships

With the generous support of the Scheidel Foundation, the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) has been studying community-based organization (CBO) and higher education institution partnerships.

The second installment in our series of case studies, it is our hope that these resources will help our members and external partners form and maintain meaningful partnerships and increase positive postsecondary outcomes for all students.

Organization: College Beyond
Location: New Orleans, LA
Students Served: 400
Interviewee: Clara Baron-Hyppolite, Executive Director
Focused Partner Institutions: University of New Orleans (UNO)
Partnership Length: Since 2018

Overview

Founded in 2015 by two teachers at Walter Cohen College Prep High School in New Orleans, College Beyond’s 360 degrees of student support model includes tools to prevent summer melt, on-campus college coaching while matriculating, non-academic supports like microgrants for gas cards and books, as well as starting a food pantry to combat student food insecurity. The first College Beyond freshman cohort at UNO began in 2016.

While College Beyond’s currently active partnership is with the UNO, they’ve previously had smaller, formal partnership pilot programs with Loyola University of New Orleans, Northshore Tech College, and Southeastern University of Louisiana.

Deliverables

College Beyond is responsible for garnering interest from the University’s freshman class and recruiting 100 students to be guided through college by College Beyond staff. There is no minimum GPA or testing score requirement; students must meet demonstrated financial need to participate in the program. Students are assigned to a coach who meets with them at multiple checkpoints throughout the year. Both College Beyond and UNO have a data sharing agreement that outlines how their joint students are progressing academically. The University provides them with space, university email addresses, as well as access to student level data.

Renewal and Evaluation

College Beyond measures success through a combination of long-term and short-term indicators. At a broader level, the organization tracks year-over-year persistence and graduation rates. As early benchmarks, they monitor the percentage of students who complete at least 20 credits by the end of their first year, as well as overall GPA. The organization also administers robust student surveys at multiple points throughout the academic year to proactively identify barriers such as transportation issues, limited access to technology, lack of career exposure, and underdeveloped academic soft skills. This data informs the design of student programming and shapes the recommendations provided to university partners to support broader institutional improvements.

Maintaining Institution Partnerships

To ensure alignment and accountability, College Beyond meets with the university president once per semester to provide updates on the partnership. In addition, the team regularly engages with key staff including the director of first-year experience, data managers, and financial aid advisors, and participates in the institution’s student success council.

Partnership Expansion Plans

Understanding the importance of data, College Beyond relied on the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to identify institutions who might be in need of additional enrollment and retention support. In terms of new institutional partnerships, College Beyond is aiming for a stronger regional presence by seeking partnerships with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Southeastern University and Southern University’s Baton Rouge campus.

College Beyond is also looking into scaling their current college success efforts, exploring options to increase the number of UNO students they serve while still maintaining their current level of high impact programming. With an emphasis on slow and steady growth, they’re hoping to have a bigger footprint in their university partners retention and graduation strategy.

Because College Beyond’s programming focus has been primarily college success work, there may be plans to increase their current college access efforts. By engaging students earlier, building trust, they’re looking to widen the pipeline with local high schools to further improve retention for New Orleans' students.

Institutional Impact

In seeking to boost student facing offices’ capacity, College Beyond offers workshops focusing on study skills, time management and resume writing. They also provide various student retreats on leadership development, financial literacy, career readiness, and networking so that students feel equipped with the tools they need to launch successful careers.

College Beyond students’ first-to-second-year persistence rate is 79%, compared to the Louisiana state average of 61% for all students, and 58% of students at UNO specifically.

Recognizing that true successful matriculation extends past simply making satisfactory academic progress, the College Beyond team has implemented an ambassador program where junior and senior College Beyond students serve as mentors to the younger program participants. These ambassadors produce social programming like movie nights, paint and snack events, peer led community circles. They also implemented a program to hire two master of social work interns to deliver elementary mental health coaching to boost student morale and provide encouragement along the journey. For more intensive mental health needs, College Beyond has brought in partnerships with Meta and Mercer Family Services to provide a grief and loss group.

Lessons Learned

“We’ve learned that having a holistic understanding of the ecosystem in which we operate is essential. This includes a deep knowledge of institutional incentives, how universities assess return on investment, the availability of federal and state funding streams, and the impact of local policies on university operations and resources. With this context, we’re better equipped to engage in meaningful conversations with partners and address institutional priorities with clarity and relevance,” Baron-Hyppolite said.

College Beyond has also recognized that if a solution does not have a clear funding path, it likely has not been effectively aligned to the institution’s most urgent needs. Thus, long-term sustainability must be part of the conversation from the outset. This includes considering how their work not only addresses current institutional challenges but also aligns with the long-term strategic goals of both university partners and funders.

More in this Series:

• CBO & Higher Education Partnership Case Studies - Part I: Onward We Learn
• CBO & Higher Education Partnership Case Studies - Part III: NCCPC & State/Regional Collaboration
• CBO & Higher Ed Partnership Case Studies - Part IV: Achieve Atlanta & HBCU Partnerships

With the generous support of the Scheidel Foundation, the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) has been studying community-based organization (CBO) and higher education institution partnerships. First in a series of case studies, it is our hope that these resources will help our members and external partners form and maintain meaningful partnerships and increase positive postsecondary outcomes for all students.

Organization: Onward We Learn
Location: Providence, RI
Students Served: 4,200+
Interviewee: Keri Rossi-D’entremont, Senior Director of College Access and Success
Focused Partner Institutions: Rhode Island College (RIC), Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI), University of Rhode Island (URI)

Partnership Length

Institutional partnerships for college access have been a cornerstone since Onward We Learn’s (OWL) original founding as the College Crusade of Rhode Island in the 1980s. Their institutional partnerships for college success and persistence work began in 2015.

Overview

Onward We Learn serves students in 6th grade through college graduation. As Rhode Island’s GEAR UP grant recipient, OWL provides scholarships and partners with colleges and universities to offer institution specific awards. Their services range from tutoring and college readiness support, college transition to college advising, assistance completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) as well as renewal and verification, career exploration, and leadership development, among others. GEAR UP funds activities from 6th grade through the first year of college; from then on, OWL supports students through college graduation via other funding sources.

Deliverables

Onward We Learn has a very detailed memo of understanding (MOU) around college success coaching. They provide a coach on the three focused partner campuses, RIC, CCRI and URI, four days a week, as 80% of OWL students attend one of these three schools. Coaches are OWL employees but they’re also an affiliate of the institution. With this partnership comes access to certain data such as midterm grades of all their students.

OWL students sign a Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) release form allowing their staff to see student level university data. Students sign the FERPA release and indicate the postsecondary institution they will be attending in OWL’s customer relationship management system (CRM) via an app. Enrollment management representatives from each partner institution also log into the CRM to see OWL students who will be attending their institution, and to retrieve the signed FERPA releases. Prior to the implementation of the CRM system, paper release forms and a student list were signed and sent to enrollment management staff at each institution.

Over the last several years, they’ve cultivated mutually beneficial relationships with institutional partners. OWL staff will have a table at college sponsored events like open houses and admitted student events. They also will welcome the general university student body to their own Onward student specific programming like FAFSA submission Fridays, FSA ID nights, community lunches, destress before finals events, etc. College and university financial aid representatives or Office of Student Life staff will often come and assist at various OWL events.

The OWL team also collaborates with their institutional partners for their summer bridge program. Their students participate in this program in addition to the college’s orientation. OWL and university staff walk them through the first-year checklist, show them facilities on campus, and ensure they’ve completed all the pre-first day of class tasks.

Renewal and Evaluation

Due to their data sharing agreement, OWL staff can track student progress throughout the year, monitoring grades and other indicators or achievements such as dean’s list awards.

For URI, their college success coaching MOU is updated and renewed every year. It’s signed by the Vice President of Student Affairs, and OWL's President. The new agreement is prepared in June so that it’s ready at the beginning of the institution’s fiscal year.

CCRI and RIC’s MOUs are both updated and renewed every two years. This change from one to two years provides more time to implement the contents of the MOU before evaluating the program’s progress.

Evaluation begins in the spring and measures 1st to 2nd year and 2nd to 3rd year persistence, if a student meets the GPA requirements all years, if students are making satisfactory academic progress, among other indicators of program success.

OWL utilizes an external evaluating company housed within the Center for Labor Markets and Policy at Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA), and who recently became housed at RIC, to demonstrate the organization’s value over a given year to an institution compared to their students’ peer cohort who are not receiving similar supports. They also have an internal director of data and evaluation who holds a PStat certification, that studies the enrollment data, major, GPA, persistence to the next year, matriculation pacing of OWL students in real time to continuously provide updates to the institutions.

Maintaining Institution Partnerships

Having the coach on campus four days a week at these three institutions is incredibly helpful for OWL’s visibility. Both the campus coaches and Rossi-D'entremont have campus branded emails, so they receive all communications that go out to the campus community. This allows her to maintain connection with campus leadership and stay abreast of staff changes. This has been helpful when multiple college dean or vice president roles changed, because those positions are heavily tied to their MOUs.

Institutional Impact

The early awareness model of working with students from 6th grade through college completion led to 73% of OWL college students being on track to graduate in four years, according to their 2021 annual report card. Additional successes were recently highlighted in their 2024 Annual Report. OWL’s program has proven to be effectively creating cohort after cohort of well-prepared students when compared to their non-CBO supported peers.

Rossi-D'entremont mentioned that for OWL’s partners, “the real benefit to the institutions in this is enrollment management, and our students are persisting well. They have the added wraparound support, so they are a desirable group of students to have. [Students] also get emergency funding from us, so [institutions] know that [students] have a lot of safety net supports, and they're more likely to persist.”

Lessons Learned

• “Having a strong handle on your data and outcomes is extremely important to creating meaningful partnerships with higher education institutions. Enrollment and persistence data of your students is of particular importance to them,” Rossi-D'entremont said.
• She also noted, “Find out if the college or university you seek to create a partnership with already has an existing MOU template their legal counsel has approved them to use. Using the college’s template saves time and edits later.
• Do research on the leadership you’ll be meeting with beforehand. Are they personally native to your area, and thus more likely to be familiar with your work? Or are you starting from scratch at introductions? What are they prioritizing in this new role and where does your work align?
• Ask directly what supports the institution would be most enthusiastic about. Rossi-D'entremont noted that for OWL’s partners, additional capacity with financial aid related programming is the one of the most appreciated aspects of their supports.

More in this Series:

• CBO & Higher Ed Partnership Case Studies - Part II: College Beyond
• CBO & Higher Ed Partnership Case Studies - Part III: NCCPC & State/Regional Collaboration
• CBO & Higher Ed Partnership Case Studies - Part IV: Achieve Atlanta & HBCU Partnerships

Ever since the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) attended Idaho's statewide FAFSA Summit in March 2023, these statewide convenings have been firmly on NCAN's radar as a key tool for driving Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion. Statewide FAFSA summits are gaining popularity nationwide as states look for ways to connect stakeholders and widen the postsecondary pipeline. NCAN interviewed college access and financial aid leaders from Kentucky, North Carolina, Idaho, and Arizona about their experiences organizing a FAFSA summit. We compiled their responses, which are full of tips and tricks, funding ideas, and challenges to be aware of, to help other states host successful FAFSA summits.

A special thank you goes out to Keith Ritchie (Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority), Toni Blount (myFutureNC), Kathy Hastings (North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority), Jenni Kimball (Idaho State Board of Education), and Dr. Jennifer Murphy (Education Forward Arizona, AzCAN) for their insight!

Note: These responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Why does your state host a statewide FAFSA summit? Was there an event or initiative that prompted it?

Kentucky: “Given the upcoming changes to the FAFSA, we at KHEAA feel it’s important to get key players involved with FAFSA completion across the state together to share ideas, FAFSA completion strategies, and to develop unified messaging to support FAFSA completion across the state.”

North Carolina: “Before the COVID-19 pandemic, North Carolina would host financial aid trainings each summer, and they wanted to start them up again. They also chose to call their summit a financial aid summit instead of a FAFSA summit to be inclusive of those who cannot file a FAFSA.”

Idaho: ‘Being new to my position and having always been a believer in the connection between FAFSA and college enrollment, I knew I wanted to start some sort of statewide conversation about FAFSA completion in Idaho. Idaho does not have an agency overseeing financial aid, nor do we have a state financial aid application. The lack of state level resources and training is really what prompted the idea for a FAFSA Summit. The rollout of the new “Better FAFSA” also helped create a need for statewide conversation.’

Arizona: “Arizona came across an article from NCAN detailing a FAFSA Summit held by the state of Idaho. Impressed by this initiative, we were inspired to host a similar gathering in Arizona, bringing together essential stakeholders from across the state who are dedicated to elevating Arizona's FAFSA completion rate.”

What did/do you hope to accomplish through a statewide FAFSA summit?

Kentucky: “We hope that Kentucky FAFSA Summit participants will walk away with a better understanding of how we can work together to support our students throughout the state with FAFSA completion. We are excited to have a diverse group of college access professionals share their perspectives on messaging, overcoming challenges, and best practices to support FAFSA completion campaigns. To help carry out this goal, we are building in ample time in the agenda for group discussion to discuss the largest barriers we face, as well as practical ways we can help as both individuals and organizations. We will be strategically organizing the discussion groups in a way that ensures each group includes representatives from different college access fields that serve unique roles within the goal of supporting FAFSA completion.”

North Carolina: “After creating a goal setting guide, four main goals emerged for the financial aid summit:

• Develop a 2023-24 action plan for each school district.
• Share about FAFSA simplification.
• Provide best practices through breakout sessions.
• Encourage schools to begin to think about leveraging partnerships.”

Idaho: “Our goal was to bring key stakeholders together to have a shared understanding of our state’s FAFSA challenges and opportunities. I really wanted people to listen to each other to better understand the various sides of financial aid: those who are on the student facing side and those who work in the regulations on the college side. Ultimately, I wanted to create a statewide FAFSA committee of people with a shared interest and passion for increasing FAFSA completion in Idaho.”

Arizona: “During our FAFSA summit, we successfully accomplished the following objectives:

1. Key Partner Convening: We brought together crucial partners to inform them about the challenges and opportunities associated with FAFSA completion in Arizona.
2. FAFSA Data Analysis: We conducted an in-depth analysis of FAFSA data, allowing us to collaboratively establish a statewide completion goal for the high school class of 2024.
3. Statewide Strategic Plan: Together, we crafted a comprehensive state strategic plan that outlines the steps and initiatives required to achieve our FAFSA completion goal.”

How did you market your state's FAFSA summit?

Kentucky: “…we started a statewide FAFSA Completion Committee in 2021 to bring partners together virtually every few months to discuss our goals and initiatives. It made sense to begin our invitation process with this group and build from there. We also invited leaders from partner organizations such as colleges/universities, the Kentucky Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (KASFAA), the Kentucky Department of Education, The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, GEAR Up, TRIO, and other local and state organizations involved with college access and FAFSA completion. We are using RSVPify as a platform to register participants. This also allows us to send reminders and updates to participants leading up to the event.”

North Carolina: “With a maximum capacity of 250 people, this only allowed for two people from each district in North Carolina to attend the financial aid summit. myFutureNC went through their school superintendent listserv so each superintendent could pass the invite along to those they thought would be impacted most by the experience. After the deadline to respond to this initial invitation passed, NCSEAA sent out a blast through their counselor listserv and the summit was sold out within a week!”

Idaho: “Our event was by invitation only. We strategically invited Financial Aid Directors from each institution, several high school counselors, admissions representatives from local institutions, and other partners from state agencies.”

Arizona: “Arizona formed a FAFSA coalition in 2018, and each year the coalition has grown to include key stakeholders from the K-12 field, higher education institutions, college access professionals, state and government agencies, as well as philanthropic organizations. We personally invited a representative from each of these sectors and organizations to attend the summit.”

Who did you need to get buy in from to host a FAFSA summit (e.g., state board, state agency, independent organization, etc.)?

North Carolina: “Getting buy-in from the leadership team of NCSEAA was important since they were providing time, effort, and funding to pay for attendees’ hotel rooms in addition to stipends for district employees who were on 10-month contracts and weren’t getting paid to attend the summit as part of their salary. The myFutureNC team and members of the board were excited to see what could come out of a financial aid summit.”

Arizona: “Once the idea of hosting a summit was proposed to the AZ FAFSA Coalition, the group was immediately supportive of the idea and everyone was excited to participate in an in-person convening to move Arizona’s FAFSA initiatives forward.”

Where did the funding come from to put on a FAFSA summit?

Kentucky: “We are fortunate to utilize the wonderful resource of NCAN’s Postsecondary Partners’ Grant to help with administrative costs like printing and material. We are planning to give each participant a folder with printed resources available to help guide discussion and walk away with resources that can help beyond the day of the summit.”

North Carolina: “myFutureNC, NCSEAA, and GEAR UP came together to help fund the summit. Additionally, the President of Wake Tech Community College gave an in-kind donation to provide the location, tech team, and event manager for the summit. After creating a sponsorship letter and using their director of development to identify good partners for outreach for the summit, Fidelity Investments covered some costs of the summit. The banking and financial services sector is often supportive in this space since it relates to promoting financial literacy.”

Idaho: “Funding came from our College & Career Access Team’s annual budget. We were able to pay travel expenses for the Financial Aid Directors from the non-local colleges and universities.”

Arizona: “Since the Arizona Board of Regents leads Arizona’s statewide FAFSA initiative and FAFSA coalition, they provided lunch for the event. Our strategic partners at the Helios Education Foundation provided the space at their education campus.”

What challenges did you encounter while planning and/or executing your statewide FAFSA summit?

Kentucky: “We wanted to make this FAFSA summit as accessible as possible for participants to attend. Fortunately, our organization has a building large enough to host the summit and is centrally located within the state. To help keep costs low, we decided not to include a meal as a part of the event. Instead, we opted to begin the event at 1 PM so that participants would have an opportunity to eat lunch before arriving. When selecting a date for the summit, we looked at the date and location of the KASFAA state conference and planned for the day prior to the start of the conference. Our thought behind this was that more people from further parts of the state could more easily attend if they were already planning to attend the conference the next day.”

North Carolina: “While it was wonderful to host the summit at a community college, this made it difficult to book a block for a hotel since NCSEAA was covering participants’ lodging. No hotel wanted to provide a block for 150 rooms for just one night since it would cause the hotel to turn business away for other guests who wanted to visit the days before and after the summit, for example. The hotel also would not gain any revenue from food and beverage fees by providing a block for the summit attendees. It was also challenging to find the best time in the summer to bring K-12 leaders over so many districts together since many of them are not employed for 12 months.”

Idaho: “No challenges per se just extra time needed to prepare content and plan the logistics.”

Arizona: “Our most significant challenge revolved around achieving our objectives within the limited timeframe of the Summit. Our schedule was structured from 8:30 AM to 2:00 PM, making efficient time utilization crucial. To address this challenge, we organized a working lunch to ensure that we could effectively tackle all the goals outlined in the agenda.”

In your opinion, what does it mean for a FAFSA summit to be successful?

Kentucky: “The goal for the FAFSA Summit is to create a launching off point for renewed collaboration across the state. What better way than to bring key players together to discuss challenges and strategies in a year of significant change with Better FAFSA Better Future? We want to learn from one another’s perspective and create common goals that we can all work toward.”

Idaho: “…if you see people having those ‘ah-ha’ moments during the Summit, then you have been successful! Hearing participants say things like ‘Oh, I didn’t realize…’ Or ‘Wow, I hadn’t thought about that before.’”

Arizona: “…a successful FAFSA summit archives the following works to increase the FAFSA completion rate, broaden outreach efforts, create and enhance FAFSA resources, reduce barriers, collaborate, and use data. Ultimately a successful summit should be a catalyst for positive change and collaboration among stakeholders.”

How does your state plan to measure the success of FAFSA summits?

Kentucky: “We’ll share data regarding previous FAFSA completion rates, as well as data moving forward to track our progress as a state. If collaboration between participating organizations is increased, and this leads to more support for our students, the Kentucky FAFSA Summit will be a success.”

North Carolina: “A pre- and post-summit survey went out to each participant and provided the team with more knowledge about what participants learned from the summit.”

Arizona: “We intend to gauge our progress by closely monitoring Arizona's FAFSA completion rate on a weekly basis during the 2024-25 FAFSA cycle. This data will serve as our key indicator to determine whether our initiatives are making a meaningful impact or if further assistance is required, and if so, in which specific areas.”

What was the result of your state’s FAFSA summit?

North Carolina: “A survey was conducted before and after the summit to measure attendees’ awareness, knowledge, and comfort about financial aid. See their post-summit results below:

• 35% more attendees said they have superior or adequate knowledge about the financial aid process for high school seniors.
• 31% more attendees said they have superior or adequate knowledge about the resources available in their district, community, or region to assist in the financial aid process.
• 59% more attendees said they have superior or adequate knowledge about the upcoming changes to the FAFSA.”

Idaho:

• “Creation of 4 statewide committees.
• Creation of statewide FAFSA Completion Challenge.
• Creation of FAFSA handouts and materials.
• Financial aid staff had a better understanding of the challenges our student -facing staff face in helping students complete.
• Increased communication among institutions and state agencies.”

Arizona: “We received an overwhelmingly positive response from the summit attendees, with a 100% attendance rate representing all regions of the state. Encouraged by this feedback, we are considering establishing this event as an annual tradition. Each year, we plan to convene as a collective group to develop a strategic plan aimed at achieving our FAFSA goals.”

What advice do you have for those trying to implement a statewide FAFSA summit in their state? What to do/not to do?

Kentucky:

• “From a logistical standpoint, we feel that selecting a central location on a day where a large conference is about to begin helps with attendance.”
• “…I see this FAFSA Summit as the start of a process. We don’t want this event to be the end of the conversation until next year’s summit. We feel that follow-up is equally important to the event itself. This will help us continue to partner in a collaborative college access task force throughout the year.”

North Carolina:

• “Start planning early! Having over a year to plan for an event this large (250 participants) is ideal.”
• “Share resources from your summit widely. The main replicable practices and documents from the summit were shared with the counselor lead from the Department of Public Instruction. They then sent out the resources to every counselor in the state they had worked with on a listserv.”
• “One piece of feedback from counselors was that they are usually not treated with the fancy table settings, good food, and networking opportunities they received at the summit. If you have the funding to provide school counselors with a very professional event where they feel appreciated, take this opportunity to treat some of the hardest working people in your state.”

Idaho:

“Do’s:

• Invite a mix of college and high school staff.
• Leave plenty of time for discussion and brainstorming.
• Bring lots of chart paper!
• Pre-arrange your guests at round tables. Mix people up so there are people from different organizations at each table.
• End the summit with a call to action – join a committee, etc.

Don’t:

• Fill the entire summit with presentations. Invite people to talk to each other and share their ideas.”

Arizona:

• “Make sure that you have representation from all FAFSA stakeholders. Ensuring that everyone's thoughts and voices are heard is a big part of making the summit successful and setting goals and initiatives for your state.”
• “After the summit, keep the momentum going- by scheduling meetings throughout the year to report on your state's FAFSA progress and to collaborate on any initiatives. Whether that be a FAFSA coalition like Arizona, a round table group, or a reoccurring calendar invite, keeping everyone invested and engaged in this work is critical.”

Every state has its own unique challenges, priorities, and resources related to FAFSA completion. Whether your state hosts a more intimate convening like Kentucky or a larger convening like North Carolina, there are so many ways to put on an effective statewide FAFSA summit. The important thing is that the way your summit is executed is what is best for your state!

Read More:

• Commentary: Idaho Hosted Its First Statewide FAFSA Summit; Your State Should, Too
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Reading time: Four minutes

Last year, $3.58 billion of unclaimed Pell Grant dollars were left on the table – a cornerstone of federal financial aid and a critical piece of the puzzle for students who are first-generation and from low-income backgrounds. Completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is complicated and with completion rates low for many students, it is increasingly a priority for many support organizations.

When this number caught the eye of Jarian Kerekes, Head of Social Impact and Community Engagement at Equitable, he knew an opportunity to have an impact awaited. Equitable Foundation, the company's charitable giving arm, is a partner of the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) and a longtime champion of college attainment and persistence, through programs such as its Equitable Excellence Scholarship.

“As a first-generation college student myself, I navigated the college admission process with minimal assistance and it was challenging at times,” Kerekes recalled. “Working with subject matter experts such as NCAN allows our organization to provide tools and resources for students in similar positions as they pursue post-secondary education.”

Equitable Foundation was already partnering with a group of six Charlotte (NC)-based nonprofit organizations to make college more accessible to students, including Road to Hire (R2H), whose work on FAFSA completion caught the eye of Equitable’s Social Impact Team.

How Their Relationship Took One High School’s FAFSA Completion Rate From 44% to 99%

R2H works with employer partners and universities to diversify workspaces and interrupt cycles of intergenerational poverty. The R2H High School program serves six Title I, low-income high schools in Charlotte. Students in this program take a R2H class for credit, learning technical skills, professional development skills and college and career readiness to work towards debt-free college and high-earning careers. As part of this work, R2H is addressing historically low FAFSA completion rates through a unique approach.

With support from Equitable, R2H delivered a 99% FAFSA completion rate following their fall 2022 semester, compared to the 44% completion rate of the six Charlotte Title I high school’s that weren’t being served by Equitable and R2H. Road to Hire Program Manager, Allen Davis, credits their high FAFSA completion rate to their relationship-based model approach.

"Since the start of their journeys with us, the R2H team has worked to build strong and intentional relationships with the students in our classrooms. We leaned on these relationships to create customizable learning FAFSA experiences to motivate and empower our students and their families towards completing such a complex process. I really believe it's because of our relationship-based model approach that we reached the number of FAFSA completions we did," Davis shared.

R2H leveraged their established and strong student relationships to build a six-week curriculum to educate and empower its students and parents to complete the FAFSA process. During this six-week curriculum, R2H walked through the FAFSA competition process step-by-step - from creating their FAFSA profiles and showing which documents need to be completed by just parents to how to submit the completed FAFSA application.

R2H's relationship-based model approach extended beyond their six-week curriculum teaching. Paired with the financial support from Equitable, R2H utilized their strong student relationships to poll their students and create fun, custom incentives and rewards for FAFSA completion based on student wants, such as unique experiences, hospitality, and access to sporting events and concerts. Based on the success of this curriculum, R2H intends to strengthen and expand the program in the years to come.

“It was an intentional, innovative approach that allowed our collective impact,” said Kerekes. “We met with R2H and discussed our shared objective to ensure students were completing and gaining access to aid that would ultimately provide more postsecondary opportunities for students. We believe our combined efforts with R2H to ensure a comfort level with the FAFSA process, in addition to unique college tours and helpful information necessary to navigate college, was the perfect recipe for success!”

To learn more about R2H’s unique approach and how Equitable Foundation is measuring their impact, be sure to confirm participation at the 2023 NCAN National Conference being held in Dallas, TX, October 16-18. Equitable, Road to Hire, and research partner UNC Charlotte will present more information on their unique partnership and results during their panel at 2:30 PM on Tuesday, October 17, entitled “Breaking Down Silos, how nonprofits can work with companies to build creative partnerships.”

Read More:

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Reading time: Seven minutes

Connecticut has been a perennial presence in the top 10 states by percent of seniors completing in the National College Attainment Network's (NCAN) FAFSA Tracker, but the state’s leaders and advocates aren’t content to rest on their laurels and want to continue to improve. A recent article in The 74 found Charlene M. Russell-Tucker, Commissioner for the Connecticut State Department of Education, and Emily Pallin, Executive Director of the Connecticut RISE Network (an NCAN member) describing their partnership around the Connecticut FAFSA Challenge.

The Challenge is a, “nine-month initiative where high schools across the state will be charged with boosting FAFSA completion rates for the class of 2023 relative to the class of 2022.” Eligible high schools receive “microgrants, trainings, and other resources…as a means of helping seniors access the financial aid they deserve to pursue a postsecondary education.”

The Connecticut FAFSA Challenge is a collaboration between the Office of Governor Ned Lamont, the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE), and the Connecticut RISE Network. The partnership has its genesis in the availability of American Rescue Plan funding and the exigency of so many students needing additional support to pursue postsecondary pathways because of the pandemic’s severe educational disruptions. Although many students were interested in higher education pathways based on their self-identified plans, students’ FAFSA completion rates showed that their needs were not being met.

“We know that FAFSA completion is highly correlated with postsecondary enrollment, and in a state where more than 70% of jobs will require some form of higher education, we saw this work as an effective tool to smoothen the path to two- and four-year programs,” says John Scianimanico, Director of Special Projects, at the CSDE. “One of the pillars of our work at [CSDE] is promoting educational equity and leveling the playing field for all students to succeed once they graduate from our K-12 system.”

The Connecticut RISE Network is at its core comprised of nine high schools and eight public school districts that reach over 13,000 students, most of whom come from low-income backgrounds and/or identify as Black and/or Latino/a. The Network uses a collaborative, cross-school to focus on continuous improvement and uses five focus areas to support innovation and improvement: “on-track” and postsecondary culture, targeted transition supports, data-driven educator collaboration, equitable educator practice, and cross-school learning. Connecticut RISE previously appeared on NCAN’s blog for their work combating summer melt.

For the Connecticut FAFSA Challenge, RISE’s role was to facilitate communities of practice that could support schools participating in the Challenge. Schools participated in an application process for the community of practice and were asked to commit to attending monthly meetings to learn about best practices and strategies and to receive RISE’s training on FAFSA completion strategies.

Schools who applied for the Challenge also had to meet other criteria. For the first year of the Challenge, a school had to have less than a 55% FAFSA completion rate the year before, which was inclusive of most school districts in the state. Every year after that the requirements have changed a bit, but most recently the requirements moved to a schoolwide FAFSA completion rate of less than 58% FAFSA but also a FAFSA completion rate of less than 50% for low-income students.

There are two tiers to the Connecticut FAFSA Challenge, into which schools can opt. Tier one did not include individual coaching but did include a microgrant, training, access to the community of practice, resources, and communications with RISE. Tier two received a little bit larger grant while committing to attending all of the community practice meetings and trainings; schools in this tier could elect into coaching (and 10 of them did so).

From a coaching perspective, the meetings and trainings included topics like marketing for FAFSA completion campaigns and eliminating FAFSA-related myths, family engagement strategies, student engagement in and awareness of FAFSA, and approaches to completing a FAFSA.

“One of the key points for me is professional development,” says Sherry McLaughlin, Deputy Director of Postsecondary Success at Connecticut RISE. “Professional development for educators around college advising is such a missing component.” Many schools do not have dedicated college advisors, and while some Connecticut school districts have third-party community-based organizations, but other than that, when there isn’t that role, the task of financial aid counseling and college advising often falls to school counselors. Connecticut RISE’s coaching provided some of that professional opportunity for teams of school professionals.

Some of the school teams built FAFSA Task Forces. “You can’t have a team of five handling 340 students,” notes McLaughlin. These Task Forces include cross-departmental representatives like world language, math, and English teachers, college and career readiness professionals, and school counselor. When the group comes together every other week, it can parse through student-level FAFSA completion data rather than looking at it in the aggregate. “It’s one of our change ideas. It really was impactful and saw double-digit growth,” McLaughlin adds.

“We are proud of this work. In our first year, our FAFSA Challenge cohort improved their collective FAFSA completion rate by four points, even as the rest of the country declined by a similar amount. In our second year, the program grew from 26 to 40 schools, together improving their FAFSA completion rate by over eight points,” explains Ajit Gopalakrishnan, Chief Performance Officer at CSDE.

Districts and schools have access to student-level FAFSA completion data via the state’s EdSight Secure portal, which is updated weekly with data from Federal Student Aid. Some schools first find out about their ability to access this data through the Connecticut RISE training.

Beyond the training, the schools receive a micro-grant based on student enrollment, and they have to complete a budget usage form that explains what they will be using the funding for. Connecticut RISE supports that process because they want to help schools use funds for a variety of things. McLaughlin estimates that the 57 schools involved in the Challenge are receiving anywhere from $5,000-$12,000 on average.

Other NCAN members in Connecticut serving students are enthusiastic about the FAFSA Challenge and have ideas on where it could be it expanded.

“I think it’s a great thing. I am in full support of the FAFSA Challenge continuing,” says Dr. Chaka Felder-McEntire, Founder of the Higher Heights Youth Empowerment Programs, an NCAN member. Higher Heights supports six schools in Connecticut’s FAFSA Challenge, three each in Hartford and New Haven. Felder-McEntire would like to see the number of schools served by the Challenge expanded: “We want to support more of the turnaround schools, beyond the ones we currently have, because of our record of success.”

“I would love for the FAFSA Challenge to be something that’s maintained, but I think it has a lot of room for growth,” echoes Faith Villegas, Executive Director at the Bridgeport Public Education Fund, another NCAN member and community-based college access program working in and around Bridgeport, Connecticut. “[The Challenge] has several categories, but it’s more than completing the FAFSA. It’s what that FAFSA indicates. How do we make those connections for those students? I wish the state would take that a step further and let districts not only help students complete the FAFSA but also ensure that they know where they’re going before high school graduation.”

Promoting FAFSA completion and subsequent matriculation is becoming a priority in more and more states. Encouraging K-12 districts and schools, charter networks, and other community partners to expand their FAFSA completion programming is a key part of driving these FAFSA completion increases, and these stakeholders’ roles will be even more critical during this academic year given the forthcoming Better FAFSA.

The aforementioned The 74 piece on the Connecticut FAFSA Challenge concludes in part, “We challenge other states across the country to make FAFSA completion a core component of their education and economic recovery efforts. Connecticut’s approach is customized to its needs, but also highly replicable.” NCAN concurs. Connecticut’s approach and the pieces to make it work are very replicable. What it takes is the partners and the will to take on such an approach and adopt or adapt it to another state’s context. NCAN looks forward to documenting additional states’ efforts in this area to challenge (pun completely intended) districts and schools to push beyond their current FAFSA completion rates.

Read More:

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Reading time: Seven minutes

Technologies like chatbots and texting platforms have the power to inform, serve, and support students at scale — both for completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and improving other student success outcomes. This was the big takeaway from “FAFSA and Beyond: Policies and Programming that Use Technology to Support Students at Scale,” a webinar held August 3, 2023. With the rollout of the Better FAFSA this fall amid ongoing college affordability challenges, states, school systems, and college access organizations can learn from the panelists' success leveraging these technologies.

The webinar was hosted by Mainstay, who partners with more than 200 organizations across the country — like the Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC) and Georgia State University. The recording is available here on demand.

Panelists for the webinar include the author and:

• Sarah Weiss, Director of College Access, WSAC
• Tobi Kinsell, Chief Impact Officer, College Advising Corps (CAC)
• Corey Edwards, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Mainstay

All three organizations are National College Attainment Network (NCAN) members.

Both WSAC and CAC offer interesting use cases about supporting students with technology.

Washington Student Achievement Council

Sarah Weiss, Director of College Access Initiatives at WSAC, set some context by explaining that Washington State has one of the largest and most generous state financial aid programs in the country with the Washington College Grant. The grant is an entitlement program for eligible students that covers public tuition for many learners from low and middle incomes and is prorated for students at higher levels of median income. Washington also has the College Bound Scholarship, which increases early awareness and sets students on a path to college. All students eligible for free- and reduced-price meals in 7th or 8th grade, or who are newly-eligible for 9th grade, are automatically enrolled in the College Bound Commitment program.

“It's a very generous financial aid program amongst Pell at the federal level and other state financial aid programs,” explained Weiss. “But we were seeing this paradox in that we have this fantastic opportunity for students in Washington State…that those of us in my team get so excited about [but] we were seeing FAFSA completion rates not be where we want them to be.” As of July 28, Washington’s class of 2023 seniors has a 42.4% FAFSA completion rate, good for 47^th nationally, according to NCAN's FAFSA Tracker.

“We wanted to really focus on how we can support students accessing the aid that they're eligible for. There are 40,000 college-bound students every year, and we're seeing these low financial aid completion rates,” noted Weiss. Because of the College Bound enrollment, WSAC has access to students’ information information and can get contact information from their schools. Putting that data to work is where OtterBot came in.

OtterBot is a free texting service that supports all Washington high school students and their parents/guardians. It is designed for seniors and juniors who are enrolled with College Bound. WSAC partnered with Mainstay to launch OtterBot in 2019. According to Weiss, OtterBot communicates with roughly 50% of College Bound Scholarship students, and a recently-launched parent bot expanded communication to parents of high school juniors and seniors. OtterBot currently has an engagement rate over 80%, with 86% of students and parents finding the bot helpful.

“...OtterBot [is] part of a larger strategy that we’re continuing to work on,” added Weiss.

WSAC has seen promising initial success with OtterBot. Students who engage with the bot have FAFSA completion rates 5% higher than those who didn’t respond, and 7% higher than those who didn’t receive OtterBot messages at all.

A generous grant from the Capital One Foundation in 2022 allowed WSAC, in partnership with MDRC, to expand, evaluate, and optimize OtterBot. “We're right in the heart of that work now, looking at how we can better understand: ‘Is OtterBot supporting students equitably? Are we supporting students furthest from educational opportunities? Are we missing out on supporting certain students and families? How does different language come into things?’ ”

Through this evaluation, WSAC learned that its regional partnerships are foundational to increasing financial aid completion and postsecondary enrollment. Washington also recently initiated “Regional Challenge Grants,” which the legislature added more than $16 million over the next two years in the 2023 legislative session. WSAC administers this grant and supports the regional partners in their work. There are two types of Regional Challenge Grants. One supports the implementation of existing work, and the other forms partnerships in areas where this work is just beginning. WSAC is considering how to integrate OtterBot into these regional partnerships in a way that best supports individual communities.

College Advising Corps

Since 2005, College Advising Corps has been transforming the college-going culture in high schools nationwide. Through partnerships with 31 universities across 15 states, CAC deploys teams of recent college grads to provide hands-on guidance to high school students on their higher education journeys. With a force of around 800 near-peer advisors, CAC now reaches approximately 200,000 students annually.

“We're doing a lot of work at scale, and our model historically has been one that placed in-school advisors in schools to work with students, but over the last eight to ten years we've been piloting different virtual advising and hybrid advising programs, and in 2020 started working in artificial intelligence,” explained Kinsell.

In 2020, when the pandemic hit, CAC partnered with Mainstay and the Common App to launch an AI-powered chatbot to support students through their college enrollment journey. “Being a part of that pilot, which was a unique model, we began to see the value that artificial intelligence and chatbots can bring to college advising,” adds Kinsell.

In 2021, CAC began to think about how they could use chatbots to support in-school advisors. CAC launched a very small pilot program in North Carolina in the spring of 2021 focused on FAFSA completion. They continued that pilot for the entire 2021-22 academic year in North Carolina and in Atlanta, GA. The results were impressive: After a year, CAC found that students who received chatbot messages completed the FAFSA at a rate of almost 70% versus 50% for students who did not receive any chatbot messages.

“We were really excited to see those numbers after our first year,” recalled Kinsell. “We wondered this year if we would see the same impact or if it was an anomaly, but very recently we conducted the analysis and found that in the second academic year of implementation, 74% of students who received messages from the chatbot completed the FAFSA versus 41% of students who did not receive messages. These were students from the same schools…so we feel that we're seeing a really positive trend around the impact of chatbots and their use.”

FAFSA completion isn’t the only area where students who used chatbots outperformed those who did not. CAC also examined their other organizational key performance indicators (KPIs) for both groups of students and found that those who received chatbot messages also scheduled more one-on-one meetings with advisors and submitted college applications at a higher rate.

“We are seeing higher KPIs for all students who receive those chatbot messages,” explained Kinsell, who added, “We would attribute that very closely to the impact of reminders because one of the value-adds we see from the chatbot is that it is constantly reminding students about those key steps they need to complete to get to college or postsecondary enrollment.”

Beyond chatbots, CAC conducted a longitudinal study in partnership with UNC-Chapel Hill that examined the impact of in-school advising on FAFSA completion from 2017 to 2021. They found that having an in-school advisor resulted in higher FAFSA submission rates, increased FAFSA completion, and earlier submissions. “We are really excited. The synergy we have between in-school advisors and artificial intelligence is one that we definitely want to continue,” concluded Kinsell.

If you’re interested in exploring this topic in-depth, Mainstay has more information about the research behind its platform, the evidence of its efficacy, and its partnerships with organizations like WSAC and CAC.

Human advising paired with scalable technology offers immense potential to expand college access and attainment. The approach harnesses their respective strengths — with advisors providing personalized guidance and human connection and technology offering real-time support at scale.

With more students needing assistance than advisors available, this collaborative model bridges the gap. Advisors empower individuals. Technology democratizes help. Both are essential to meet all students where they are and guide them to and through college.

It's important to remember that FAFSA isn’t the only time students need support. Chatbots can provide guidance across the entire student journey. Before FAFSA, they can be used to build college knowledge and increase self-efficacy. Post-FAFSA, chatbots can help prevent summer melt and provide student support that increases the likelihood of them persisting in their higher education journey.

NCAN will continue to seek out and share successful strategies for supporting students at-scale. Thank you again to Mainstay, the Washington Student Achievement Council, and the College Advising Corps for their membership and knowledge sharing in this important webinar!

Read More:

• Commentary: Idaho Hosted Its First Statewide FAFSA Summit; Your State Should, Too
• NCAN Consulting Services is Here to Help
• Scholarship Programs Can Achieve More Equitable Outcomes

Reading time: Five minutes

More than two-dozen stakeholders connected with students’ college and career readiness pathways convened in Boise on March 14 for the Gem State’s first-ever statewide FAFSA Summit. The full-day event represented a concerted effort by the Idaho State Board of Education to identify barriers to FAFSA completion and opportunities for closing historic gaps in performance.

School counselors, admissions staff, college access professionals from community-based organizations, financial aid staff at Idaho colleges and universities, TRIO staff, representatives from the state’s workforce development council, and state GEAR UP personnel were just some of the more than two dozen attendees.

Idaho is in an interesting place regarding FAFSA completion and postsecondary outcomes writ large. Idaho was the first state with direct admissions and has a robust state-driven college and career readiness campaign, but unfortunately has ranked in the mid-40s by percentage of high school seniors completing over the past five FAFSA cycles (notably, Idaho is not the only Western state to face FAFSA completion headwinds). In more positive news, FAFSA completions are up 6.5% through early March for the class of 2023, good for 13^th nationally.

NCAN is pleased to be able to partner with the Idaho State Board of Education through the Postsecondary Pathways Project. Jenni Kimball, College and Career Advising Manager at the State Board, was one of the event’s organizers. Mallory Essman, one of the National College Attainment Network's (NCAN) College and Career Readiness Fellows through the same endeavor, was the event’s other organizer. I was honored to be asked to present at the Summit on FAFSA completion trends in Idaho and beyond and to share some insights about what other states are trying to do to drive FAFSA completion.

The Summit’s agenda likely provides a good model for other states out there who are interested in hosting a similar event:

• 8:00 - 8:30 AM: Light Breakfast and Check-in
• 8:30 - 9:00 AM: Welcome & Introductions
• 9:00 - 10:00 AM: Presentation: "FAFSA Completion in Idaho" by Bill DeBaun, NCAN
• 10:00 - 10:15 AM: Break
• 10:15 - 10:45 AM: Debrief and Discussion
• 10:45 AM - 12:00 PM: Asset Mapping
• 12:00 - 12:45 PM: Lunch
• 12:45 - 2:00 PM: Barriers, Gaps, and Opportunities
• 2:00 - 2:15 PM: Break
• 2:15 - 2:45 PM: Working-Group Action Plan and Next Steps
• 2:45 - 3:00 PM: Wrap Up and Closing

I put this agenda here because, to be very clear, I think states should be interested in hosting a similar event. The energy in the room, the exchange (and generation) of new ideas, and the obvious relationship-building that occurred over the course of seven hours strikes me as invaluable for Idaho’s college and career readiness ecosystem, and I expect this event to pay dividends down the line. Developing this kind of connective tissue between stakeholders from the K12, higher education, and nonprofit sectors is at the heart of the systems change work NCAN is engaged in via our strategic plan, and it was wonderful to see an in-person version of it in practice.

The debrief on the data I presented asked each table to consider and discuss their reactions to the data as well as questions about and opportunities for increasing FAFSA completion. This was interesting and opened up the conversation to larger discussions about the root causes of FAFSA completion difficulties in Idaho, the implications of the forthcoming Better FAFSA, and more.

The asset mapping is the point at which the Summit really turned tactical: what did the assembled stakeholders think were the available resources that contributed to FAFSA completion? The team used Slido to create an interactive word cloud and then spent much of the rest of this session exploring the implications of those resources. This is an important piece for most states to undertake, not just to name the different resources students use for FAFSA completion but also to understand the connections between them. Indeed, those connections were a key theme for the Summit generally.

The post-lunch session focused on barriers, gaps, and opportunities for FAFSA completion. Admittedly, by the time Jenni Kimball hit the 3rd sheet of oversized Post-It notes full of barriers, it was starting to feel a little grim. There are a lot of things that can derail students’ FAFSA completion progress! But attendees did a great job identifying the full range of challenges, from the micro: “they don’t understand grant aid” to the macro: “families don’t trust the federal government.” A valuable exercise in this segment was to ask attendees to identify which challenges they felt were in their collective locus of control. After all, some challenges are addressable by practice. Some are going to feel more unconquerable no matter the approach.

The last segment of the day was also the most tactical. Gathering suggestions for practices and next steps from across the day, the Summit’s organizers asked attendees to vote for their two most valuable next steps by arranging jumbo Post-It’s around the room. The four action items receiving the most votes were:

• Coordinating a statewide FAFSA completion task force.
• Organizing a statewide calendar of FAFSA completion events to cover school districts, postsecondary institutions, and other venues.
• Developing a common financial aid presentation to be used statewide to ensure consistency of messaging across students and families.
• Creating a statewide FAFSA toolkit, a la Tennessee’s FAFSA Frenzy, to give district and school professionals a sense of how to run a FAFSA completion event and other facets of successful FAFSA completion campaigns.

To be frank, the Summit was one of the more edifying events in my time at NCAN. My descriptions above aren’t going to come close to doing justice to the richness of the conversations participants conducted and particularly not to the richness of the developing empathy in the conversations. To see colleges’ financial aid staff, for example, understanding the difficulties in helping students work through FAFSA verification, or to see college access program and college staff conversing about how they can better balance the burden to make sure more students’ needs are met. When NCAN talks about building relationships and trust between different sectors, these are exactly the kinds of conversations we mean.

I’m walking away from Idaho’s FAFSA Summit deeply convinced that every state should have one. Not just to talk about FAFSA completion, because indeed FAFSA completion should not be any state’s end-all, be-all goal, but to try to bridge the silos that have long-plagued the college access field. The kinds of connections you create sitting across a table are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to build across Zoom or email. The cost and time involved both increase with an in-person event like this. So, too, I feel could be the benefits that justify them.

Want to have or explore a similar FAFSA Summit in your state? I’d love to have that conversation and connect you to more who would, too. Reach out to me at debaunb@ncan.org!

Read More:

• Scholarship Programs Can Achieve More Equitable Outcomes
• Implementing Effective Workplace Learning Opportunities: Preparing Students & Employers for Success
• How To Engage Your Program Alumni in Career Advising

By Colette Hadley, Senior Director of Consulting Services 

Reading time: Two minutes

At the National College Attainment Network (NCAN), we find that scholarship providers that undertake a program assessment are often surprised to find that there are many ways to streamline operations and make greater impact for their students. Foundations can move away from a complex donor-driven scholarship program and expand their educational grant making to a postsecondary attainment initiative featuring strategic, needs-based scholarship awards supported by current and new donors. 

Sometimes we see that staff members managing scholarship programs are reluctant to educate and inform their current and prospective donors about what can be done to increase postsecondary attainment in their local region, why it matters, and about the opportunity to invest in local talent. Foundations generally excel at accommodating donors and are very willing to accept all sorts of scholarship selection criteria to land a donor. But to truly make impact, and to move towards a more equitable program for students, organizations have a responsibility to do better at educating their contributors with a proactive effort, not a reactive effort.   

Scholarship providers should ask themselves: “What are the guiding principles of our scholarship program – what is our goal?” “Do we want to move towards achieving more equitable outcomes?” If so, foundations can’t continue to blame donors for their shortcomings or continue to operate scholarship programs in a vacuum. 

Call on NCAN for help!

With targeted consulting assistance, foundations can transform scholarship programs into assets that measurably help targeted student populations, as well as attract more local individuals into the donor pipeline. NCAN provides expert advice and hands-on help to foundations and organizations across the country that are looking to assess and update their scholarship practices, secure new donors, build sustainable programs, and find the best ways to collect and benchmark their data. 

NCAN is the national industry leader in consulting with foundations on scholarship programs. We know your business and can help you bring out the best in your program. For questions and information contact Colette Hadley at hadley@ncan.org.

Read more:

• Fee-for-Service Consulting
   

Reading Time: 4 min.

Encouraging students to participate in workplace learning opportunities is an integral part of many career advising programs for college students. This is for a good reason – research indicates that student participation in workplace opportunities, specifically internships, are correlated with positive student outcomes post-graduation. Many organizations work closely with both students and employers in advance to make sure everyone is set up for success. Below are some tips NCAN members shared in a recent webinar for how and why they invest so much time up front to try to ensure a positive experience for everyone involved.  

Preparing Students for Success 

Some of the students with whom NCAN members work may not have had the experiences or community connections to prepare them for a workplace learning experience. Here are some of the ways NCAN programs prepare students for their workplace learning experience: 

• Help students understand the goals of the workplace learning experience so students make good use of their time with employers. The goals students will achieve include:
  • Understanding the wide variety of jobs and career paths that exist, some of which might never have been on their radar.
  • Broadening their networks and making connections for future support, internships or jobs.
  • Defining for themselves what the future holds and what success means e.g., a career ladder job, graduate school, etc.
• Some NCAN members have a written career development curriculum that helps prepare students for a workplace experience. The curriculum includes career advising basics such as resume writing, interviewing, and networking.
• Empower students to ask questions and exercise leadership skills. Help students see that it’s OK not to know everything at first – this is a learning experience and there are people who want to support them.
• Orient students to “commonly accepted” workplace norms and behaviors, some of which might not be familiar or comfortable depending on their cultural background and/or community traditions.
• Support social-emotional growth by assigning students to a specific career advisor with whom they can meet consistently and develop a relationship. This advisor then becomes the student’s go-to for both career advising and general/social-emotional support. Advisors can act as a sounding board to help students navigate uncomfortable work situations.

The NCAN members that invest time preparing and supporting their students for a successful experience, often develop long-term relationships with employers who appreciate the level of readiness with which these students arrive. 

Preparing Employers for Success 

NCAN members who invest time preparing students, also spend time readying employers to craft an experience that has value to the students and their organizations. Here are some of the strategies member programs use to prepare employers to work with their students: 

• Share information about the topics addressed with students during their preparation before working with the employer, as well as the modes through which the preparation takes place e.g., curriculum/topics, workshops, online modules/webinars etc. 
• Encourage employers to think about how they can create a culture that is safe, warm, welcoming, positive, and supportive of their students. This includes reminding employers that some students may be unfamiliar -- or even uncomfortable -- engaging in some common workplace behaviors because they do not align with those of their upbringing or community. 
• Making employers aware of some of the internal conflicts with which students might be grappling, such as impostor syndrome, and how this might impact a student’s career trajectory. Employers can help students manage and resolve these conflicts. 
• Provide employers with documents that include tips for working with students. 
• Conduct early and mid-season check-ins with employers to assess performance of students and the status of the program in general. 
• Offer suggestions to employers about the enrichment/supplemental activities they can offer to students including:
  • Career panels that showcase the various jobs, departments, experience levels within that company, 
  • Panels during which employees share their own career paths
  • One-on-one or group mentoring focused on mapping a career path.
  • When appropriate and relevant, encouraging mentors and supervisors to leverage their own professional networks to help students further their careers.
  • Employee-led workshops on subjects such as networking and network mapping, creating an effective profile and using LinkedIn, how to create your personal “brand”, and building social capital. 

To watch the entire webinar, Laying the Groundwork for Engaging Employers and Professionals in Career Advising, click here. 

This blog is part of NCAN’s Career Advising for College Students series, funded by the Scheidel Foundation. 

Read more:

• Helping Students Make the Most of A Campus-Based Career Center
• How To Engage Your Program Alumni in Career Advising
• Guided Pathways: Part of a Comprehensive Career Advising Strategy
• Why and How to Incorporate Earnings Data Into College Access Advising

Reading time: 3-4 min.

One element of providing career advising services to postsecondary students is engaging program alumni. This is because alumni can benefit from ongoing advising even after they graduate from college, can offer helpful insights into improving program operations, and may activate their own networks to provide additional resources to their program alma mater.

As part of NCAN’s Career Advising for College Students project funded by the Scheidel Foundation, NCAN interviewed several of our members about their work in this area. We also hosted a webinar on this topic with presenters from Chicago Scholars, iMentor, and KIPP Forward. This is a summary of what we learned.

Continue to Provide Services

NCAN members have a deep commitment to the success of the students they serve and articulated that they stand ready to provide services regardless of when a student officially “graduated” from their program. As Chicago Scholars likes to say, “Once a scholar, always a scholar.”

Some of the career advising services members continue to provide to their postsecondary alums include:

• Ongoing networking opportunities so alums can connect and cultivate community, social capital, and their personal support systems.
• Access to job opportunities, career fairs, and career mentoring. These opportunities may be posted on an alumni-specific area of a member’s website.
• Advice to help alumni articulate and refine their personal brand through resume writing and LinkedIn profile building/improvement.
• General career advising services, which may be provided by the program itself or through partner organizations.
• Mental health and wellness supports, which are in high demand.

Work with Current Postsecondary Students

Program alumni are a great source of knowledge and opportunities for current students, in part because they are relatable role models. Some of the ways alumni engage with current students include:

• Participation in career panels during which current students can learn more about a specific career or organization. This type of opportunity also helps hone the public speaking and other professional skills of program alums.
• Acting as mentors, career coaches, and advisers, as well as offering informational interviews for current college students.
• Designing and delivering programming that is entirely alumni-driven, in addition to regularly planned advising activities.

Involve Alumni at the Organizational Level

Some programs involve alumni in the general operation of the organization. For example:

• Several programs engage alumni as full voting members of their board of directors.
• Some alums are involved in efforts to recruit both new students and corporate partners to the program.
• Alumni may provide input on program and service improvement.
• Alumni may be actively involved in fundraising efforts through general donations and donations targeted toward student scholarships.

Track Alumni and Program Outcomes

For some organizations, a reason to engage alumni is to try to gauge the overall success of their program.

Staying in touch with alums and encouraging them to read newsletters, open emails, and respond to surveys about their current whereabouts can be challenging. Open rates for and responses to emails can be low, so some programs provide incentives, such as gift cards, to encourage alumni to open email newsletters and surveys.

Members are eager to share information and opportunities for engagement with alumni. They are also eager to collect their contact information, employment status, income level, and interest in being engaged with the program. Our members know that even with all the support they are providing to college students, there are still many barriers these students may face upon graduation. The supports our members design for their alumni are to help them navigate those obstacles and navigate the path to a satisfying career.

Engaging alumni is time-consuming work. But the payoff, according to NCAN members already doing this work, is worth it. To learn more about how NCAN members are engaging alumni in career advising, you can review the recording of this webinar by visiting the NCAN webinar archives and selecting the June 8, 2022 recording (an NCAN member login is required).

Read More:

• Guided Pathways: Part of a Comprehensive Career Advising Strategy
• Why and How to Incorporate Earnings Data Into College Access Advising
• Career Advising for College Students: Getting Started
• NCAN E-Learning Course: Career Advising

Reading time: 6 min.

In the midst of uncertainty and unprecedented isolation, a group of college access practitioners established a small community of support known as the "Directors Circle." The Directors Circle served as a safe space for college access and success program directors seeking support and guidance during the pandemic.

The Circle consisted of three program directors from different college access organizations in the Bay Area: First Graduate, Scholar Match, and College Track. At the time, each director faced unique challenges in serving their students as their environment was shifting from in-person programming into a reality of virtual learning and engagement.

"You know, I was getting pretty burned out on Zoom and on webinars," said Eric Guico, First Graduate’s program director. "I also thought many of the webinars did not go as deep into the material as I wanted because they were one-hour sessions aimed at getting people of a wide range of experience levels the fundamentals of the topic. I wanted a place where I can engage in deeper conversations with a few people rather than listening to a series of speakers."

While the Directors Circle meetings were informal, they enabled the participants to discuss daily challenges associated with their work as well as bright spots they experienced in the field. The meetings also created space for the participants to holistically support one another as they made critical decisions about their professional and personal lives.

For three months, the Directors Circle met virtually to discuss topics and issues centered around:

• Ensuring students' needs were being met in a virtual environment.
• Shifting from in-person programming to a virtual format.
• Developing more equitable approaches to programming.
• Managing barriers to communication and staying connected in the workplace.
• Navigating internal and external struggles related to diversity, inclusion, and accessibility at the height of the pandemic.

Meagan Taylor, the previous program manager at Scholar Match, explained the impact these conversations had on her work: "In response to COVID-19 we had to quickly pivot to a virtual scholarship selection process. I was really grappling with how to make this equitable for students, particularly virtual interviews. This group helped me brainstorm supports to make the process accessible and comfortable for students, supports that stuck around even after in-person selection became an option again."

Members identified the following as benefits of participating in the Directors Circle:

• Having the ability to connect with others outside of your immediate organization at the same professional level. This allowed individuals to be fully candid about their experiences while feeling a sense of camaraderie around shared struggles.
• Engaging in a space where resources and ideas can be developed and shared to improve college access and success for all students in their local community.
• Receiving thoughtful and critical feedback about new program ideas and initiatives to help boost student engagement and advising during and after the pandemic.
• Establishing a support network of individuals who are passionate about creating more equitable postsecondary pathways for students while cultivating organic friendships that extend beyond formal professional ties.

"The Directors Circle offered me a rare kind of compassionate witnessing and understanding. Others in the Circle intimately knew the mission, challenges, and success of college success and access work, yet their distance from my particular day-to-day allowed them to spot opportunities within my own work with fresh eyes," said Jessica Samples, the previous senior college completion director at College Track San Francisco.

Expanding the Circle to Other Professionals in the Community

The success of the Directors Circle ultimately laid the groundwork and inspiration for a peer mentoring pod pilot program recently launched by the Bay Area College Success Network (CSN). The Bay Area CSN is a coalition of organizations committed to broadening postsecondary access and success for youth from low-income backgrounds and those who are first-generation to college.

After learning about the Circle's success from Guico, the Bay Area CSN developed a six-month pilot program to offer informal, peer-mentoring pod groups to their members starting in January 2022 and lasting through July 2022. Outreach and advertisement for the program began in October 2021. The Bay Area CSN began accepting applications shortly after to participate. There were no formal requirements other than an individual’s interest and willingness to meet monthly with their pod.

In late January, the Bay Area CSN assigned individuals to their respective pods based on shared interests and professional titles (advisers, direct-service staff, program directors, etc.).  At their first meeting, each pod established a set of shared community agreements. Some of the shared community agreements were focused on confidentiality, remaining present in the moment, and staying committed to creating a safe space for all pod members. At their monthly meetings, the pods have complete autonomy over the topics they want to discuss.

The Bay Area CSN has high hopes that the peer mentoring pods will help increase engagement and connection among members. They have expressed the following goals for the pods:

• Increase professional development and best-practice sharing among members.
• Improve retention in the field by building strong relationships and partnerships among like-minded practitioners.
• Strengthen engagement in Bay Area CSN activities and events.

"At the end of the program, it would be great to see enthusiasm for a second or third go-around to build off of the growth and connecting that has already taken place," said Guico.

We asked the Director’s Circle members to share any advice for other organizations and individuals seeking to build community with same-level professionals in their area. Samples emphasized that "time must be invested into creating a container of confidentiality, brave space, and personal connect[ion] early-on in the process."

Other suggestions and insights offered during a recent interview include:

• Be eager and open to learning about new perspectives from others in your field. Others can provide fresh ideas and approaches to work that you may not have considered before.
• Step into vulnerability and seek feedback for new and old ideas. Feedback is a critical part of growing as professionals in this field.
• Bring a relational lens into all conversations and build a sense of trust early on. Once that is established, individuals can be more accepting of feedback and engage in discussions with more ease.
• Keep peer-mentoring pods or circles small. The ideal number of people for each group is three or four because this size allows for a diversity of perspectives and fruitful brainstorming. A larger group may cause disengagement from members and overshadowing of voices that would like to be, and should be, heard.

NCAN is excited to see the development of these peer mentoring pods; it has been a unique source of collaboration, best-practices sharing, and socio-emotional support for practitioners in the college access field. We will share updates on the progress and outcomes of the Bay Area’s CSN’s peer mentoring pods, as we believe this approach to professional development can be transformative for the wider college access community.

Read More:

• 5 Resources to Build Your Mental Wellness Toolkit
• NCAN e-learning course: 5 Skills for Multiculturally Competent Advisors 2021-22

Reading time: 3 min.

(Photo by fauxels from Pexels)

NCAN member Earn to Learn, based in Tucson, Arizona, provides an awesome example of the power of partnerships for our students.

Founded in 2013 by CEO Kate Hoffman, Earn to Learn’s mission is to empower students to achieve their goals and be workforce ready with little to no student debt. After working in the financial services sector, Hoffman was driven by the skyrocketing cost of college to support low-to-moderate income (LMI) students striving to attain a postsecondary education.

Hoffman facilitated a collaboration between Arizona’s public universities, community colleges, high schools, and financial service providers to launch Earn to Learn. Here’s how it works: Students who qualify based on income deposit $500 into a savings account each year. Those funds are then matched 8:1 through university support and other public and philanthropic funding, bringing the total award to $4,500. Now, Earn to Learn operates one of the largest and most successful matched savings programs in the United States.

Kate Hoffman, Earn to Learn Founder and CEO

How did Earn to Learn use its success to go from great to even greater?

Enter the Arizona State Treasurer’s Office (ASTO). After administration of Arizona’s 529 program (AZ559) moved to ASTO, this created the opportunity for Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee to consider a possibility: partnering with Earn to Learn to replicate the matched-savings model on the 529 program.

Both parties agreed on the following key components, which are similar to the policy design elements that must be present to deliver children’s savings accounts (CSAs) at scale.

Enrolling low-to-moderate income students on the 529 platform:

• Provides an opportunity to potentially serve a much larger number of students in Arizona (LMI families historically tend to not open 529s).
• Provides an opportunity to educate LMI families about saving for college by utilizing a 529 account (they may have never heard of a 529 account, or if they had heard of the 529 account, they may have assumed it wasn’t a tool for them).
• Provides an opportunity to create a deeper understanding of banking for those potential participants who may be unbanked or underbanked.
• Creates the opportunity to raise the overall level of understanding about the complexity of financing higher education.
• Expands the outreach to economically disadvantaged families to encourage postsecondary pathways and student success.
• Provides an additional opportunity for financial capability training in Arizona at scale.

In 2021, Earn to Learn and AZ529 joined forces, becoming the first partnership of its kind in the nation.

A great partnership comes with some challenges. Legal review of new processes can take time. If you are considering a similar partnership in your state, be prepared with FAQs ready to share with students and parents. Each state differs in how it administers its 529 program, so specificity is important.

Starting this fall, Earn to Learn will pilot opening accounts on the 529 platform. This includes a signed agreement between Earn to Learn and ASTO, which outlines roles and responsibilities, including data sharing.

Inspired by this partnership? Learn more about CSA programs, 529s, and learnings from state treasurers who run some exemplar programs.

Read More:

• NCAN topic page: CSA basics
• 6 Reasons to Unite Child Savings Accounts and College Access-Success Programs
• Prosperity Now's interactive national map of CSAs

Reading time: 6 min.

A joint venture between the state of Delaware and the United Way of Delaware is providing free personal finance coaching and empowerment services, including many related to college and career readiness, to Delaware residents. The initiative’s formal name is the Delaware Financial Empowerment Partnership (DFEP), but it’s better known publicly as Stand By Me.

Since 2013, Stand By Me’s NextGen College Funding Project (CFP) has provided comprehensive, wraparound financial literacy services and Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) support to nearly every high school in Delaware. Currently, CFP serves 43 schools. CFP was ushered into high schools to respond to statewide goals to increase both FAFSA completion rates and the number of students enrolling in postsecondary institutions.

CFP is a school-based program that provides financial aid information, resources, and direct assistance to high school juniors and seniors and their families. In addition, CFP offers professional development assistance and opportunities for school counselors and college advising staff. CFP staff members are trained experts in financial literacy education and financial aid.

CFP staff members provide a range of services and resources to schools. Participating schools can select from various CFP services to supplement their existing programs based on their needs and interests. Some of the items featured on CFP’s menu of services include:

• Financial Aid Presentations: CFP offers several presentations for juniors and seniors. Typically, CFP staff facilitate presentations both in person and virtually at the request of individual schools. However, since COVID, presentations are offered virtually on a weekly, come-one-come-all basis. Presentations run about 45-60 minutes.
• Grade 12: Paying for College – Provides an overview of the many options available to students and families to fund a college education. Topics covered in the presentation include FAFSA procedures, scholarships application processes, grants, and federal loan programs.
• Grade 12: Scholarship Presentation – Covers state, national, and private scholarship opportunities available to high school seniors. Students and families receive guidance on how to navigate the scholarship application process.
• Grade 11: Paying for College – Helps prepare juniors and families for completing the FAFSA in their senior year. Facilitators discuss the ins and outs of securing financial aid for college, including the FAFSA, scholarships, grants, and loans.
• FAFSA Walkthrough – Provides step-by-step instructions for completing the FAFSA. This walkthrough aims to familiarize students and families with the FAFSA. If students or families need further guidance, they can schedule an appointment with a CFP staff member.
• FAFSA Completion Appointments – Students and families receive one-on-one assistance from a CFP financial aid expert to complete the FAFSA. The hourlong appointments, acquired via a well-published link to Acuity, are conducted via Zoom. Appointments are also available in Spanish.
• FAFSA Workshops – Schoolwide events to promote financial empowerment, education, and awareness to high school students and their families.

CFP also offers an extensive list of online resources for families, students, and educators. Some resources featured on their website include:

• FAFSA Myths for Parents
  • Spanish version
• Completing the FAFSA Step-by-Step Guide
  • Spanish version
• College Funding Workshops Menu For Educators
• FSA ID Cards

"Since 2013, FAFSA completion rates in Delaware have risen from 46% to 64% due to SBM NG’s intervention and the willingness of school personnel to engage with our team," said Sally Coonin, the director of NexGen Programs, "FAFSA has become a familiar concept over the years as a result."

While the CFP team only provides services to juniors and seniors at this time, their colleagues on the NextGen College, Careers, and Cash (CCC) team host in-school financial empowerment and literacy instruction for freshmen and sophomores.

The CCC program offers two custom-designed curricula (each three hours long) to participating Delaware high schools: "CCC: Explore for 9th grade" and "CCC: Envision for 10th." "Envision" may be used in other grades, as school needs dictate. The curricula consist of interactive and engaging classroom workshops on understanding the connection between fruitful career and financial decisions, developing an early awareness of financial aid, and managing money to support lifestyle goals.

Since 2018, 26 schools statewide have used the CCC curricula, which has impacted over 11,000 Delaware high school students.

Cory Dunt, program manager for CCC, explained the impact of the program: "CCC allows students to begin making postsecondary decisions based on data, not just on a whim, as early as 9th grade. When they are researching a career of interest in CCC, and they see what the entry-level educational requirements are, they can begin charting the rest of their high school career to guide them to where they need to be, instead of waiting until senior year to make a hasty, uninformed decision."

We asked CFP staff members to share any advice for others seeking to build and sustain partnerships with the state, community organizations, and school communities to do this work effectively.

Coonin emphasized: "There is value and importance in knowing your school community. You have to get a sense of what their needs are. Don’t assume that you know what a school needs." She continued, "Go in with a partnership mindset. At the heart of this work is relationships. You have to spend time building trust and authentic relationships with school and district level champions to maximize the impact of the services."

Candace Powell Kinard, the program facilitator, coordinator, certified financial educator for NexGen Programs, illuminated the need for states to evaluate their postsecondary planning practices and outcomes. "There may be a lot happening in your state that you are not aware of, and some may be successful and others may not. States have to establish a strong understanding of the data available to set a baseline of metrics and standards."

Other insights and lessons learned from CFP staff during a recent interview include:

• Training is invaluable. Individuals providing financial aid assistance must have an expert-level understanding of the FAFSA to provide exceptional support and guidance to students and families.
  • Professionals must be open to participating in ongoing training and remaining flexible to the changes and challenges that arise when navigating the FAFSA application process.
• Enlist local college financial aid professionals as partners to provide one-on-one support and guidance to families and students during workshops, presentations, and other FAFSA-related events. SBM NG offers its FA partners a small stipend for their engagement. Their knowledge and commitment are invaluable.
• Funding is key to expanding these opportunities and resources to school communities. States and funders must dedicate money to ensure that the services are high-quality and sustainable. The best funders understand the importance of returning resources to the state in the form of educated youth as well as Pell Grant funding.

NCAN looks forward to following along with the NextGen CFP and commends the team there for their commitment to providing high-quality FAFSA completion services.

Read More:

• NCAN's FAFSA Resource Library
• Broward County Helpline Provides New Model for FAFSA Completion Assistance
• Student-Level FAFSA Data Policies by State

Reading time: 5 min.

Members, partners, and friends of NCAN know that COVID-19 has thrown immense hurdles in the paths of students striving to transition from high school to college.

Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, these challenges have not been equally distributed. Amid the economic, health, and other impacts caused by the pandemic, students of color and students from low-income backgrounds are experiencing the largest declines in  Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion and postsecondary enrollment.

In response to these disruptions, NCAN awarded 23 grants, totaling $1.6 million, to college access and success organizations across the country who are going above and beyond this spring and summer to support students with FAFSA completion as well as college enrollment and persistence. These grants were made possible thanks to the generous support of  The Kresge Foundation’s Education Program.

Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be sharing the grantees’ creative strategies for helping their students transition to college and experience success once there. We’ll also explore how these organizations are maximizing partnerships, some of the challenges they’ve faced, and how they are gauging success.

This week we’re learning from the Springfield Public Schools, which received funding to enhance its college and career advising efforts through, among other strategies, peer mentoring and improving postsecondary relationships.

The Springfield Public Schools (SPS) are located in Western Massachusetts. This urban district enrolls about 26,000 students across 61 schools. About 80% of those students are economically disadvantaged; about two-thirds are Hispanic and nearly 20% are Black.

Springfield has a strong commitment to closing equity gaps in postsecondary outcomes, and over the past two years was an enthusiastic participant in the NCAN-led To & Through Advising Challenge. The district has been making significant efforts to change practice to better serve students.

SPS is focusing its grant on four specific strategies:

• Targeting students for help using a senior exit survey to understand who did and did not have postsecondary plans and target students for assistance with additional planning where needed.
• Data sharing with the local community college because that institution is the top destination for SPS students and partnership can help SPS to verify enrollment.
• Tracking milestones to monitor weekly progress to understand enrollment goals and identify gaps.
• Engaging peer mentors who provide student outreach support that can bridge relationships with current students and ultimately support their enrollment.

Dr. Yolanda Johnson, Springfield Public Schools’ executive officer for student services, noted that the district chose these strategies because of the ease with which they could be implemented and their connection to the district’s goals of supporting students.

To ramp up these activities, SPS verified students’ contact info before the close of the school year so that students could be more easily reached through the Signal Vine text messaging platform, social media, and email. SPS also alerted students that outreach activities would be available over the summer.

During the summer, the district began its action steps and summer melt prevention activities to promote a seamless postsecondary transition process that is being guided by intentional data monitoring.

SPS isn’t going it alone with these activities. Many of the supports students are receiving are built on relationships with community-based organizations, neighborhood housing organizations, community leaders, parent groups, and faith communities. Additionally, the district is working with the top six colleges attended by Springfield students (via National Student Clearinghouse data); the district has weekly check-ins with the colleges that use data to verify that students are following through with the enrollment process. SPS views all of these relationships as building a collaborative model that is identifying definitive resources for students and advancing supports around concrete goals and data.

Unsurprisingly, there have been some challenges in getting this work going. Dr. Johnson identified finding meeting and planning time and fully engaging students over the summer as obstacles. The continuing difficulty around engaging is a sign of the pandemic’s impact.

Dr. Johnson takes a more hopeful perspective on what these challenges are teaching the district. She notes:

“While there are challenges, we are learning how to serve our students now and beyond. We are learning a lot in this process. We see this as an opportunity that unfortunately took a pandemic to reveal our ‘flaws’ as a district and the ‘flaws’ of the colleges. Our collective ‘flaws’ are opportunities to strengthen how we serve students throughout the school year including the summer.”

In terms of advice for NCAN members and other communities who want to emulate some of these approaches, SPS suggested recently via email:

“Get data agreements where the majority of students are matriculating to college and get confirmation to meet. It’s important that the colleges recognize that they must re-think their strategies around student success and innovate what they are providing. The faith community is especially a critical outreach factor, as they have influence on families in ways that the school system does not.”

Longtime NCAN readers may remember that this blog previously highlighted SPS’ efforts related to fit and match advising and summer melt prevention.

NCAN is grateful for the insight here from Springfield Public Schools, and we will continue to follow along with the intensive efforts they are making to improve their students’ postsecondary outcomes.

Stay tuned to the NCAN blog for more from the 23 grantees working to improve students’ futures.

Read More:

• NCAN's K-12 College & Career Readiness Calendar
• Milwaukee Public Schools Offers Roadmap for Engaging Classes of 2020 and 2021
• CA Next Maximizes Partnerships, Student Connections to Keep K-12 to Postsecondary Pipeline Flowing

Reading time: 4 min.

Anyone paying attention to NCAN’s blog in recent months knows we think that the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding included in the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and other stimulus legislation is a critical opportunity to invest in students’ postsecondary pathways.

As important as we think districts and schools using stimulus dollars for college and career readiness activities is, we haven’t seen a ton of evidence that this use is top of mind for states, districts, or schools.

Along with collaborators from leading educational organizations across the country, NCAN is pleased to share Invest Forward, a new effort to encourage district and state leaders to prioritize support for students' pathways to postsecondary and career success in their ARP spending plans.

High-quality postsecondary education and training is the ticket to long-term opportunity. Unfortunately, the pandemic has had an alarming impact on students’ transitions to postsecondary education and training.

The dramatic drops in direct higher education enrollment in fall 2020 — which were particularly severe among students of color and those from low-income families — are likely to persist as students and their families continue to feel the impact of COVID-19. In a time when nearly all jobs created since the 2008 recession require some type of learning beyond high school, this trend is dangerous not only for millions of students but for our economy and workforce as a whole.

By using ARP-ESSER funding to invest in students’ next steps, district and school leaders can help students to:

• Build college and career momentum early in high school.
• Acquire knowledge, experiences, and relationships necessary for career success.
• Earn college credit and/or stackable credentials before graduation.
• Directly enroll in postsecondary education or training programs that lead to credentials with labor market value.

As part of this effort, we’re working with leading experts from across the country to arm district and state leaders with high-impact strategies and shovel-ready investments to guide their investments in student pathways. A new website contains detailed how-to guides for 20 potential pathways investment strategies (and counting). These investment strategies include:

Build college and career momentum early in high school

• Keep students on track in 9th grade
• Ensure Algebra success with expanded support
• Expand postsecondary advising during the school day
• Communicate about key milestones on students’ pathways
• Leverage technology-enabled advising tools

Acquire knowledge, experience, and relationships necessary for career success

• Foster students’ purpose and career exploration
• Link college and career advising structures
• Scale pathways-connected work-based learning experiences
• Launch youth apprenticeship opportunities
• Develop near-peer advising support
• Link education and workforce data

Earn college credit and/or stackable credentials before graduation

• Expand equitable access to advanced courses
• Scale career-aligned dual enrollment pathways
• Incentivize high-value industry-recognized credentials (Coming Soon)
• Enable postsecondary credit through summer work (Coming Soon)

Directly enroll in postsecondary education or training programs that lead to credentials with labor market value

• Increase FAFSA completion
• Implement postsecondary match advising structures
• Implement 12th grade transition courses
• Track student postsecondary outcomes
• Use postsecondary data to drive targeted student support
• Freeze summer melt
• Build a college bridge program
• Create a direct admissions initiative
• Build an electronic portfolio transcript (Coming soon)

NCAN members will no doubt see a lot of familiar ideas and approaches in the list above. These are activities they are already doing, are planning to do, and may even have advised the districts and schools they work with on implementation. Each strategy discusses the steps to take for implementation and offers insight on budget considerations, among other topics.

Are you a district or state leader or do you have the contact information of one of the aforementioned individuals? The website also provides opportunities for these professionals to connect with peers and experts to plan for their pathways investments.

Make sure to sign up to hear about additional resources coming soon, including: 

• Research and evidence on promising practices to support students’ postsecondary pathways access and success.
• Spotlights on district and state spending plans that are prioritizing pathways investments.

There is an urgency to help students at every level of the education system. Given the leading indicators and postsecondary outcomes observed so far, that’s especially true about college and career readiness. The Invest Forward campaign will surely help districts, schools, and their community partners meet this moment.

Read More:

• How NCAN Members Can Leverage ARP Funds to Support Districts, Schools, and Students
• K-12 and CBOs Should Use Federal Funding to Spur Partnerships, Help Students
• NCAN's K-12 College and Career Readiness Calendar

Reading time: 2-3 min.

A recent NCAN webinar explored how NCAN members can, and should, approach K-12 districts and schools to assist them with college and career readiness activities and services. NCAN members can view the June 30 webinar in NCAN’s webinar archives. NCAN also proposed these partnerships in a previous blog post.

As part of the webinar, NCAN released a template letter for members to use in approaching potential K-12 partners.

Three pieces of federal legislation, including the American Rescue Plan (ARP), have established three Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds totaling more than $190 billion for funding recovery and renewal that can drive transformation and change nationally. Given that the federal government spends about $80 billion annually on elementary and secondary education, these funds represent a massive investment and commitment to students and schools.

School districts have “considerable flexibility” in how to obligate ESSER funds, and state departments of education do not have the authority to limit how they are used so long as districts observe a broad set of parameters.

The good news for community-based and nonprofit NCAN members is that an FAQ from the U.S. Department of Education specifically highlights work to support high school seniors, college and career transition activities, and summer programs run by “non-profit or community organizations” as allowable uses (see C-17, C-18, and C-25 in the link above).

In making the case for a partnership, community-based organizations should remind schools or districts that:

• NCAN members have the content (and technical) knowledge to quickly assist students and families with their most pressing milestones.
  • Many college access organizations have been delivering these services virtually for the past year.
• Working with a college access organization means that a district or school does not have to hire (or train) more specialized staff of its own to deliver services. District and school administrators who are worried about the sustainability of recovery-related staffing can put that worry aside by working through a partnership.
• Time is short. We are already in July, and students are making decisions now that will affect their potential fall matriculation. Immediate enrollment following high school graduation is associated with eventual completion. Students who fall off a postsecondary pathway now are at significant risk for never rejoining one.

On the webinar, Dr. Michele Scott Taylor, chief program officer at College Now Greater Cleveland, joined NCAN. Members would be well-served by viewing the webinar recording (at about the 35-minute mark) to hear her incredibly valuable insight from working with school districts in and around Cleveland, Ohio.

The ARP funds provide a valuable window for NCAN members to approach, and partner with, K-12 districts and schools. Now is the time to seize that moment.

👍👎 POLL: Has your organization talked with your school district(s) about using federal ARP/ESSER funds for postsecondary transition supports, including services your organization could provide?

Have questions or concerns about this topic? Contact one of the NCAN staff members below:

• Zenia Henderson, Director of Member and Partner Engagement
• Bill DeBaun, Director of Data and Evaluation
• MorraLee Keller Director of Technical Assistance
  
  

View the K-12 Partnership Template Letter

Read More:

• K-12 and CBOs Should Use Federal Funding to Spur Partnerships, Help Students
  
• FAFSA Completion Declines Nearly 5%; Nation Loses 270K FAFSAs Since 2019
• NCAN's K-12 College and Career Readiness Calendar

(Photo by Allison Shelley for EDUimages)

Reading time: 4 min.

(Note: This post was originally published June 3, 2021. As of June 1, 2022 it has been revised and updated.)

There are few more poignant moments than when students cross the stage and receive their high school diplomas. At that moment, families, district and school administrators, teachers, and everyone else who has helped the student get to this point see so much of their time and effort realized.

Borrowing a page from every commencement speech ever written, that K-12 culmination is also a new beginning and, for many, a new pathway toward college and/or career.

As students take their first steps toward that new pathway, do district and school personnel really know where their students are going? Unfortunately, the answer too often is “no” or “not really.”

Sure, most schools monitor acceptances and conduct senior exit surveys to better understand students’ post-high school plans, but that knowledge is too infrequently paired with practice that ensures students fulfill those plans.

NCAN often writes about summer melt (and publishes resources about the same). Summer melt is a phenomenon that affects 10-40% of high school students intending to matriculate to a postsecondary institution. We offer suggestions like making sure to measure summer melt, creating college transition checklists, building a summer melt program, and using our summer melt toolkit to be proactive.

One key practice left unconsidered was how to forge stronger connections between K-12 districts and school and the postsecondary institutions to which their students matriculate. When we talk about the “silos” between the K-12 and higher education sectors, what that looks like in practice is that districts and institutions don’t have consistent, meaningful, or productive contact that could benefit students. Existing connections might include scheduling tours for students to visit a campus or getting more posters for the counselors’ suite, but K-12 and higher ed need outreach to build deeper, sustained, less transactional relationships.

Our sense from talking with districts and schools across the country is that substantial proportions of their students matriculate to a handful of institutions, with a long tail of additional institutions getting one or just a few students each year. Our other sense, unfortunately, is that few districts and schools have close professional contact with the institutions welcoming most of their graduates. That lack of contact makes it so there is no formal hand-off of students, and they can fall through the cracks, or “melt” as described above.

Now is the time for school district administrators to look at their senior exit survey data or, even better, their previous National Student Clearinghouse StudentTracker data to see which combination of institutions comprises the largest proportion of students’ destinations. (By the way, summer is the best time to update your StudentTracker Graduates file so that it is ready to go when fall enrollment data become available).

Next, conduct outreach to those institutions, through the admissions or financial aid offices or student support services. See how district and college or university staff can work together to ease students’ transitions. Maybe that is as simple as the university co-creating or developing a college transition checklist (or reviewing an existing one for accuracy and making any needed additions). But maybe it’s a more intensive partnership that includes personalized outreach to students that can answer their matriculation questions. The possibilities are endless, but none of them will come to fruition without there being contact between K-12 and higher ed.

Summer is the right time to do this because both sectors know this is a perilous time of year in a particularly perilous moment for many students, and there is a concrete goal for both sides: making sure students achieve their postsecondary aspirations. Let’s break down the K-12/higher ed silo and forge the connections that can help students in the class of 2022 and beyond.

Read More:

• NCAN's Summer Melt Toolkit
• NCAN's K-12 College & Career Readiness Calendar
  
• Partnership for LA Schools Kicks Off Summer Melt Initiative; You Can, Too
• K-12 and CBOs Should Use Federal Funding to Spur Partnerships, Help Students

Reading time: 6 min.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress appropriated more than $190 billion in aid to K-12 education to provide relief, promote recovery, and prevent learning loss. Given that the federal government spends about $80 billion annually on elementary and secondary education, these funds represent a massive investment and commitment to students and schools.

They also represent a tremendous opportunity to provide students with support that can keep them on the pathway to postsecondary education. K-12 districts and schools are permitted to use these funds broadly (more on that in a moment), and NCAN’s strong desire and sincere hope is that many of these local education agencies will invest these funds in college and career readiness activities.

NCAN’s community-based organization and nonprofit members should make themselves readily available to fill in supports wherever possible.

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) released detailed guidance about using funds provided through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP) (see pages 22-23 specifically about allowable summer enrichment programs). ED also released this handy FAQ about the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund. Some key points from the FAQ:

• Districts and schools have “considerable flexibility” in how to obligate ESSER funds.
• State educational agencies (SEAs) do not have the authority to limit the uses of ESSER formula funds.
• A district may support any school in the district, or it may target funds based on poverty, indication of school needs, or other targeting measures.
• Funds can be used retroactively: an SEA, district, or school may use ESSER funds for any allowable expenditure incurred on or after March 13, 2020.

There is an extensive list of allowable uses of the recovery and relief funds. These include:

• Any activity currently authorized under ESEA, IDEA, AEFLA, Perkins, or McKinney-Vento.
• Providing principals and others school leaders with the resources necessary to address the needs of their individual schools.
• Addressing the unique needs of children or students from low-income backgrounds, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth, including outreach and service delivery.
• Planning and implementing activities related to summer learning and supplemental afterschool programs.

Probably the biggest takeaway here is that any use allowable for Title I spending is allowable here for the recovery and relief funding, which in and of itself greenlights a large swath of activities. That said, the list above is non-exhaustive (and contains way more allowable uses). For more on the legislation that created the ESSER funds, see the end of this post.

Other uses aside, partnering with community-based organizations to provide postsecondary readiness services to students clearly falls under the broad umbrella of allowable ways for districts and schools to obligate these funds.

Additionally, the ARP Act requires that districts and schools set aside 20% of their funds to address learning loss “through the implementation of evidence-based interventions, such as summer learning or summer enrichment, extended day, comprehensive afterschool programs, or extended school year programs, and ensure that such interventions respond to students’ academic, social, and emotional needs.” Summer melt and other college and career readiness activities would also fall into this bucket.

And because districts and schools can do it, NCAN strongly believes that they should.

Now is the time for districts and schools and college access programs to come together to fill in service gaps for students. The coronavirus’s impact on college access has been clear:

• FAFSA completions were down 4.2% for the class of 2020, a decrease of about 100,000 completions compared to the year before.
• Fall enrollment for the class of 2020 declined 6.8%, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, including even steeper declines in low-income and high-minority high schools.
• FAFSA completions for the class of 2021 are even bleaker than last year’s; as of April 30, completions are down 5.8% compared to last year, a difference of more than 110,000 completions.
• The number of first-generation students applying to college through the Common App is down three percentage points.
• 43% of first-generation students have now modified the number of schools they are applying to due to the pandemic. Nearly half of those students say their college plans are changing because they find it too difficult to focus on their future amid the pandemic. About one-third say it’s because they have been unable to connect to their school counselor for advice.

Partnering with an external organization makes sense for districts and schools right now for a few reasons:

• College access organizations have the content (and technical) knowledge (like postsecondary advising and how to complete a FAFSA) to quickly assist students and families with their most pressing milestones, and many college access organizations have been delivering these services virtually for the past year.
• Working with a college access organization means that a district or school does not have to hire (or train) more specialized staff of its own to deliver services. District and school administrators who are worried about the sustainability of recovery-related staffing can put that worry aside by working through a partnership.
• Time is of the essence. We are already in mid-May. Students are making decisions now that will affect their potential fall matriculation. Immediate enrollment following high school graduation is associated with eventual completion. Students who fall off a postsecondary pathway now are at significant risk for never rejoining one.

In short, NCAN members across the country are staffed, trained, and ready to help districts and schools fill in where they need extra support for students this summer (and beyond).

The data are clear, and disastrous, for students’ postsecondary outcomes. The class of 2020 saw significant enrollment declines, and without decisive action, the class of 2021 will experience the same. Congress has made the investment and created the opportunity to avert more damage to students’ futures. Now is the time for partnerships to be forged across the K-12 and nonprofit sectors to keep students’ postsecondary aspirations alive and ensure their matriculation in the fall.

Want to find an NCAN member to explore a partnership? Visit NCAN’s member directory or contact Zenia Henderson, director of member and partner engagement.

Additional Information on Congressional Relief and Recovery Funding

Since March 2020, Congress has established three Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Funds through legislation. These were contained in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act ($13.5 billion to ESSER-I), the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act ($54.3 billion to ESSER-II), and the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act ($122.7 billion to ESSER-III). Funds are awarded to state education agencies (SEAs), who pass them through to districts and schools. The funds are distributed based on existing ESEA Title I-A proportions.

For information on allowable uses of ESSER funds, see Section 18003(d) of the CARES Act, Section 313(d) of the CRRSA Act, and/or Section 2001(2)(e) of the ARP Act (in all cases search “elementary and secondary school emergency relief”).

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) has a breakdown of funds distributed to states and what each SEA’s spending priorities are for their 10% carveout.

SEAs, districts, and schools have considerable time to obligate funds under these federal programs:

• CARES: funds available through 9/30/22
• CRRSA: funds available through 9/30/23
• ARP: funds available through 9/30/24

Read More:

• What NCAN Members Need to Know About How the Government is Responding to COVID-19
• NCAN's K-12 College and Career Readiness Calendar
• There’s Still Time to Reignite College Aspirations for the Class of 2021 by Using American Rescue Plan Funding

Reading time: 5-6 min.

By Zenia Henderson, Director of Member & Partner Engagement

NCAN established the Success Replication Project, with the generous support of a Michael & Susan Dell Foundation grant, to help organizations ensure students they had served in high school complete postsecondary credentials. Over three years, 12 organizations set out to expand their student success services in their respective communities.

What we learned was a pretty clear formula for scaling success services, which we’ve outlined in a new four-paper series. Each paper offers a collection of case studies about several organizations that participated in the Success Replication Project. Ann Coles, senior fellow, uAspire, authored the papers.

This post is an excerpt from the third paper in the series, which outlines the steps four college access and success organizations took to build partnerships with colleges and universities. The featured organizations are:

• DC Prep, PrepNext (Washington, D.C.)
• Operation Jump Start (Long Beach, California)
• Project GRAD Houston, Aspiring Young Adults (Houston, Texas)
• Ready to Rise Tacoma, Degrees of Change (Tacoma, Washington)

NCAN would like to thank all of the individuals who took the time to share their experiences and expertise for these publications. NCAN is grateful to the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation for their support of the Success Replication Project.

Strategic partnerships between community-based college success programs and higher education institutions can play a critical role in students’ degree completion and workforce readiness. Developing such partnerships is not easy. However, when done with knowledge of the elements that make partnerships effective – namely a foundation of trust, mutual benefit, and mutual responsibility – they can significantly benefit college success programs and the students they serve.

Operation Jump Start – Long Beach, CA

Operation Jump Start (OJS) began partnering with California State University Long Beach (CSULB) in 2009 when OJS decided to expand its services by continuing to support students beyond high school. In need of additional staff capacity, OJS approached the CSULB School of Social Work about serving as a field internship site for students. Subsequently, OJS signed an affiliation agreement with CSULB outlining what they would provide interns, including the ways they would help interns develop social work competencies in prescribed areas (Attachment A.) OJS also agreed to engage a licensed clinical social worker to serve as the students’ field instructor and supervisor.

Since then, OJS’s college success program has been staffed by 10-12 CSULB graduate and undergraduate social work interns. The graduate student interns provide students with social and emotional support, which OJS considers critical to their college success. Interns work 16 hours a week and have an average caseload of 25 students, each of whom they support throughout the academic year. They check in with students every other week by phone, video chat, and/or text, offering support and help with problem-solving. The interns document their interactions with students in the OJS data management system, allowing for a relatively seamless transition for students to a new intern the following year. Undergraduate interns work for eight to 10 weeks. They help with data entry, manage phone calls, and support student events. Along with graduate interns, they also facilitate college success workshops for 11th and 12th graders. While the interns are not paid employees, they receive a stipend at the end of the year, lunches, and gift cards during the holidays.

OJS and CSULB benefit from their partnership in significant ways. OJS benefits by having near-peer advisers supervised by an experienced social worker to support their students. CSULB benefits by having an agency where students can participate in internships that give them experience with real-life clients and the opportunity to develop clinical and case-management skills. Most importantly, the social work interns provide students valuable assistance with meeting the challenges they face in college that OJS would not have the capacity to offer otherwise.

Project GRAD Houston – Houston, TX

Project GRAD Houston’s (PGH) higher education partnerships originated in the late 1990s. At that time, PGH awarded scholarships of up to $4,000 over four years to college-ready Houston public school graduates. Since Project GRAD Scholars were bringing thousands of dollars to local colleges, when PGH’s president asked these institutions to partner with them, their leaders readily agreed. While PGH ended the scholarship program in 2010 due to lack of funding, the partnerships continued.

Today, Project GRAD Houston partners with three metro area community colleges. PGH has an MOU called a “Partnership Agreement for Support Services” with each college spelling out what the partnership involves (Attachment B.) Houston Community College provides PGH free office space within its main administrative offices in exchange for PGH leaders serving as “in-house” consultants on issues related to first-generation students. Lone Star College and Lee College provide space for PGH’s GRADcafés, which offer free college and career information and advising to residents of the surrounding communities. In exchange, PGH conducts outreach to students referred to as stopouts from the partner institutions to encourage them to return to college.

The day-to-day work of PGH’s partnerships involves helping students enroll and persist in college. All students complete a Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) waiver before enrolling, permitting the colleges to share the names of students’ academic advisers and information about how they are doing with PGH. Houston Community College designates an academic adviser to serve as the liaison to PGH. This person provides PGH advisers with the information they need to stay on top of students’ academic progress and offer advice tailored to students’ needs. Colleges also provide space where PGH advisers can meet with students on campus.

The partnership with Houston Community College (HCC) extends beyond direct services for students. PGH leaders work with institutional leaders to address systemic issues that present challenges for students. One example is HCC’s FERPA waiver. HCC had three different versions of the waiver, which students found confusing. PGH called attention to this situation and persuaded HCC to consolidate the three forms into one to be used campuswide. Another example is HCC’s financial aid refund policy. Depending on when students started classes, some were not getting their refunds until the semester was almost over. PGH worked with HCC to modify this policy so that all students would get their money when they needed it.

Read the full paper for additional case studies and recommendations of how your organization can build its own higher ed partnerships.

Read the full "Scaling Success Services" series:

• Overview paper: Strategies for Promoting Postsecondary Success
• How 5 Organizations Increased Their Capacity to Serve More Students
• How 5 Organizations Track and Use Student Data
• How 4 Organizations Built Impactful Partnerships with Higher Ed

By Bob Obrohta, Executive Director, Tennessee College Access and Success Network

The numbers are in, and what we expected has come to pass: college enrollment is down across the country. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, in their November 2020 report, total enrollments are down -4.4% at all undergraduate institutions and -9.5% at community colleges. Undergraduate enrollment for first-time freshman students is down -13% at all undergraduate institutions, and -18.9% at community colleges.

The Tennessee Board of Regents released preliminary community college data for our state, which gives insight into how COVID-19 is most likely playing out across the country. The virus isn’t affecting everyone equally and it is no different in postsecondary education. All indications are that young people, particularly those from low-income families and African American students, are feeling the full brunt of COVID-19.

Students from the 2020 high school graduating class, first-time full-time students (FTFT), were hit hard. All student demographic groups show double-digit declines. However, the majority of the loss is coming from students with lower ACT scores, and if ACT is any indicator of income (and it is), then the majority of students lost were low-income. In Tennessee, White students declined 17%, Hispanic students declined 18%, and Black student enrollment declined a staggering 31% (Black males declined 35%, Black females declined 27%).

It took all of us in the college access and success community a second to find our footing. When COVID-19 hit and the world shut down, we all had that initial moment of panic for our students. Stories of students whose only means of computer access was a college’s computer lab started coming in. One student went to the local pawn shop to purchase a computer in the hopes that the device would live long enough for her finish out the semester. A number of students were using cell phones as their primary device. We had to enlighten leaders that using a cell phone was a last, not first, resort. Wi-Fi, high-speed capability, hotspots, boost technology, dead zones – this became our new student support world.

Our organization, the Tennessee College Access and Success Network (TCASN), began holding weekly virtual meetings with urban and rural practitioners from across the state. With the few resources everyone had available, we began piecemeal approaches to help as many students as possible. Sharing ideas led to the creation of programs to provide technology access for students, communicating important updates, and sometimes helping just that one student get what they need to complete their college application.

Having found our footing, access programs are now figuring out the best approach to connect with students in schools that are stressed and virtual. One of TCASN’s current projects is expanding WiFi boost technology to 10 Nashville branch library parking lots in neighborhoods with heavy concentrations of high school and college students with limited access.

One advantage every organization had in 2020 that they will struggle with in 2021 is contact information for students. This impacts every organization from college access, to college admissions, to state-run programs, to scholarship providers. In 2020, we had student contact information when the virus hit – email addresses, cell phone numbers, completed FAFSAs, college applications, etc. More importantly, we had multiple means by which to collect data such as high school visits, college fairs, and state scholarship applications.

This data was used for multiple purposes, not the least of which was to give professionals the opportunity to build relationships with students. Additionally, the data was used between organizations and helped facilitate important milestones such as putting a student on a college admissions officer’s radar or having a college mentor hunt down a student to turn in a FAFSA verification form.

We had all of this data in 2020, and look how well that went. The college-going numbers speak for themselves. For many students in the class of 2021, we don’t have contact information. College enrollment management tells us the smaller the pool of students everyone begins with, the smaller the number of students who will eventually enroll in college. Admissions officers are starting to realize enrollment numbers for the class of 2021 might be worse than 2020.

College access organizations, practitioners, college admissions officers, student support programs, state departments of education, and higher education need to be in constant communication, working closer than ever before, sharing data, solving problems, and innovating. Here are recommendations for everyone to consider:

1. Everything is on the table: From extending critical deadlines to waiving requirements, everything should be considered open for revision. States, higher education institutions, schools, and college access organizations that figure out ways to eliminate bureaucratic barriers will be the most successful. We need to acknowledge the plight of students and modify our practices accordingly.
2. On the federal level:
   1. Any new stimulus needs to include a major investment in postsecondary education and workforce training. Higher education has been and will continue to be the fuel of the country’s economic engine. Current unemployment rates for those with a college degree have returned to pre-pandemic levels.
      
   2. Simplifying the FAFSA and doubling the Pell Grant should be a priority for our leaders. College affordability was a priority before COVID-19 and is even more so now. Additionally, federally funded college access programming such as TRIO and Americorps should be expanded.
      
3. On the state level: Avoid cutting funding to higher education and scholarship programs. As we’ve seen in previous economic downturns, higher education funding tends to be where state leaders first cut. While these are not easy decisions, states that can maintain funding will rebound quicker than those that don’t.
4. Philanthropy needs to step up and invest in direct service programs: Most nonprofit programs particular to serving students from low-income backgrounds and students of color live an existence of fragile funding. Many are in jeopardy of losing their lifelines as cities and rural communities are forced to make tough budget decisions. We have already witnessed New York City’s nationally recognized CUNY ASAP program threatened with funding cuts. Here in Nashville, the city is currently struggling with  cutting the NashvilleGRAD program and other access programs designed to support college-bound students with limited financial resources. As national numbers continue to roll in from across the higher education community, unfortunately, we are going to see losses overwhelmingly coming from an entire generation of young, first-generation, low-income students – disproportionately represented by students of color. Supporting the organizations that serve them should be a priority.

We’ve always been in the business of eliminating barriers to postsecondary education for students, but it has never been as critical as it is at this moment. This heavy lift will happen one student at time.

Bob Obrohta is the Executive Director of the Tennessee College Access and Success Network and recipient of the National College Attainment Network’s 2018 Executive Leadership Award of Excellence. Feel free to contact him at bobrohta@tncollegeaccess.org.

To explore new National Student Clearinghouse data on fall 2020 enrollment, register for NCAN's Dec. 10 webinar: "Is the High School to College Pipeline Broken? The Data Says Yes."

Read More:

• What's Working: Stories of College Access and Success Efforts During the Pandemic
• Students Weigh In On How to Improve Postsecondary Advising in the Era of COVID-19
• NCAN's #FormYourFuture FAFSA Tracker

By Zenia Henderson, Director of Member & Partner Engagement

As school districts across the country continue to assess their plans for reopening for the fast-approaching 2020-21 academic year, postsecondary planning may not be top of mind for many. Understandably so, when school leaders are overwhelmed with thinking about the many needs and risks involved in reopening that can literally put peoples’ lives at risk, as noted in this Washington Post article. The article leans on a post written by a music teacher in New Jersey, who removes some of the “magical thinking” behind the countless suggestions and ideas about reopening.

A note to our readers: This post is not intended to contribute to the magical suggestions swirling around in the reopening conversations. Rather, my goal is to offer some considerations for our K-12 NCAN members and partners on how to support the much-needed postsecondary planning initiatives that are absolutely critical to ensure the members of your class of 2021 not only safely complete their secondary education, but are set up for a successful postsecondary transition.

Here are some steps schools and districts can take:

1. Share postsecondary planning communications with students and families widely.

As you send out welcome packets, senior letters, and robocalls, or post new information to your school website’s college and career readiness page, consider gathering updates from any community-based partners who support your students about their plans for working with students this academic year. You may have supports provided by a national or local partner that should be included in your schoolwide communications, even if they serve only a portion of your student population. These partner organizations, too, may have trouble reaching all the students they serve and may need to communicate critical updates about how they will continue supporting students this academic year.

2. Determine a plan for sharing students’ documents/information with your community partners.

Assuming you have a data-sharing agreement in place, consider how you will share critical information about students with your community partners, or even students themselves. Many college access programs may need students’ transcripts in order to properly advise them on their postsecondary options.

Consider how you can ensure your partners have what they need to effectively serve students. Will it be students’ responsibility to request an unofficial transcript? Can you grant your community partners access to the records they need?

3. If your school plans on offering in-person schooling, work with your IT department to determine how you can ensure students have access to the appropriate college access-related websites.

We know many schools limit access to social media sites and other external websites, but consider how your partners communicate with students and what kinds of websites students need to visit as they engage in their college search and other aspects of their postsecondary planning journey.

4. Remember community-based partners are there to supplement and support your work with students so that educators and counselors can focus on educating and counseling.

Students’ social-emotional needs have been exacerbated by the current times with so much uncertainty and disruption. It’s important to view these partners as essential resources to students’ whole-school experience.

5. Invite community partners to the (virtual) table to collaborate on the delivery of supports.

This is what you would put into practice if you are on board with the preceding consideration. It serves K-12 partners to ensure their community-based partners not only collaborate with the school, but also with each other.

If you have an after-school program that has capacity to provide whole-family support with basic needs, and a center-based organization that works exclusively with seniors, you can ensure those partners are also making appropriate referrals and perhaps reaching even more students than has traditionally been the norm.

I recently chatted with some community-based organizations about their collaborative efforts with school partners and local institutions, and here’s what one shared.

“At the onset of the pandemic quarantine, the Be A Leader Foundation rallied with fellow college access and success programs to provide access points for students to receive assistance and timely supports. Key to our successes was having all partners at the table, site-based college access centers, school district liaisons, postsecondary partners including the three in-state universities and community college representatives. By having all partners at the table, not only were we able to actively collaborate and develop solutions, but were able to continue to deepen our relationships.”

Be a Leader Foundation Chief Program Officer Soilo Felix said this about their work in Arizona:

“As the African proverb states ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, the entire Arizona community continues to come together to develop interventions through fostered collaboration focused on the immediacy of supporting our students. Invite, collaborate, build relationships, and foster open communication with your high school and postsecondary partners – remember it takes a village!”

I have firsthand experience as a direct service provider in the college access and success space, serving students from place-based centers, facilitating afterschool programs, and overseeing in-school college advising services. So I hope these considerations are helpful to school leaders and counselors as you think about how to ensure you are moving the needle on students’ postsecondary outcomes.

As the education field continues to work toward closing the equity gaps in postsecondary attainment, NCAN knows that postsecondary pipeline partnerships are a key to success in this effort. The American Talent Initiative and College Greenlight introduced a three-part framework in a new report that lays the groundwork for strong college and community-based organization partnerships.

Many other NCAN members have successful partnerships between and among K-12, higher ed, and community-based organizations. If you're interested in learning more about data and partnership transparency from Cincinnati Public Schools and their StrivePartnership model or about the collaborative work in Arizona from members like Be a Leader Foundation, Flagstaff High School, and others, contact me for more information (hendersonz@collegeaccess.org).

In this uncertain time, it is of utmost importance that students have all the supports they can get to guide them through their postsecondary plans. NCAN is here to help ensure partners are making the necessary connections to each other to ensure students receive these much-needed supports.

Read More:

• New Must-Read Guide Provides Roadmap to Improving District, CAO Advising Practices
• NCAN Releases Report Highlighting Big Ideas for Changing K-12 Advising
• 6 Recommendations on Distance Learning: How Districts Are Supporting Students, Families, & Educators

Sure, you’ve seen consulting reports before. Click on them, skim them, and file them away. But Bellwether Education Partners has a new report out, “Postsecondary Advising: Characteristics and Conditions for Expanding Access,” that you will want to bookmark and will likely return to again and again until its pages are well-worn and dog-eared from use. That’s especially true of the three short tipsheets for college access organizations, districts, and funders.

The report’s big assets are how tactical and digestible it is. Its findings come from more than 60 discussions with stakeholders in the field, some of them NCAN members. The report “describes key aspects of the current advising landscape, outlines six conditions that must be in place to expand advising, and identifies concrete actions that districts, CAOs, and funders can each take toward that goal of providing quality advising that meets the needs of all students.”

This idea of enabling conditions is an important one for improving postsecondary advising practices. Bellwether suggests that “to meet the needs of all students, districts must develop postsecondary advising systems that have five characteristics.” These characteristics are:

• Equitable
• High-quality
• Measurable
• Aligned to college and career, and
• Financially sustainable

Page 7 of the report includes a particularly helpful rubric using those five characteristics that helps districts place themselves on a continuum from absent to ad hoc to systemic to exemplary. Through their interviews, Bellwether found that although many districts have moved from absent to ad hoc there are still relatively few exemplary school districts across the country with all of these characteristics in their postsecondary advising systems.

By page 28, the report pivots to the six conditions for success identified by Bellwether’s research. These conditions’ summaries are included below, but the each is examined in great depth in the report.

• Case for Change: There is broad support for postsecondary success as a unifying purpose of the core work of K-12.
• Vision and Milestones: There is a shared district vision for postsecondary outcomes and a strategy to achieve the key milestones that students must reach to successfully navigate postsecondary pathways.
• Data and Platforms: Data are used to understand student needs — prioritizing milestones and which student needs to address — and to track student outcomes.
• Supports – Content, Coverage, and Delivery: There is an intentional and strategic use of internal and external supports and resources to maximize coverage.
• Coordination & Continuous Improvement: Partnerships, staffing models, and roles are defined to optimize the provision of services, reducing duplication and ensuring coordination.
• Resources: Adequate and sustainable financial resources are identified and secured.

The recommendations for the field section is as robust as the rest of the presentation. Bellwether suggests in part that:

• Districts already undertaking advising work should focus on improving effectiveness and sustainability.
• In districts with no advising work underway, the most important first step is to establish the Case for Change.
• The nature of district-CAO partnerships should evolve, in particular with regard to cost effectiveness.
• The recommendation here also notes “The role of CAOs will need to focus more on (1) leading innovation and development of advising best practices, (2) building district capacity, and (3) more strategically partnering across CAOs to reduce duplication of effort and inefficiency.”

The report is well-aligned with our interests here at NCAN. For the past two academic years, we’ve supported the To & Through Advising Challenge with 20 school districts and community partners across the country. More broadly, our members across the country, school districts and college access organizations alike, have long been working to advance the enabling conditions identified by the report.

This useful resource from Bellwether is very much worth a read for all NCAN members. In many ways it provides a road map to expanding school district and college access organization partnerships, making postsecondary advising systems more robust, and changing the way school districts do business around this key topic for students’ futures.

Read More:

• NCAN Releases Report Highlighting Big Ideas for Changing K-12 Advising
• 5 Virtual Advising Tips From the NCAN Community
• Schools Should Make Better Use of Advisory Periods; Here's How They Can