Cherelle Washington

Mid-July the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) announced its fellows selected to participate in its College and Career Readiness Fellows Program. The Fellows Program aims to develop a cohort of school personnel to lead the college and career readiness work in their district/school. The program will focus on three primary areas: 1) delivering an effective student support model and activities to develop student college and career readiness; 2) tracking and analyzing data to use in effective decision-making that drives practice; and 3) developing an efficient administrative model for managing college and career readiness work.  

NCAN selected 15 Fellows to participate from 12 different states, 2 Fellows were selected in Missouri! We are extremely proud to announce the Missouri Fellows and look forward to bringing what they learn back to the students of Missouri.  

Joyce Nguyen Hernandez, College Access Coordinator

Kansas City Public Schools

Joyce Nguyen Hernandez is a longtime Kansas City, Missouri educator for over twenty years in the public school system. As an English instructor, she prepared many students for International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement, and dual credit courses. Her style of teaching embraces rigor, engagement, and joy. 

Additionally, she worked for two members of Congress as a District Aide assisting constituents with federal issues and concerns regarding IRS, veterans, immigration, and other agencies. She is a first-generation college graduate and first-generation U.S. citizen. Her family’s background as Vietnamese refugees, educators, and volunteers greatly influences her interactions with families and personal philosophies.  

Joyce is a proud graduate of Kansas City’s Bishop Hogan High School and Rockhurst University with a master’s degree in literacy. As a classroom teacher of juniors and seniors, her interest in guiding students through their college and scholarship application process grew each year to meet their needs. 

Currently, she serves in the Department of Equity, Inclusion, and Innovation as the Manager for College Access and Success for the Kansas City Public Schools system. Joyce and her new staff of College Access Specialists are committed to reduce barriers by strategically supporting students as they visit postsecondary programs, apply to college, and seek out scholarships and financial aid. 

Kimberly Merrill, Dual Credit and Early School Counselor

University City High School

Kimberly Merrill is a Professional School Counselor and currently serves as the Dual Credit and Early School Counselor at University City High School. She has worked with the St. Louis Internship Program as a Student and Training Development Specialist for the last ten years and has provided direct college and career counseling services for students since February 2008. 

Kimberly holds a B.S. in geography from Northwest Missouri State University, an M.A. in teaching and professional school counseling from Lindenwood University, and Professional School Counseling Certification at the secondary level.  When Kimberly is not only engaging with University City High School Students and St. Louis Internship Program students, she is providing educational support, career counseling or event coordination to a number of organizations. Through her many endeavors, Kimberly is committed to ensuring that every student she serves graduates from high school fully prepared to enter into their best fit post-secondary college and careers endeavors.   Kimberly is the mother of one daughter who loves to travel and spend time with her family. 

Bill DeBaun, Senior Director of Data and Strategic Initiatives

I get it: no one wants to talk about to-do lists in August. For many, August is when we’re clinging to the last few weeks of summer vacation and pointedly not talking about the start of the impending school year.  

Still, sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, the school doors will also open soon enough, and when they do, we should be ready to meet and prepare our students for pursuing college and career pathways.  

August is a time for rest and relaxation, but also readiness. In that spirit, here are four questions that district and school leaders and staff, school counselors, and anyone else in students’ orbit should ponder and prepare for as they turn toward the start of the 2022-23 academic year and some key resources for helping to answer that question. 

1. Who’s focused on college career readiness? Who else should be? Each district and school doesn’t necessarily have personnel specifically focused on postsecondary pathways. Even in those districts and schools who do, everyone who should have a seat at the table doesn’t always get one. District-level staff, school leaders and counselors, teachers, community-based partners, students, and parents all have a role to play in helping students explore their options and pursue their next, best step. It’s important to ask whether you’ve got a college and career readiness team and, if not, to work toward convening one to collaborate on a plan. 
   Key Resource: UnlockED’s Harnessing the Power of Postsecondary Data Building a Student-Centered, Data-Driven Strategy, see: “Establish a Coalition” 

2. How am I getting feedback from students about their postsecondary plans? Most districts and schools are familiar with delivering senior exit surveys, but is this really the ideal timing to collect that information? By the time seniors fill out that survey, there’s very little window for schools and staff to shift their plans. Why not collect that data in the fall of senior year, or even better yet, the spring of junior year to get the insights early and connect students with the best available resources and supports according to their responses? Surveys often get eyerolls because there aren’t good plans for what to do with the resulting data, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Keep the questions lean and focus on the ones whose answers are actionable. The surveys needn’t be exclusive to seniors. Getting information about students’ aspirations, questions, and needs as early as freshman year extends plenty of time to staff to get students what they need. 

Key Resources: Iowa College Aid’s Beginning-of-Year Student Survey; College Advising Corps Career Aspiration Survey; Broward County Schools Senior Exit Survey 

3. Where are my college-bound students likely to matriculate? Data from the National Student Clearinghouse’s StudentTracker for High Schools ($595/high school/year) service provides subscribers with the top 25 enrollment destinations for up to their past eight high school graduating classes. Most students’ matriculation patterns are place-based; that is, students tend to go to college near where they went to high school. Conventional wisdom runs strong in high schools about where students go, but it’s always helpful to check the data for confirmation. Once you’ve got a better sense of the high school-to-college pipeline, ask yourself some more questions: 1. Do I have a good relationship with these institutions? If yes, how can they continue to help me with activities like FAFSA completion? If not, how can I promote one? 2. How do my students do when they get to these institutions? If not so well, is there an alternative that gives them a better chance of graduating? 

Key Resource: Answering Key Questions with Your NSC Student Tracker for High School Reports 

4. What does my plan for FAFSA completion look like this academic year? Sure, we’re in August, but October 1, the opening date of the next FAFSA cycle, will be here before we know it. Some students will complete the FAFSA by osmosis, but most won’t, so which kinds of activities can your district or school engage in to increase the number of students who do? NCAN has a whole resource library dedicated to this topic, which includes planning calendars, communications strategies, and more. Not sure about where to access student-level FAFSA data in your state? We’ve got a handy list here. 

Key Resources: College & Career Readiness Calendar for High Schools; NCAN’s FAFSA Resource Library 

Going for the high score in college and career readiness and interested in more activities? NCAN has a comprehensive calendar that suggests activities and resources for every month of the year. Of course, NCAN is also here to help so feel free to email me at [email protected]. There are other questions that are important to ask, of course, beyond the above, but it is still August after all, so we can file this under “a good start.” Stay tuned for more suggestions and resources in the coming months. 

Bill DeBaun, National College Attainment Network

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.

National College Attainment Network 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 education 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 education.

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 education silo and forge the connections that can help students in the class of 2022 and beyond.