MOCAN

MO College and Career Attainment Network

Cherelle Washington

Start Your Year Off Right by Refreshing Your College and Career Toolbox

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Caroline Doglio, Program Associate, National College Attainment Network

As January approaches and you consider your new year’s resolutions, here at NCAN we find it to be a great time to reaffirm your commitment to college and career readiness! If you’re lost on where to start, a great jumping off point is our K-12 resources for postsecondary transitions. This page serves as a compilation of resources, some created by NCAN and others not, to help navigate every step of a student’s transition into the postsecondary world. 

Depending on what you and your district might want to tackle first, there are numerous tools linked on the page. If you’re curious on where your district or school can improve its work around postsecondary advising, OneGoal has rubrics that measures advising on seven different focus areas. Once a district goes through the rubric, identifying places they might want to concentrate on, NCAN’s K-12 calendar can be a great resource to accomplish certain shifts. The calendar is color-coded by topic, such as partnerships, FAFSA, data, summer melt, etc., making it easy to focus on topics that the rubric identifies.

Another option for tools to focus on could be data! Understanding where students are not only going, but persisting and completing, after high school is key to improving postsecondary outcomes. The National Student Clearinghouse’s StudentTracker for High Schools is an easy, affordable way to start understanding student-level outcomes and identifying patterns. Once you become more comfortable with the tool, NCAN has some resources on how to level up the work you do with it.

The final tool linked on the page is an NCAN brief that examines five school districts and partner organizations using big ideas to improve their students’ postsecondary outcomes and how other districts could replicate these practices to achieve similar outcomes.

On top of these tools, there are additional pages linking to plenty of resources on various topics. There’s a page on transforming postsecondary advising, which allows you to explore strategies for connecting students and families to information they need. Another page provides more information on how to use data to educate students and inform services. There’s a FAFSA specific page to learn about best practices that have worked across the country. And finally, a whole page on strategies for reducing summer melt, which, by the way, starts way before summer.

The new year provides a chance to re-orient yourself and your goals and what is a better goal than easing postsecondary transitions!

Have questions or looking for a specific resource not covered by the above? I’d love to hear from you! You can reach me at [email protected]!

As The Year Winds Down, Use NSC Data to Plan Next Steps

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Bill DeBaun, Senior Director of Data and Strategic Initiatives

NSC

The National Student Clearinghouse recently announced that its “effective date” for the fall 2022 semester was November 18. This means that StudentTracker for High Schools subscribers will have new postsecondary outcomes data for their students in the next few weeks. That data is invaluable for understanding students’ postsecondary pathways and shaping postsecondary advising strategy.

If the words in the paragraph above seem foreign to you, let’s stop and rewind in the paragraph below. Did you catch all the above? Skip over the next paragraph or read it for a refresher.

The National Student Clearinghouse is a nonprofit organization that warehouses data covering about 98% of all the postsecondary enrollments nationally in any given year. They offer a subscription service to K-12 districts and schools ($595 per high school per year) that matches high schools’ senior classes with their postsecondary enrollment and completion data. Three times a year, the NSC sets “effective dates” where they have enough high school graduation and postsecondary enrollment data to generate new sets of reports. These reports are a collection of charts and spreadsheets that have both aggregated and student-level data. (Incidentally, education nonprofits who work with students can also access this data through a different subscription service, either Student Tracker for Outreach or Student Tracker for Educational Organizations.)

In the next few weeks, Student Tracker subscribers will receive an email when their reports are available for them to download from their FTP accounts. Once that notification goes out, it’s important to take a look and share with any internal personnel or external partners who collaborate with you on college and career readiness activities. Not sure where to start? Here are four things to look for in the data:

  1. Class of 2022 first fall enrollment: This is the fall 2022 semester effective date, so naturally most users will be interested in how their most recent graduating class fared. The class of 2021 experienced substantial first fall enrollment declines compared to class of 2020, so all eyes will be on the class of 2022 and whether these students will continue the enrollment declines.
  2. Previous classes’ persistence patterns: We know that the past few years haven’t just been disruptive for the classes of 2021 and 2022, they’ve been disruptive for, well, pretty much all of us. Using the stacked bar charts showing year-by-year outcomes in the aggregate report, it would be interesting to take a look and see if students from previous classes had an uptick in stopping out or if they were able to persist in and/or complete a postsecondary pathway.
  3. Top 25 institutions: The Student Tracker report comes with a .csv file showing the top 25 institutions to which students matriculated. Many districts and schools have fairly set matriculation patterns, but it’s always good to look for surprises here. The next level of analysis is to use the “student detail file” to break out students’ outcomes by institution. Are the institutions to which students are matriculating delivering good outcomes? If not, it might be time to consider a conversation with the institution, a change in college advising, or both.
  4. Outcomes by student demographics: When submitting a “graduates file” with the names and birth dates of students from each graduating class, the NSC offers the option to include students’ demographic characteristics. When provided, the NSC then sends back a report disaggregating outcomes by those characteristics. This is important because all student groups may not be getting the same outcomes as a graduating class is overall. Having this data available highlights gaps that can be addressed through practice and programming. Not submitting student demographics? Include them in your next graduate file upload, and you’ll see these charts in the next release.

Interested in the above but not a Student Tracker subscriber? It’s not too late to sign up. Once subscribed, you’ll be sent a report based on the November 18 effective date and then two more reports (mid-April, mid-August) in the next calendar year.

The effective use of data can help us improve students’ outcomes. The NSC’s Student Tracker service is a handy tool to in the toolkit for examining students’ actual postsecondary pathways.

Tackling Summer Melt in the Fall

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Caroline Dogolio, National College Attainment Network

Despite fall still being its early days, it’s never too early to think about freezing summer melt. It’s estimated that every year between 10-40% of college-intending students fail to enroll in college the fall after high school graduation. This is a phenomenon that disproportionately impacts students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, and first-generation students.

Understanding the Problem

Like many other issues in postsecondary education, finding the solution begins at learning more about the predicament. For summer melt, this means measuring the percentage of students that are not matriculating. While getting this number can take some effort, having this knowledge is well worth it.

For many, a senior exit survey can serve as the perfect jumping off point. Harvard’s Strategic Data Project Summer Melt Handbook offers resources on increasing completion and what exactly to include in the survey with examples. The guide advises that the more specific questions are, the better. These questions should include what students’ enrollment plans are and if they have paid their enrollment deposit.

With an understanding of how many students planned on enrolling, data from the National Student Clearinghouse’s (NSC) StudentTracker service will provide the numerator in this equation (e.g., how many students truly enrolled).

Knowing the percentage of students melting each year is a great place to begin intervening, but even better is identifying groups of students melting at a higher rate than others.

Prevention

Summer melt can serve as a motivator to strengthen K-12 and higher ed pipelines. NCAN’s understanding of enrollment trends across the country is that there are typical institutions that receive high proportions of students matriculating from the same high schools each year.

The Puget Sound College and Career Network created a number of checklists for their students’ popular college choices to ease the application process and the transition. These one-page cheat-sheets lists tasks, deadlines, “good to know” information, and contact information.

Along with these cheat-sheets, identifying these institutions can serve as a motivator to form relationships between high schools and their students’ popular college destinations. Edutopia has some suggestions on programs that can serve as a win for both parties:

  • Getting volunteers for an after-school STEM programs
  • Inviting guest speakers to discuss career pathways
  • Collaborating on a grant that could bring professional development for school staff

One idea not outlined by Edutopia, but worth exploring is inviting staff from financial aid offices to present or assist with FAFSA completion. These personnel can provide some expert knowledge not only on financial aid questions that may come out of the FAFSA but also on related topics such as how to read an award letter, what student can expect in financial aid packages, and the financial aid appeal process.

These partnerships will vary vastly from school to school, but the University of California system offers several great ideas that can be used throughout the entire K-12 spectrum.

Along with the resources outlined in this post, NCAN provides a Summer Melt Toolkit along with our K-12 Advising Calendar which has a summer melt category.

Have questions about summer melt? We’d love to hear from you! Contact me at Caroline Doglio ([email protected]) to hear more about approaches to freezing summer melt.

FAFSA Season is Here – Here’s How to Prepare

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College Campus

Caroline Doglio, Program Associate at National College Attainment Network

With October comes all the exciting autumnal things, trees changing colors, Halloween, and the opening of FAFSA season. As FAFSA numbers continue to grow, getting closer to pre-pandemic numbers slowly but surely, we’re sure schools remain eager to raise those numbers even higher. NCAN has a robust library of resources that we are happy to provide in these efforts.

The Class of 2022 began to show signs of rebounding from the pandemic. FAFSA completion grew 4.6% by this past July 1 nationally, though we are still not at pre-pandemic numbers. This growth represents approximately 52.1% of seniors in 2022 completing the FAFSA. By comparison, the pre-pandemic class of 2019 finished at 53.8%. Alabama and Texas were standout states in terms of year-over-year growth, and, notably, both implemented an universal FAFSA policy this past academic year.

District and schools, and the myriad professionals that make them run, have their work cut out for them. There have never been more demands on counselors, teachers, district and school leaders, and the other caring adults that pave the way for students toward college and career readiness. The past three years have been devastatingly difficult, and the prospect of helping students complete the FAFSA, a notoriously not-fun form, may be daunting.

It doesn’t have to be. We’re here to help.

This month NCAN will begin sending out our first of this cycle’s monthly reminder emails. These emails are geared towards K-12 practitioners and supply suggested to-dos depending on where in the cycle we are, as well as help in catching up if needed or what to look ahead for. Those interested can sign up for these emails is here.

These emails can be used conjointly with NCAN’s FAFSA resource library, which has a monthly calendar of action items as well as resources on actives that can promote FAFSA completion such as: 

  • A FAFSA planning calendar
  • Info on laying the groundwork and engaging external partners
  • Completing the actual FAFSA form
  • Training and capacity building
  • Communication
  • Accessing and using data

Need more on how to put together an effective FAFSA completion campaign? We’ve got that, too.

By the way, NCAN’s Form Your Future FAFSA Tracker, which counts completions at the national, state, city, district, and school levels, will return for the sixth straight year in early October.

More specific to this FAFSA cycle, FSA is introducing multi-factor authentication, or as they’re calling it, “two-step verification.” NCAN understands that this introduction will likely create barriers for students located in places with limited Internet or cell phone reception or in school districts that have restrictive cell phone and Internet policies. These barriers may bring a different array of questions to practitioners than in years past. To help prepare for this adjustment, NCAN has an article outlining the process, with tips and resources from FSA.

NCAN College & Career Readiness Fellows Announced

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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. 

Key Questions to Ask Before the School Year Starts

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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” 
  1. 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 

  1. 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 

  1. 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.