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Tag: School counselors

  • OPINION: Encouraging Black and Latinx students to apply to selective colleges has become more urgent than ever – The Hechinger Report

    OPINION: Encouraging Black and Latinx students to apply to selective colleges has become more urgent than ever – The Hechinger Report

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    Those of us who worked with high school students in the wake of the Supreme Court’s historic decision overturning race-conscious admissions can’t profess shock over news showing decreases in enrollment among Black and Latinx students across many college campuses, especially those considered competitive for enrollment.

    We saw this coming.

    Last year we saw too many highly qualified students shy away from applying to schools because they were sent a message that they wouldn’t get in without affirmative action. This year, it is more important than ever that we encourage our Black and Latinx students to apply to schools attended by similar students before the court’s reversal. Mentoring is a critical catalyst to achieve this goal.

    Another year of dips in enrollment among Black and Latinx students would arguably ignite a snowball trend in some of our nation’s most recognized institutions, leading to a perception that they are unwelcoming to students of color.

    As a society, we simply can’t afford this. We are at a demographic crossroads: Generation Z is forecast to be the last majority-white generation; the majority of Americans under the age of 18 are “nonwhite.” If we don’t increase the numbers of Black and Latinx students going to colleges where they belong and deserve to have a seat at the table, we are impacting the future of America.

    To change this new dynamic, we need to think outside the [check your race] box. College-educated adults hold the key to reshaping how to support Black and Latinx students getting to and through the college process so that they can unlock their full potential and achieve the “holy grail” of economic mobility.

    As colleges put more emphasis on early action and deadlines specific to first-generation students, our Black and Latinx high school seniors have the chance to make their voices heard through the power of their applications.

    Increasing applications by November’s early admission deadlines is a critical first step.

    Related: Interested in innovations in the field of higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly Higher Education newsletter.

    Also, vitally, first-generation students need to have strong, trusting relationships in place before, during and after the application process to reinforce a sense of belonging. The adults these students meet early in their lives — often outside the home — can help blunt a seismic shift in the makeup of college enrollment across our nation.

    Over the past 25 years of working with primarily first-generation and low-income students, I have found that the path to and through college is built on a mentorship model that relies heavily on schools, corporations and communities working in lockstep. This tripod of support needs to work even more closely together to encourage students to increase their applications to and enrollment in selective universities.

    Through a focus group of 42,000 (the total number of students mentored since 1999), my organization has shown that the model of starting junior year of high school with 1:1 mentoring is proven and ensures that every student has an adult champion to not only help them chart a path to college but also build the sense of belonging needed to persevere to graduation.

    Mentoring develops the social capital to help establish careers and create the building blocks needed for long-term economic mobility.

    Every adult needs to adopt a mentoring mindset. We cannot sit back and watch as Black and Latinx students are shut out of college.

    One successful mentoring model I’ve seen uses partnerships with corporations that open their doors to high school students. This helps students start charting a course toward college and career paths based on interactive experiences in the conference room as well as the classroom.

    Related: How did students pitch themselves to colleges after
    last year’s affirmative action ruling?

    As DEI initiatives decline on college campuses, many corporations are expanding their own affinity groups and DEI initiatives. For students, these corporate communities foster a sense of belonging in both college and careers. For adults, these experiences hone a greater understanding of the many inequities that Black and Latinx, often first-generation, students face.

    Seemingly simple connections matter. Planting seeds of trust and confidence early in a relationship helps students see their future selves in their mentors. More Black and Latinx students need to hear “we don’t know if we don’t try,” and this work needs to start well before the beginning of senior year.

    Looking through the lens of a trusted adult, students can better trust the process and not be deterred by such things as the reversals of court decisions.

    While the decrease of Black and Latinx students enrolled in some selective universities this fall is discouraging, there is hope. The vast majority of students (97 percent) mentored in my organization who apply to college are accepted.

    Higher education has a critical accountability role as well as we head into this admissions year. I applaud those who have already reached out to try to help encourage underrepresented students to apply for college.

    Through an ecosystem of support, more Black and Latinx students will earn seats at the table in college and beyond.

    Mentoring helps close equity gaps for first-generation students, guiding them toward successful college careers and beyond. Together, we can turn these recent challenges into a transformative opportunity for lasting impact. The future needs as many Black and Latinx college-educated students as possible.

    Heather D. Wathington is CEO of iMentor, a national leader in 1:1 mentoring that builds long-term, personal relationships to help students, largely first-generation college students from underresourced communities, access and navigate postsecondary educations and careers.

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about mentoring for college was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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    Heather D. Wathington

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  • OPINION: School counselors are scarce, but AI could play an important role in helping them reach more students – The Hechinger Report

    OPINION: School counselors are scarce, but AI could play an important role in helping them reach more students – The Hechinger Report

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    If we are to believe the current rapturous cheerleading around artificial intelligence, education is about to be transformed. Digital educators, alert and available at all times, will soon replace their human counterparts and feed students with concentrated personalized content.

    It’s reminiscent of a troubling experiment from the 1960s, immortalized in one touching image: an infant monkey, clearly scared, clutching a crude cloth replica of the real mother it has been deprived of. Next to it is a roll of metal mesh with a feeding bottle attached. The metal mom supplies milk, while the cloth mom sits inert. And yet, in moments of stress, it is the latter the infant seeks succor from.

    Notwithstanding its distressing provenance, this image has bearing on a topical question: What role should AI play in our children’s education? And in school counseling? Here’s one way to think about these questions.

    With its detached efficiency, an AI system is like the metal mesh mother — capable of delivering information, but little else. Human educators — the teachers and the school counselors with whom students build emotional bonds and relationships of trust — are like the cloth mom.

    It would be a folly to replace these educators with digital counterparts. We don’t need to look very far back to validate this claim. Just over a decade ago, we were gripped by the euphoria around MOOCs — educational videos accessible to all via the Internet.

    “The end of classroom education!” “An inflection point!” screamed breathless headlines. The reality turned out to be a lot less impressive.

    MOOCs wound up playing a helpful supporting role in education, but the stars of the show remained the human teachers; in-person learning environments turned out to be essential. The failures of remote learning during Covid support the same conclusion. A similar narrative likely will (and we argue, ought to) play out in the context of AI and school counseling.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

    Guidance for our children must keep caring adults at its core. Counselors play an indispensable role in helping students find their paths through the school maze. Their effectiveness is driven by their expertise, empathy and ability to be confidants to students in moments of doubt and stress.

    At least, that is how counseling is supposed to work. In reality, the counseling system is under severe stress.

    The American School Counselor Association recommends a student-to-counselor ratio of 250-to-1, yet the actual average was 385-to-1 for the 2022–23 school year, the most recent year for which data is available. In many schools the ratio is far higher.

    Even for the most dedicated counselor, such a ratio makes it impossible to spend much time getting to know any one student; the counselor has to focus on administrative work like schedule changes and urgent issues like mental health. This constraint on availability has cascading effects, limiting the counselor’s ability to personalize advice and recommendations.

    Students sense that their counselors are rushed or occupied with other crises and feel hesitant to ask for more advice and support from these caring adults. Meanwhile, the counselors are assigned extraneous tasks like lunch duty and attendance support, further scattering their attention.

    Against this dispiriting backdrop, it is tempting to turn to AI as a savior. Can’t generative AI systems be deployed as virtual counselors that students can interact with and get recommendations from? As often as they want? On any topic? Costing a fraction of the $60,000 annual salary of a typical human school counselor?

    Given the fantastic recent leaps in the capabilities of AI systems, answers to all these questions appear to be a resounding yes: There is a compelling case to be made for having AI play a role in school counseling. But it is not one of replacement.

    Related: PROOF POINTS: AI essay grading is already as ‘good as an overburdened’ teacher, but researchers say it needs more work

    AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data and offer personalized recommendations makes it well-suited for enhancing the counseling experience. By analyzing data on a student’s personality and interests, AI can facilitate more meaningful interactions between the student and their counselor and lay the groundwork for effective goal setting.

    AI also excels at breaking down complex tasks into manageable steps, turning goals into action plans. This work is often time-consuming for human counselors, but it’s easy for AI, making it an invaluable ally in counseling sessions.

    By leveraging AI to augment traditional approaches, counselors can allocate more time to providing critical social and emotional support and fostering stronger mentorship relationships with students.

    Incorporating AI into counseling services also brings long-term benefits: AI systems can track recommendations and student outcomes, and thus continuously improve system performance over time. Additionally, AI can stay abreast of emerging trends in the job market so that counselors can offer students cutting-edge guidance on future opportunities.

    And AI add-ons are well-suited to provide context-specific suggestions and information — such as for courses and local internships — on an as-needed basis and to adapt to a student’s changing interests and goals over time.

    As schools grapple with declining budgets and chronic absenteeism, the integration of AI into counseling services offers a remarkable opportunity to optimize counseling sessions and establish support systems beyond traditional methods.

    Still, it is an opportunity we must approach with caution. Human counselors serve an essential and irreplaceable role in helping students learn about themselves and explore college and career options. By harnessing the power of AI alongside human strengths, counseling services can evolve to meet the diverse needs of students in a highly personalized, engaging and goal-oriented manner.

    Izzat Jarudi is co-founder and CEO of Edifii, a startup offering digital guidance assistance for high school students and counselors supported by the U.S. Department of Education’s SBIR program. Pawan Sinha is a professor of neuroscience and AI at MIT and Edifii’s co-founder and chief scientist. Carolyn Stone, past president of the American School Counselor Association, contributed to this piece.

    This story about AI and school counselors was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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    Izzat Jarudi and Pawan Sinha

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  • COLUMN: The FAFSA fiasco could roll back years of progress. It must be fixed immediately – The Hechinger Report

    COLUMN: The FAFSA fiasco could roll back years of progress. It must be fixed immediately – The Hechinger Report

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    The cursing came loud and fast from a nearby room, followed by a slamming sound. This was a few years back, and I immediately suspected the culprit: the dreaded FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid, with all its glitches and complexities. 

    My husband was losing his cool while attempting to fill it out for the second time in two years. Across America right now, so are millions of parents, students and counselors, frustrated by a failed promise to finally streamline this unwieldy gatekeeper to college dreams.

    It’s a terrible time for anyone who counted on that U.S. Department of Education promise, and many are calling for an urgent push for help, including through legislation  and a marshalling of resources from institutions like libraries and groups such as  AmeriCorps.

    “I don’t think we’ve seen a full court press about FASFA completion yet,” said Bill DeBaun, a senior director at the National College Attainment Network. “This is an emergency. We need all-hands on deck: governors, state departments, agencies, influencers at the White House. We are kind of at the point where we need to stop nibbling and take a big bite.”

    Anyone who has dealt with the FAFSA knows how needlessly complicated and unreliable it can be: In the midst of back-to-back college application season for my two kids, the site kept kicking us out, then losing the previous information we’d painstakingly provided. 

    Don’t worry, parents were told over and over, it will get easier, it’s being fixed. A bipartisan law passed in 2020 initiated a complete overhaul of the FAFSA. But after a problematic soft launch on Dec. 30, glitches and delays are inflicting pain on undocumented students, first-generation college goers and others who can’t decide how and if attending college will be possible without offers and aid packages.

    The so-called shorter, simpler form so far has been anything but, although DeBaun said many families have submitted it swiftly without problems. Still, as of March 8, there have been roughly 33 percent fewer submissions by high school seniors than last year, NCAN data show.

    The finger-pointing and blaming right now is understandable, but not helpful: It threatens years of efforts to get more Americans to and through college at a time when higher education faces both enrollment declines and a crisis of public confidence, in part due to spiraling prices.

    This year’s FAFSA rollout is frustrating sudents, parents and counselors and prompting calls for immediate help. Credit: Mariam Zuhaib/ Associated Press

    Fewer than 1 in 3 adults now say a degree is worth the cost, a survey by the Strada Education Network found, and many fear FASFA snafus could lead to more disillusionment about college.

    “FAFSA is such a massive hurdle, and if they [students and parents] can’t get this first step done, they may say it’s too complicated, maybe college isn’t for me,” said Scott Del Rossi, vice president of college and career success at College Possible, which helps low-income students and those from underrepresented backgrounds go to and through college.

    Del Rossi wonders why the form wasn’t user-tested before being rolled out, and is among those calling for urgent solutions, beyond band-aid fixes that are literally keeping Department of Education staffers up all night.  

    Related: Simpler FAFSA complicates college plans for students and families

    “As much staff as government has, it’s not enough for students right now,” said Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of the national advocacy group Complete College America. She wants colleges to do more to directly help applicants still struggling to fill out the forms.

    “They should be sharing webinars and workshops and talking about what’s happening and how [students] can begin in spite of the problems,” Watson Spiva said. “If we don’t have those conversations, parents will say this [college] isn’t worth it, and they will look for other opportunities and options.”

    Even before the FAFSA fiasco, that’s been happening. In 2021, the proportion of high school graduates going directly to college fell to 62 percent from a high of 70 percent in 2016, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. At the same time, costs have more than doubled in the last 40 years, even when adjusted for inflation.

    The task ahead is daunting: The Department of Education only started sending batches of student records this week to colleges that will determine aid offers, and about 200 have already extended the traditional May 1st deadline for students to accept offers.

    No wonder parents and students are “stressing out and overwhelmed,” said Deborah Yanez, parent programs manager at TeenSHARP, a nonprofit that prepares students from underrepresented backgrounds for higher education.

    “This is a special time for them; they have dreamed about sending their kids off to college, but now they are being held in this place of limbo, not knowing what the numbers are,” Yanez told me.

    More colleges should extend deadlines for student decisions, Del Rossi said. Counselors that College Possible works with usually say it take at least three interactions, or sessions, with parents to conquer the FAFSA, but many are now reporting the recent form requires more than six – and many are still unsuccessful, Del Rossi said.

    “We have to continue to encourage them not to give up and not to lose hope,” Del Rossi said. “We tell them it is not their fault, these are just glitches, but it’s a little heartbreaking.”

    But turning to college counselors for help is not always a viable option for public school students, where public school counselors handle an average caseload of 430 students, well above the 1:250 ratio the American School Counselor Association suggests.

    And this admissions year has the added complication of being the first since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision barring colleges from considering race as a factor in admissions, along with being a time of rapidly changing rules around whether standardized test scores is required for admission.

    Related: Will the Rodriguez family’s college dreams survive the end of affirmative action?

    That’s why the message about the importance of a college education must continue, and students must be told not to give up. Still, if they can’t fill out the form and the government can’t turn the forms over to schools in time, it’s game over.

    This story about the FASFA was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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    Liz Willen

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  • An unexpected way to fight chronic absenteeism – The Hechinger Report

    An unexpected way to fight chronic absenteeism – The Hechinger Report

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    Editor’s note: This story led off this week’s Future of Learning newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers’ inboxes every other Wednesday with trends and top stories about education innovation.

    Students at Bessemer Elementary School don’t have to go far to see a doctor. If they’re feeling sick, they can walk in to the school’s health clinic, log on to a computer, and connect with a pediatrician or a family medicine provider. After the doctor prescribes treatment, students can in many cases go straight back to class – instead of having to go home.

    The telemedicine program was launched in fall 2021 by Guilford County Public Schools, North Carolina’s third largest school district, as a way to combat chronic absenteeism. The number of students missing 10 or more days of school soared in the district – and nationally – during the pandemic, and remains high in many places.

    Piloted at Bessemer, the program has gradually expanded to 15 of the district’s Title I schools, high-poverty schools where families may lack access to health care. Along with other efforts aimed at stemming chronic absenteeism, the telemedicine program is helping, said Superintendent Whitney Oakley. The chronic absenteeism rate at Bessemer fell from 49 percent in 2021-2022 to 37 percent last school year, an improvement though still higher than the district would like.   

    “It really doesn’t matter how great a teacher is or how strong instruction is, if kids aren’t in school, we can’t do our job,” she said.

    Oakley said district administrators focused on health care access because they were seeing parents pull all their children out of school if one was sick and had to visit the doctor. Rates of chronic absenteeism were also higher in areas where families historically lacked access to routine medical care and had to turn to the emergency room for non-emergency health care needs.

    The telemedicine clinic is also a way to relieve the burden on working parents, Oakley said: Many parents in the district’s Title I schools work hourly wage jobs and rely on public transportation, making it difficult to pick up a sick child at school quickly.

    Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that combats chronic absenteeism, said that early research indicates that telehealth can improve attendance. According to one study of three rural districts in North Carolina that was released in January, school-based telemedicine clinics reduced the likelihood that a student was absent by 29 percent, and the number of days absent by 10 percent.

    Some districts are also turning to virtual teletherapy services to fight chronic absenteeism. Stephanie Taylor, a former school psychologist who is now vice president of clinical innovation at teletherapy provider Presence, says the company’s work has expanded from 1,600 schools to more than 4,000 in recent years as the need for mental health services grows. Therapy can help kids cope with emotional issues that might keep them from attending school, she said, and virtual services give students more choice of counselors and a greater chance of finding someone with whom they mesh.  

    At Guilford County Public Schools, the district plans to expand its existing mental health services to eventually include teletherapy, according to Bessemer Elementary Principal Johnathan Brooks. The district is also planning to roll out its telemedicine clinics to all of 50 of its Title I schools, said Oakley.

    The clinic is staffed by a school nurse who helps the physician remotely examine the student and ensures that prescriptions are quickly filled. The program is funded through a partnership between the district, local government and healthcare providers and nonprofits, which allows for uninsured families to still access treatment and medicine, Brooks said.

    The biggest challenge in launching the clinic was getting parents’ buy-in, he said. The district held meetings with parents, particularly with those who don’t speak English as a first language, to communicate how it would help their kids. To access the program, parents must opt in at the beginning of the school year.

    Of the 300 students who received care at Bessemer’s clinic last year, 240 returned to class the same day, said Oakley. Without the program, she said, “all 300 would have just been sent home sick.”

    She added: “School is often a trusted place within the community and so it helps to bridge some of those gaps with medical providers. It puts the resources where they already are.”

    This story about telemedicine in schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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    Javeria Salman

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