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.”
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.
Email to a Friend