By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director of Data and Strategic Initiatives
Reading time: Three minutes
Before I jump into the rest of this awesome blog post, I’d love for you to save the dates for April 17-21. During this week, under the theme, "Field a Full Team: How Everyone in K-12 Can Help Students Go to College," the National College
Attainment Network (NCAN) will host at least a webinar a day organized around the idea that everyone in a school has a role to play in students’ college and career readiness. Students’ postsecondary pathways aren’t just a school counselor’s focus,
or a teacher’s focus, or a principal’s focus. No, every caring adult in a school, along with external partners, parents, and students themselves has a role to play.
Our great webinar lineup will examine topics like helping students reach different kinds of college and career pathways, how to build a college and career readiness team, and what kinds of frameworks are useful for understanding what students should know
and experience. Interest piqued? We hope so. Full details are coming soon, but giving us your name and email here will make sure we get you more information and an invite ASAP!
Onto this post’s main business. Lots of districts and schools really want to improve their college and career readiness efforts. You may even be associated with one of them! But it turns out, lots of districts and schools can also benefit from help figuring
out how to do that. Don’t reinvent the wheel! It feels bad. Instead, borrow someone else’s wheel and make it yours!
I’ve pulled some blog post from NCAN’s blog that focus on different aspects of college and career advising. These are mostly from a high school context, but some also feature K-12 and community-based
partnerships. Have questions? As always, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me at debaunb@ncan.org, and I hope you’ll reach out!
A 'Warp Speed' Spring and Summer: Fit and Match and Combating Melt in Springfield: Advising students
on their postsecondary options through the concepts of “fit” and “match” is important. So is freezing summer melt so students actually matriculate when they intend to. This post from Springfield Public Schools has the actual materials the district
used to adopt both fit and match and summer melt prevention strategies.
How Sending Letters Helped Sacramento's Students Find the Right College: Speaking of fit and match, Sacramento
Unified School District helped students think about their college options by sending customized letters home to each student. It’s an approach we’ve also seen put into action at the District of Columbia Public Schools.
Using Peer Mentoring to Change Postsecondary Advising in Broward County: Sometimes, students need to hear from
their peers in order to really buy into a message. Broward County Schools in Florida has used peer mentoring to great effect, and the “BRACE Cadets” also help with school programming.
Still with me? I’m grateful, thanks for reading! As a bonus, here’s three more of my favorite posts:
Next month, we’ll have more information on how to freeze summer melt early. Summer melt starts way before summer starts, so it’s never too early to start thinking about it. In the meantime, I hope this post got some ideas going on different practices
districts and schools can adopt to help students be more successful!
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