Counseling Leadership in College Readiness

It’s early September, and Leslie Moore, superintendent of a high-performing, affluent school district outside New York City, contemplates how she will meet the goal her school board gave her — to land more graduating seniors into Ivy League institutions and other highly selective colleges.

In a nearby middle-income district where 98 percent of graduates enroll in postsecondary studies but only 40 percent complete a college degree within five years of leaving high school, Doug George, the superintendent and a 35-year educator, is thinking about how he can dramatically improve those outcomes.

Likewise, Keith Francis, an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in a nearby district, wonders how he and his colleagues can reach the growing number of students from low-income families who believe college is an unattainable goal.

These real-life scenarios (the superintendents’ names are pseudonyms because of their part in a recent research study) reflect the challenges leaders face when contemplating how to educate students and families about the full range of postsecondary options. How can they support teachers’ and administrators’ efforts to promote and enable these options? In particular, they wonder how they can leverage their respective districts’ guidance director to reach the stated goals.

Researching Roles

From my 2013 study of the district guidance director’s role in creating and sustaining a college-readiness culture at three small school districts located in the vicinity of New York City, I found district guidance leaders tailor the way a college-readiness process is developed and managed to account for socioeconomic profiles and students’ social and cultural capital.

Social capital refers to the who you know and how information is communicated within social circles. Cultural capital is the what you know and how that knowledge is transferred from families to students.

Though located within close proximity, the three K-12 districts had distinct and disparate levels of social/cultural capital and student demographics. The low-income district of 3,000 students has pockets of dire poverty in a community where the median household income was $81,000. Working class families predominated, and about 30 percent of students qualified for the federal lunch program. About half of the student body was white, and 40 percent were Hispanic or African American.

The middle-class district had 1,200 students in a community of about 4,000 residents. Fewer than 15 percent of students qualified for lunch support. About 19 percent were Hispanic or black, and another 7 percent were Asian.

The affluent school district served more than 5,000 students in a community of 40,000. Median household income was $120,000. About 10 percent of the students were Asian and fewer than 4 percent were Hispanic or black. On student test measures, it had the highest achievement levels of the three by a significant margin.

Defining the Role

District guidance leaders played a critical leadership role in building and sustaining a college-readiness culture in seven areas: administrator/supervisor, program facilitator, data aggregator, strategic planner/innovator, relationship builder/manager, advocator and other (miscellaneous). These distinct but related tasks supported the work of the school district’s guidance office.

A critical part of preparing students and families for postsecondary options is providing them with information about the preparation process. The school counseling leader can enable the exchange of this information and manage the learning process around how students and their families understand this information.

In my analysis, two overarching role-types described what school counseling leaders do in regard to college readiness: (1) they act as institutional information agents and (2) they serve as navigators for students, families, administrators and faculty.

Information and Navigation

Students and their families generally rely on the guidance office for college preparedness. District counselor leaders manage this process. They create the master schedule of classes that place students in the appropriate sequence of courses, including prerequisite college courses. They organize financial aid workshops and manage relationship protocols between families and school counselors and teachers to ensure quality advising.

The counselor’s role of institutional information agent was more critical in a low-income district. The deficit of social and cultural capital, relating to students’ motivation for pursuing college and their knowledge of college preparation, was more prevalent. Students who received little insight about college preparation from their family or social circles had a limited understanding of what was required to be ready for college or how to access this information.

District leaders in all three districts noted this distinction about families’ or social circles’ access to the best information about preparing for college admission.

In the role of navigator for college readiness, the district counseling leader influenced how students and parents were steered through a complex process. The leader designed processes to shepherd students in middle and high school through various counseling practices, such as coordinating college visits, ensuring students attended in-school admission sessions or coordinating career or skills assessments for students. Recognizing students’ difficulty in navigating the academic and social rigors of school, one district counselor leader remarked, “We live a teenager’s life over and over again every day!”

Varying Socioeconomics

While school counseling leaders in all three districts performed activities related to all seven role-types, a marked distinction exists along socioeconomic lines in terms of which role-types dominate. In the low-income school district, the advocator role was the most prominent. In this district, the counseling leader ensured counselors focused their efforts on the many lower-income students who required extra support. They knew which kids would need the most support in their senior year of high school based on the absence of parental engagement during the junior year.

From their experience, counselors understood that students whose parents did not attend the required junior-year college counseling session were students who did not have familial support for the college-going process. These students, most of whom were lower-income, explained their parents’ excuses for not attending. Either their parents were not supportive of their college pursuits (e.g., apprehensive of the student moving away or afraid of the cost of college), were afraid of meeting with counselors due to a language barrier or simply believed it was their child’s responsibility, not theirs.

In the middle-income district, the program administrator role was the most prominent. The counselor leader in this district focused on improving the fit-and-match of students with the right colleges as most of their students were transferring once in college or returning home to the community college. The district emphasized college-going and improved its handling of college admissions and student advising to ensure better fits.

In the affluent district, the district counseling leader was primarily engrossed in the relationship building/managing and strategic planner/innovator roles. The counselor leader in this district had to actively manage the demands of a knowledgeable parent group and provide creative programming to enable students to differentiate themselves for admission to highly selective colleges and universities.

Additionally, this community’s sensitivity to the importance of college preparation played a role in how district administration structured the guidance function. Unlike the other two districts, the superintendent ensured the district counselor leader had no other responsibilities other than leading the guidance function. The supportive school board appropriated funding for additional Advanced Placement© courses and supported schoolwide remediation and college-prep for all students.

District Implications

Understanding the district counseling leadership role from the perspective of an institutional information agent and navigator may provide district leaders with added perspective on how to manage a college-readiness culture. This perspective would reveal the complexities in getting students and their parents through the college-readiness process and inform decision making about budget allocations with respect to elements of guidance counseling for college preparation. District counseling leaders have a 360-degree view of academic and social aspects of students’ lives and this insight could be leveraged to address the college-going culture of their districts.

The assistant superintendent and two superintendents articulated the value they saw in leveraging their district’s school counselor leader. They believed their school counseling leader and subordinates had deep relationships with their students and parents.

As institutional information agents, district school counselor leaders not only disseminate information, but they receive a significant amount of feedback from students and families. In this way, they are in a position to share insights with top district administrators about the communities they serve.