Why FAFSA by Phone is a Good Thing

By:  Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

There’s been more than a little scuttlebutt in the counseling community over yesterday’s announcement that the US Department of Education is creating a mobile phone app, making it possible to complete the FAFSA by phone. The app, which will be available in Spring of 2018, is part of a larger overhaul of the financial aid process, all designed to make it easier for students and parents to access and apply for federal student aid.

It’s easy to see how counselors could be skeptical about this move, especially if you’ve ever filled out a FAFSA. Since the form relies heavily on access to income information, it’s pretty easy to compare completing the FAFSA to doing your taxes, where forms are scattered all over the dining room table, and you need access to your online bank statements to stand even a remote chance of filling out the form with any degree of accuracy. Since most phone apps are associated with something quick and easy—ordering pizza, downloading a video—filing something as serious as a financial aid form by phone just seems like a bad idea.

On the other hand, some data would suggest this could be one of the smarter things that could be done to open up financial aid access to low income students. At the First Reach Higher symposium held by the Obama administration, data was shared that indicated most low income students do not have access to a home computer, but nearly all of them have access to a smart phone. This is one of many reasons why the wildly successful scholarship program Scholly started as a smart phone app—their real target audience uses phones, not computers.

Of course, there’s that whole “we need your tax information” part of completing a FAFSA that would make it equally hard to complete the application on a phone, since most people don’t exactly keep their tax information with them on their commute home, or at the local coffee shop when they check email. This may be true, but last year’s change in FAFSA filing asks students and parents to use tax information that’s already been reported, and can be retrieved from the IRS by using the FAFSA app. Now that the security problems have been cleared up, this really does make it possible for most, if not all, of those numbers to be pulled in on a smart phone.

New technology always raises the possibility of something going wrong, but there are two reasons why it’s a good idea the Department of Ed is making this move. First, if a student or parent starts completing the FAFSA by phone app and finds that it would be easier to use a computer, there’s a much better chance they will actually seek out a computer and complete the FAFSA, now that they’ve started it. It may be at work, it may be in the public library, but if you’re more than halfway done with a form that gets you cash for college, your incentive to finish the form is high.

Second, the increased access to FAFSA on a phone suggests users will give feedback to the Department about how the app could be better, and that could lead to modifications to the form itself. Americans aren’t shy about suggesting how tech could be better, and they really aren’t shy about talking about the high cost of college. Social media conversations about any limits the FAFSA app might have could be just what we’ve been hoping for to make applying for aid easier, no matter how you apply.

Looking for a Counselor Role Model? Try Dana Dornburgh

By:  Patrick O'Connor  Ph.D

Dana Dornburgh

School counseling is one of the few professions where the year starts fast and gets faster. This is particularly true in high schools, where the school counselor is welcomed back on their very first day with an office full of parents and students, all eager to discuss their academic intentions for the year. In other words, schedule changes.

Of course, some school counselors don’t even have to wait that long. Dana Dornburgh of Holland Patent Central School District was at home, squeezing the last drops out of her summer, when her daughter approached her, phone in hand. The parents of one of her daughter’s classmates didn’t have access to the school’s online portal, so they texted Dana’s daughter to see if Dana could take a screenshot of their daughter’s schedule and send it to them. You know—today.

Dana’s response, in length, quality, and success, is more that reason enough to elect her Queen of School Counseling. “I'm not at work. I'm on a ladder painting my porch. See you Thursday!”

Dana came to mind this week, as counselors are not only trying to advise students on personal issues, but also keenly focused on helping students apply to colleges that have early application deadlines  Applying to college is, at best, a well-organized fire drill of different people sending different things at different times, and hoping it all gets there on time. In the interest of helping some students learn more about responsibility, there are some things only the student can do in this process, like write the essays, and send in their test scores. That may not seem like much, but the number of students who come in asking if it’s too late to do either of these things, can be incredible, or depressing…

…or it could inspire you to reach down deep and find your inner Dana Dornburgh. It seems easier to say no during schedule changing season to requests that are a stretch. After a while, you can tell that Billy’s new interest in World Geography has nothing to do with Khartoum, and much more to do with Emily, who happens to love World Geography. If only Cupid could change schedules—but until then, it’s just me.

Believe it or not, missing college deadlines is really the same thing. Students and parents insist this is different, more serious. Billy and Emily have plenty of time to see each other outside class, and it’s likely their high school romance will fade. But denying a student the chance for admission at a college, just because they didn’t heed the dozen warnings you gave them about deadlines?

Not every student gets the attention they deserve from an overworked counselor, but it’s important to create policies about deadlines that give students the tools they’ll need to be successful at college. Will a college professor extend a term paper deadline, just because Billy never looked at the syllabus? Will Emily assume she can get more time for a project just by asking, since that’s all she’s had to do in high school? Americans are known for being inventive, but what does it say about the way students value rules if they’ve been raised to believe they’re always exceptions?

Counseling is a fine line between being supportive and being nurturing, or creating responses that lead to student growth. That may call for occasional exceptions to deadlines and processes, but if they’ve been created to provide growth, what are we saying to kids when we don’t let them grow?

Which is why I brought a mental paintbrush to my office today. Thanks, Dana Dornburgh.

Need Counselor-Focused PD? In Michigan, There’s a Law for That

By:  Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

You’ve been through this one too many times. You get through the first nine weeks of school, and you’re truly looking forward to the in-service day. You have all kinds of ideas about what you could do with the day—online seminars, visiting a college campus, talking to local mental health professionals about community needs— and you’re just about to run these ideas past your administrator, when the agenda for the day hits your inbox:

9-11:30 Learning the new online grading book

12:30-3 Reading across the curriculum

Important? Yes.

Good to know, so you can be a more supportive colleague for classroom teachers? You bet.

Directly applicable to your work as a school counselor? Absolutely not.

PD budgets are tight, so the school wants to get the biggest bang for their buck. That means the day is scheduled to help the 93% of the educators in your building who teach in classrooms, and the other 7% is just going to have to grin and bear it. Again.

That’s likely to change in Michigan in the next few years, thanks to a bill that was signed into law yesterday. House Bill 4181 was created in response to three clear needs. The first need came from state business leaders, who felt the state was putting too much emphasis on the value of a four-year college degree. Since students didn’t learn about vital career options in fields like manufacturing and skilled trades, businesses found themselves with thousands of vacancies in jobs that required as little as six months training, many with starting salaries of $40-50,000 a year.

The second need came from the public in general, who also had the feeling that maybe four years of college wasn’t the cure-all for Michigan’s economic woes. Polls showed an overwhelming majority of citizens felt the quality of college and career advising had a long way to go—and even though many realized part of the problem was due to the huge caseloads counselors worked with, there was still a sense something more could be done.

Combined with the frustrations of school counselors who were looking for professional development opportunities that spoke to their professional needs, House Bill 4181 found the essential support needed for passage. Michigan school counselors have long needed to complete 150 hours of professional development every five years to maintain their license or certification. This bill keeps that number at 150 hours, but requires that 25 of those hours focus on updated training in college counseling, and 25 hours focus on training in career counseling, with 5 of those 25 focused on careers in the military. The remaining 100 hours of professional development can be in anything else—including topics focused more on teachers—but the 50 counselor-focused hours is a big change, and a good start.

The bill now requires the state to develop guidelines for what kinds of professional development will meet these new requirements. Testimony on the bill focused on activities like counselors using professional development days to visit college campuses and job sites, participating in online seminars and “make and take” workshops, and taking greater advantage of the free professional development options that already exist in the state.

There are already enough free PD options in Michigan to have counselors meet these new requirements for the next 15-20 years. House Bill 4181 is expected to free more counselors from the bonds of teacher-based PD to take greater advantage of these programs, and the new ones that will come about as a result of the bill’s passage—all for the betterment of Michigan students, and Michigan’s economy.

Responding to “Our Records Indicate”

By:  Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

November is one of the most challenging times to be a high school counselor.  With so many students applying to colleges that have early deadlines, it can be impossible to get all of their transcripts sent on time—so, of course, you tell the students that if they are applying to a college with a November 1 deadline, they have to tell you this by October 15.

It would be great if this works, but it doesn’t.  There are those students who will never, ever understand that applying to college is a team activity.  As far as they are concerned, if they wake up on Halloween and decided to apply to a college with a November 1 deadline, there’s no reason they could possibly think of that would prevent you from submitting their transcript, along with a personalized letter espousing their talents.  After all, they reason—they gave you a day’s notice!

What’s even worse is when these very same tardy students come back into your office November 4 and say “I just checked my application portal, and it says you never sent my transcript!” Try as you may, the student just won’t believe it when you try to point out that the college has just received 3,000 transcripts in the last three days, so they haven’t had a chance to file them all yet.  This is also a perfect time to point out why you set an October 15 deadline for November 1 applications, but they won’t understand that either.  In fact, that likely only increases the chances of their parents calling wanting to know why you didn’t send the transcript, and why you yelled at their child.

There’s only so much you can do to try and keep students organized, and the key is to be organized yourself.  Once you figure out how much November 1 stress you can handle, take these steps to implement your plan:

Start early  There are tons of students who won’t pay attention to any reminders, but there are many who will.  Since every obedient student makes your job that much easier, set up a calendar of college application due dates and share it with students and their families as juniors.  Announce it at parent programs, put it in the college handbook, text it, post it on your Website, remind students if you meet with them individually.  Ample coverage is your best defense for any student or parent who says they were never told.  Remind them there’s a difference between not knowing, and never being told.

Give them something to do  No matter what your best plans, there will always be a student applying late, or a college erroneously saying they are missing something.  Reading a “we don’t have it” email from a college is a pretty helpless feeling—so give your students help.  Every time you talk about college deadlines, tell them that colleges make mistakes, and sometimes claim to be missing things they have.  If you get a notice, call the college, and have them double check.  There’s a good chance one part of the computer wasn’t talking to the other part of the computer, and it’s there.

Give them something else to do  If the college insists something is missing, you also want to empower your students to solve the problem.  Give them a process—“Email me, call me, contact the department secretary”—and when they come in with a problem, make them follow it.  Knowing something can be done is good; knowing what to do is better, and will make for an easier time for everyone.