College Counselor to Parents: Relax

By: Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

It must be September, because the parents of high school seniors are panicked about college. As a high school counselor, I did everything but give away free gas to get parents to visit me in the spring, but usually to no avail. Now, I'm buying my groceries in the next county because so many parents want to solve their senior's college woes in Aisle 6 of the corner supermarket.

The stress of applying to college is not lost on me. But unlike running from a burning building or scoring a Harry Potter book at midnight, stress doesn't help the college selection process. If you feel you're behind, the best thing to do is forget about the stress and start talking to two important college experts.

The first expert is your high school senior, the person who will be going to college. You may have missed the February college night for juniors and the college fair last May, but chances are your child has picked up more than enough information to bring you up to speed – plus, they know what they're looking for in a college.

Of course, this might not be easy. Teenagers often seem feisty, uncommunicative, and embarrassed by your every move. Ask them about college plans, and you may as well be doing the Macarena at the bus stop. You need an approach that shows respect for them as independent people, interest in their opinions, and an understanding of their values.

So go buy a pizza.

Sitting down with a pizza creates a common interest (food), a relaxed atmosphere, and something to do in the event of an awkward silence. In the middle of their second slice, tell them you want to help them apply to college, but you don't want to hassle them. As a result, you'll sit down once a week for 20 minutes to talk about college, and unless they bring it up some other time, that will be it.

The 20-minute weekly meeting is the only time you nudge them about application deadlines (NOT on Friday night as they're heading to the game), and ask how college plans are going. In return, they use the meeting to ask if you wrote the check for the application to State U., or why you asked that embarrassing question when you visited a college last week. You get the information you need, they don't feel you're invading their turf, and everyone gets a snack. Voilà!

After about two or three of these meetings, you're ready to meet the second expert, your child's school counselor. If you haven't met the counselor before, don't worry; the goal here is to make sure everyone knows how to help your child find a college that's right. Since most school counselors have far too many students, the challenge is to reach that goal in a short period of time – about 18 minutes. But since you've found a way to talk with your senior about college and not look like a dork, you can do anything.

When the meeting comes, you and your child greet the counselor and you ask these questions:

1. What should my child focus on as a student this year? The counselor can talk about your child's schedule, what teachers think of your child, and what they think your child should do to grow as a person – it's wide open.

2. Can we tell you a little about our child that we think would help you with their college plans? This is a forced question few counselors say no to, and they shouldn't. If you talk about your concerns and interests for just a few minutes (practice at home), the counselor can ask questions, and really get to know what you're thinking about for your child's life after high school.

3. Does my child have a realistic list of colleges? Your child should drop a copy of this list off to the counselor three days before the meeting – that way, the counselor can prepare a solid answer.

4. What are the deadlines for submitting applications to you? This is probably in the school's college handbook or website, but ask (and write down the answer) so everyone knows the deadlines.

5. What's the best way to get in touch with you? Most counselors are either e-mail or phone people, so here's their chance to share their preference, and your chance to further respect their time. Two big no-nos here for parents are asking "quick questions" if you see the counselor at a school function (or the supermarket) and dropping in at the counselor's office without an appointment. Counselors want the chance to serve you well; give them that chance, and send the quick questions in via the counselor's preferred way.

Feeling bad about getting a late start on college won't help your child. Instead, use that energy to consult with two local college experts, and the rush will make you want to do the Macarena.

Just not in front of the children.

Three Big College Changes You May Have Missed This Summer

By: Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

It’s always good to be so busy having a great summer vacation that you lose track of the bigger world.  Relaxing is important, and helps school counselors maintain perspective.

Of course, August then rolls around, and like the student who missed the first day of class, it’s a good idea to ask someone who’s been paying attention, “Did I miss anything important?”

As a welcome back from those of you just straggling in from the beach, here are a few new trends to keep your eye on:

Veterans and Families Pay In-State Tuition  One of the biggest changes to the GI Bill happened this summer, as President Obama signed a bill allowing veterans to pay in-state tuition at any public college in the country.  Individual colleges and states had these policies in place, but this new law opens up more affordable educations to veterans from coast to coast.

Of special interest to school counselors is the bill’s provision that extends in-state tuition to the spouses and children of veterans as well.  Since the law goes in to effect in the Fall of 2015, counselors will want to announce this change to all of their students, but especially budget-conscious seniors, who can now think again about public institutions that may have been out of reach just a month ago.

Big Sports Colleges Gain Strength  Another change less than a month old is the NCAA’s loosening of some economic limitations on large college athletic programs.  Starting next fall, colleges in what’s known as the Big 5 athletic conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, and SEC) can offer more health insurance, scholarship, and cost-of-attendance aid to athletes.  This change will clearly make successful programs even more successful, making it that much harder for colleges with smaller programs to land top athletes.  Then again, it was always a tough sell getting a student to come to a college with hundreds of fans, versus one with thousands.

Top players in the Class of 2015 will likely pay even less than before for college, making competition more keen among the biggest programs.  At the same time, more athletes may be interested in these bigger benefits whose skill levels might not make them top-notch recruits.  This makes it more important than ever to make sure all athletes have college options that don’t rely on an offer that might change with a coach’s new job offer or an off-season injury.

College Athletics, Part II  Another August NCAA ruling isn’t likely to impact next year’s athletes, but it’s worth paying attention to for 9th and 10th graders.  A federal court has ruled that the NCAA’s policy forbidding athletes to share in the profits of their college’s athletic program violates anti-trust law.  This policy has long kept athletes from asking for part of the revenues colleges get from TV contracts and Bowl appearances.  This summer’s ruling is the first step toward allowing that to happen.

The final word on this ruling will likely come from the US Supreme Court in a couple of years, but the implications are important as school counselors advise their youngest athletes.  While current policies often create financial gaps for athletes to fill, a change in profit-sharing policies could leave find some athletes attending college while making a hefty profit.  Combined with an earlier decision allowing college athletes to unionize, the field of college athletics is likely to see many changes in the near future, making it more challenging to encourage high school student athletes to hit the books as hard as they hit the gym.

The Ten Goals for This School Year

By: Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

The start of a new school year is a lot like the start of a new calendar year.  Everyone begins with a sense of fresh opportunity, convinced this is the year that will be different from the time we vowed to give up chocolate, use the treadmill every day, or walk the dog even when it’s cold.

In the spirit of eternal optimism, here’s my list for this year. I’d love to hear yours:

This school year, I vow:

1.     To write my college letters of recommendation right after I meet with each student.  The fresher the meeting, the better the letter—even if the ones I write at 2 AM the night before they’re due are just fine, too.

2.     Not to scream when someone talks about the 3 Rs of education.  Only one of them is an R, so it’s easy to see why people don’t take educators seriously when we use this term—but I’m pulling a Queen Elsa here.  We’ll see what happens.

3.     To figure out if there’s more I can do to help students pay for college.  The need is greater, and the resources seem smaller, but once my letter writing is done, this will be my focus, since getting into college doesn’t matter if you can’t afford it.

4.     To ease off on social media.  It’s too easy to look at the phone; it’s time to look more at the world first-hand.

5.     To master Excel and Google Docs.  How hard can it be?

6.     To make sure no student’s college essay uses the word Epic.  I know—right?

7.     To eat lunch out of tmy office, with other people, at least once a week.  Yes, it’s become that bad.

8.     To help at least one state pass school counselor training reform in college counseling.  We need to know more, and we know we need to know more.  I hope my state is first past the finish line, but if another state wants help doing this, call me.

9.     To figure out when I can do leisure reading without falling asleep.  Doris Kearns Goodwin is a great writer; why have I read the same sentence about Teddy Roosevelt every night for the last four months?

10.  To let people call me whatever they want.  School counselor, guidance counselor, college counselor.  I know I work hard for kids; that’s all that matters.

What Was Done for School Counselors on Their Summer Vacation

By: Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

Schools are opening after a summer of activity rich with support and opportunity for school counselors.  There are almost too many highlights to talk about, but these four come to mind:

First Lady Michelle Obama electrified the profession when she appeared as a keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the American School Counselor Association in June.  Mrs. Obama recognized school counselors for their hard work, and acknowledged that their work was made even more challenging due to large caseloads and insufficient training in career and college counseling.  Mrs. Obama promised to do more for school counselors…

…and she made good on her promise when the White House held a July summit on school counselors and college advising at Harvard.  120 college advising advocates met to discuss current progress and challenges in this vital field; participants were also asked to make a promise to advance college advising in some way over the next six months.

The summit came about a month after US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to the 50 state chief education officers.  In that letter, Secretary Duncan asked school leaders to make sure counselors received adequate training in college and career counseling. He also asked them to make sure school counselors received the training and opportunities necessary to be seen as the leaders of creating a college readiness atmosphere in their buildings—with both goals accomplished by the end of this summer.

Common Application was supposed to open August 1st for high school seniors to begin the college application process.  Fraught with logistical challenges last year, Common App put the concerns of many counselors to rest, as the application tool opened twelve hours early, on July 31st.  Since then, students and counselors have been completing online materials without a hitch, much to the delight of all members of the Class of 2015 and those supporting their work in the college application process. (Disclosure: I am a member of the board of directors for Common Application.)

School counselors find themselves in the unusual position of starting the school year with positive momentum built by others, so it’s natural to ask—what should we do next to build on this summer of school counselor support?  Three things come to mind:

Continue to implement the excellent programs and support school counselors are known for.  The White House is extending unprecedented support to school counselors because the work we do for students makes a difference.  Plans for future services are always important, but only if they are built on the continued success of our programs—as a result, we need to keep up the good work.

Find out what steps your state has taken to implement the requests of Secretary Duncan’s “Dear Colleague” letter.  Early indications suggest state school leaders have been slow to consider or develop initiatives that will give school counselors the better training they deserve in college advising and in building leadership in college readiness.  Now is not the time to let this opportunity die due to lack of counselor input; contact your state education office, and ask about their plans.

Get involved.  The White House is holding another college advising summit in December, where invitations are extended based on commitments to strengthen the relationships between K-12 and higher education.  There’s really no such thing as free time to a school counselor, but if your state is behind in its Dear Colleague commitment, now is the time to step up to the plate.  Not only will it help counselors and students; it may land you in the Roosevelt Room with the First Lady.

A Reminder That Numbers Don’t Always Tell the Story

By: Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

Michigan residents received interesting news about their schools this week, as the state released its annual test results.  According to the report, and to a related editorial in the Lansing State Journal, Michigan’s eleventh graders managed to do three very interesting things, all at the same time:

·         As a group, their scores on the Michigan Merit Exam went up;

·         At the same time, the number of students the test deemed to be “college-ready” went down;

·         At 200 high schools, not a single junior was college-ready, according to the test.

If the purpose of data is to lead to more questions, this set of test scores gets an A, since the results seem to be confusing at best, and discouraging at worst.

How can scores go up if fewer students are college ready?  The test used to determine college readiness is the ACT, which measures student performance in English, math, science reasoning, and math.  Students are college-ready only if they score at a certain level at each of the four areas.  This means more students scored higher on parts of the exam than last year, but fewer of them scored at the college level ready in all four areas.

So it’s kind of like having five players on your basketball team that each score 20 points, instead of having one player score 30, and the other four score 10.  Exactly.  Michigan’s students generated more points, but fewer individuals were, so to speak, high scorers.

Is that good?  As a group, Michigan scored higher on the exam to move up the average.  That suggests students as a whole are learning more, so that’s good news.

But fewer students are college ready, so that’s bad, right?  It would be much better if the average scores had gone up *and* if more students were college ready, for sure.  But the increase in scores likely means more students are closer to being college ready, as it’s measured by the test. 

Will this lead to more students taking remedial classes in college, or flunking out?  That’s hard to say.  If a student majoring in History is college ready (according to the ACT) in reading and English, but not math and science, they might get through the few college-level  math and science classes they need with more study time and a tutor. Engineering students with high math and science scores who didn’t make the ACT college-ready standard in English may have a harder time, since you have to read no matter what you study, but they might be OK as well, if their scores were only a point or two away.

Because the test isn’t perfect, and some students who scored close to college-ready may be fine.  Right.

So the college-bound students at those 200 high schools will probably be OK?  Many of those students will go on to college and be fine, as long as they study hard in their senior year and make good college choices.  Still, educators in those schools will be looking to see what they can do to get all of their students across the finish line. Zero is a powerful number, and that could be good news in the end.

Anything else in the data we should know about?  The breakdown of average scores by race continues to be discouraging—only 5% of African-American students taking the test were viewed as college-ready in math. This suggests we have a long way to go in working with students of color, especially in low-income areas; but if anyone needed test scores to realize that, you have to wonder if they’ve been paying attention.

White House to States: Help School Counselors Now

By: Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

School counselors got their summer vacation off to a great start, as many are attending the annualconference of the American School Counselor Association in Orlando, which featured First Lady Michelle Obama as one of the keynote speakers. After thanking the counselors for all they do, Mrs. Obama touched on many of the key challenges counselors live with every day:

• Mrs. Obama called the national average of one counselor for every 471 students "outrageous."
• "(O)ne in five American high schools doesn't have any school counselors at all--none. And that's appalling."
• " (T)hose of you at the high school level are expected to help students choose between thousands of colleges and certificate programs and countless financial aid packages, but hardly any of your master's degree programs included training on college and career readiness."

The applause received by each of these remarks indicated a sense of gratitude and relief--at last, a policy maker truly understood the needs of school counselors.

Mrs. Obama then outlined three key steps the administration is taking to support school counselors:

• Starting in 2015, the School Counselor of the Year will be recognized at a White House ceremony, echoing the long-held White House practice of honoring the Teacher of the Year.
• A meeting will be held in late July at Harvard to discuss the professional development needs of school counselors and the future of the profession.
• Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has sent a letter to all state education leaders, calling for more support of school counselors.

A close look at the letter sent to state school leaders clearly indicates this commitment to counselors is a serious one. In his communique, Secretary Duncan calls on school officials to:

• Give counselors the resources they need to do their work, including the removal of non-counseling duties that take away from time with students.
• Empower and train counselors to serve as leaders of the college access movement in their schools and beyond, giving them the skills and opportunities to provide professional development to teachers and others who help shape student attitudes about college access and college readiness.
• Develop these programs and policies for improved college access this summer.

That last point can't be overstated. The profession that has spent decades discussing student assessment and teacher tenure must radically improve the way school counselors are viewed and able to do their work in eight weeks.

Mrs. Obama's remarks advance a year-long effort by the White House to improve college access for all students. The call to elevate the role and visibility of school counselors in the college selection process is bolstered by an avalanche of datashowing the importance of counselors in helping students make good decisions for life after high school--and how badly students want and need that assistance. School counselors have long been the de facto leaders of the affective tone and college advising curriculum of their buildings. Mrs. Obama's remarks, and Secretary Duncan's letter, are the most tangible acknowledgements to date of those important roles.

Many details remain to be worked out--what will change in eight weeks, where will the money come from for professional development in college advising, how will counselor training programs respond to the paucity of college advising preparation--but it is clear that school counseling and postsecondary planning are receiving a welcome by this White House that has never been seen. School may be out, but state education leaders suddenly have some serious homework to do this summer vacation--and it's due in eight weeks.

Let's hope they get an A.

Worried About Student Debt? Ask a Counselor

By: Patrick O'Connor Ph.D

It happens every year.  No sooner does school let out, and counselors complete their extra couple of days/weeks/months of work, and the headlines fill with a story that directly impacts our work.

This year’s topic is student debt.  Many articles are posted each May about the high price of college, but this year brought more of them than ever.  Many of them went to great lengths to include examples of students who took out $80-100,000 in loans to complete Bachelors’ degrees that held small value in the job market.  This has led to a number of articles countering that, all things equal, statistics show student debt isn’t all that much worse than it was ten or twenty years ago.  Now, in late June, the articles are challenging the data used in these articles, with the “sky is falling” team and the “things have always been this way” team trying to outmaneuver each other with discussions of mean, average, and outliers.

It’s important to read these articles, but it’s even more important to do so with a wary eye.  Yes, there are students who take out $80,000 loans to get degrees in things like Medieval Art History, but there aren’t that many, or the average debt load of graduates would be $80,000, when it’s currently $33,000.  That’s still a lot of money, unless of course your degree is in Engineering, when you will likely get a job before college is over, and that job will pay at least $55,000 a year.  That means $30,000 in debt isn’t a risky loan; it’s a wise investment. 

On the other hand, it really probably is a very bad idea to take $33,000 in loans to attend a local “college” that promises you a great-paying job in six months, when you have never heard of that college before they called you at home.  If their results were really that good, there’s a great chance someone—your parents, a friend, your counselor—would have told you about this at some point in your high school career. 

Beyond offering bad advice for students and parents, these articles hold a higher likelihood for compelling mischief when they recommend policy changes based on their limited use of statistics.  The “do nothing” crowd is totally oblivious to the number of debt-endowed students who are living with their parents—but that is where we find the largest increase in indebted students. 

At the same time, a remarkable number of high borrowers choose to attend higher-priced private colleges, rather than the lower-priced universities that, as a rule, are considered less prestigious.   Many people would rather drive an Accura than a Camry, but should we really alter college loan policies just because those who can well afford the Camry take loans to support a poorly-informed choice to go for the flashier ride?

The challenge in letting economists, politicians, and the media determine education policy is that none of them are educators, making it too easy to wander from reality when they try and find a “cause” and a “solution.” This year’s discussion of college costs is lengthier than prior years, but the quality of the debate has now devolved into arguing about one another’s figures.  Students and parents should let the argument continue without them; if you need help in deciding what’s best for you, talk to a counselor before you sign off of any loan, or decide to spend your life savings on a college just because it has a higher ranking.  Your decision shouldn’t be about prestige, or bimodal distributions—it should be about you.