Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Learn from Other Schools’ Success Stories

Bill DeBaun, Senior Director,  National College Attainment Network (NCAN)

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 posts 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! 

• Hear from Peers: NCAN-Served Districts Offer Advice for K-12 CCR Efforts: During our To & Through Advising Challenge, NCAN worked with 20 school districts across the country on how to level up their college and career readiness work. This post includes some of their best advice! 
• 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 are three more of my favorite posts: 

• 5 Considerations for Schools Working with Postsecondary Planning Partners 
• OneGoal Postsecondary Readiness Rubrics Are Must-See for Every District, School 
• RISE’s Postsecondary Tracker Offers Data Insights to Counselors 

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!