I don’t think too few guidance counselors are a problem. If the theory is that poor people go to poor schools, how much benefit would be derived from hiring more lousy guidance counselors?
It has never been easier for anyone to go to college. Any college-able high school senior can at least figure out how to go to a state college or a community college. There is a bit of neurosis out there about “fit” and finding the perfect college.
A too busy and uninformed (about college) parent is also a crummy parent. But even with lousy parent(s), a kid has never had it easier for going to college. It is so easy that too many unqualified students attend college and rack up massive, never-to-be-paid debt.
In 2015, we had about 3 million high school graduates and over 2/3 went on to college. To me the problem is not too few guidance counselors, it is too many high school dropouts. Over 500,000 students drop out of high school per year. That is the plight of the poor (or soon to be poor). The ease of dropping out of school or attending sham “alternative” high schools aggravated by abysmal parenting in many cases is creating a burgeoning social problem.
I guess because I am in LA I immediately think of the demographic of the poor here. There are so many uneducated parents that focus on feeding and housing their children they aren’t as focused on their education. Kids need to start thinking about college planning in their freshman year. Most 14 year olds in that demographic (and others) are clueless. They don’t know how to create a path of grades and classes that will make them candidates for a four year college or university. They realize in the middle of junior year when tests start that they may or may not be prepared for.
I worked with and for very wealthy and educated people before I became a parent who made me realize the necessity of education so when my daughter was 5 years old and asked how long she was going to school I automatically added in 4 years of college. She didn’t realize college wasn’t mandatory until eight grade. But, if you have a parent with no education, meaning 10th grade or lower because the live in an economically depressed area where people drop out of school because they have to work to survive and this has happened for generations, college educations are not their reality. And this is many kids who are very smart and capable.
Here is an article that coincidently popped up on my FB feed.
Huh, @WISdad23, cute pun. Indigent students do tend to go to indigent schools in our current system. But those same students could (and sometimes do) go to excellent schools when taxpayers make it a priority.
Many years ago I read an article about why the children of impoverished Asian immigrants in California tend to have much higher college enrollment than the children of other immigrants. The finding was that Asian parents were better at sharing information on the intricacies of college preparation with other parents. Newly arrived families learned from members of their social circle how to help their kids get ahead, and college was a goal early on. This morning on NPR’s StoryCorps they featured an interview with a man who had immigrated from Mexico and worked as a groundskeeper at Stanford for many years. His son had graduated from Stanford and was now the head of the union organization that included his dad’s union. It was one of the best StoryCorps interviews I’ve heard. I think what’s apparent is that there is little a guidance counselor can do if the seeds of higher education are not planted early. http://www.npr.org/2016/05/13/477694356/a-stanford-family-groundskeeper-dad-cultivates-his-sons-classroom-dream
^^ I shared that same StoryCorps story in that “Stanford dean” thread yesterday. It really was so inspiring.
The other thing about both Francisco and many Asian immigrants is that, even though they may work in blue-collar jobs here in the US, they were often relatively well (and sometimes highly) educated in their home countries. While they themselves weren’t eligible for the best jobs here, their goal is to make sure their children have the opportunities they missed out on. These parents may be poor and/or working-class, but they’re bright and ambitious and have big plans for their children, which they’re willing to work towards (and sacrifice for) to fulfill.
In many ways, it all comes down to good parents. The deck is really stacked against the bright, ambitious student who is the anomaly in his or her own family. Those are the kids I really feel for – the ones with big dreams who constantly hear, “Who do you think you are?” and “It was good enough for me, it’s good enough for you.” from family members and friends. Those students are really dependent on a teacher or a counselor intervening on their behalf. How many never get that chance?
If you like inspiring stories about a poor student overcoming great odds, this one about Darren Walker, the current head of the Ford Foundation, is one of the best I’ve ever read. It goes at great length about a third of the way in to explain how he got to where he is today. There were several people who saw his raw intelligence and potential and helped him see what he could achieve with a good education: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/04/what-money-can-buy-profiles-larissa-macfarquhar
We moved here from Germany right before my daughter started High School, so we didn’t only have to figure out the whole college application process but also the American school system. My daughter met with her GC once in 9th grade and that was it. I don’t see the need for a GC at all, everything you need you can find on the Internet. Maybe it was easier for us, because coming from Germany we are used to absolutely no handholding, but I don’t see how a GC could have helped us with the whole process.
@Momsquad “The finding was that Asian parents were better at sharing information on the intricacies of college preparation with other parents.”
In the primarily white communities we have lived in, if you share what you are doing for college prep, you are likely to be criticized, so people tend not to discuss it much. It sounds like in asian communities, that sharing might be viewed more positively, and more families have a chance to learn things.
I hate to say it, but I also think that in a lot of more affluent communities, parents and students don’t want to tip anyone off to their plans. It amazes me how protective many parents are of their students’ prospects. They want to hang onto every advantage.
Our school’s college counseling team recommends parents not talk to each other. They said it makes people feel more anxious and competitive. I think in reality, many parents do share info in a general sense but I have to agree that following their advice about keeping plans private greatly reduces gossip and maintains a supportive environment. Many of the kids talk to each other, so it’s not all cloaks and dark rooms. Having said that, there is a greater flow of info between parents whose kids are in different years.
@LucieTheLakie Agree 100%. Parents often do their best to dissuade others from applying on the theory that a given university will only take a certain number from each school. Indeed, at my D’s high school college night, there was a lot of gossiping over where various kids were applying. Some of the comments were downright mean. I told my D to say she would probably stay near home as that wouldn’t attract attention. She then surprised her friends on May 1st when she announced where she had decided to go.
@gardenstategal “Our school’s college counseling team recommends parents not talk to each other. They said it makes people feel more anxious and competitive.”
Not talking about plans probably does reduce stress, but it strikes me as the “ostrich sticking its head in the sand” / “ignorance is bliss” approach. I would much rather be informed.
@LucieTheLakie , Thank you for posting the New Yorker article. It’s interesting that in his recollections, Darren Walker specifically remembers a teacher explaining to him the importance of self control. It seems he took control of his future at a very young age.
I am surprised to hear that in some school districts parents are hesitant to share information with each other. At our high school most of the kids head to one of the State schools (U California or Cal State) or to community college. Most of us shared whatever we could with each other through the process. Perhaps some families that hired pricey admission counselors with an eye to private schools were more circumspect with their information. My friends who had kids a few years older were a huge source of information for me, and I in turn helped friends with younger kids as they started the process. I think it is this social circle sharing of information that is missing for many kids.
@Much2learn , I can understand why you’d say that, and if it were a different school, I think I would agree. But in this case, I don’t think that it was so much a matter of putting heads in the sand as of the school wanting parents to stay focused on their own kid and honoring the fact that while the kids work really hard, they don’t compete with each other. (No class rank, no valedictorian, no weighting of grades, etc.) The school really values the kids as individuals and emphasizes making a good match, and I think their point is that the only kid you know well enough to really truly understand fit and chances is your own.
Having said that , it is a BS, and the parents don’t tend to see each other a whole lot (i.e., parents weekend, perhaps at a game or concert), so it’s not as if we’re all neighbors and avoiding a taboo subject. The school provides good group programming for parents on college planning and excellent individual counseling.
The kids have very different preferences and objectives, and DS’s friends are pursuing really different paths – engineering, art, writing. Kids who need FA might be focusing on publics in their home states as well as places that are need blind, and this really does make the searches different.
Not to say that I never engaged in a discussion about junior spring break road trips (and that reactions to schools and/or suggestions of similar ones were exchanged) or a conversation about how our kids were working with their counselors or just general commiserating over how anxiety producing the whole process was, but I can honestly say that I never had a conversation about where kids were applying or what their stats were.
The kids, I think, knew a lot more about what was going on with each other, especially the ones that were applying to a couple of schools that tend to be popular. DS was not interested in any of those, so I was (blessedly!) oblivious to that drama.
I can see how discussing college plans could make others anxious, especially if the students come from a high achieving prep school. There are a few parents I discuss Spyboy’s game plan with, but these are good friends who all share information, tips, etc. Our sons have different trajectories and interests so there’s no sense of competition.
However, I learned the first time around that some will place their values on your decisions so I don’t share freely. We live in a small town and Spyboy attends a prep school in another city. Many of the local kids attend community college or in-state university. Those with more money/better grades attend the flagship. Few from our small burg leave the state so eyebrows raise if OOS or privates are mentioned.
Our large public school actually has fairly good GCs even though they have a caseload of about 400 students each. We are lucky that DS17 has the “best” GC at the school, from what I’ve heard from other parents. They are assigned by alphabet and stay with students all 4 years, so they only have ~100 graduating each year.
Our GCs are happy to meet with the student and their family once per year starting in 9th to talk about course planning and how to be on track for college. We schedule that meeting in advance, but students can also meet with their GC as needed anytime. Our GC generally responds to my email within 24 hours and has been good about faxing and emailing transcripts etc. I think she probably knows all the students who have met with her by name.
The GC workload at our school is probably lower than you’d think, because many of the families don’t take advantage of the one meeting per year offer and many students have probably never even met with their GC other than to fix a messed up class schedule. Of course, GCs also meet with student who need access to social services and other non-college-related things.
I do know that there are GCs at our school who have forgotten to tell kids aiming for engineering that they should take SAT Subject Tests before senior year and have given bad advice about course selection. Most of the focus is on kids wanting to get into the UC and CSU systems, which have fairly set rules about minimum required courses. It helps me that I’m on CC, where I can get a lot of information that I might otherwise need from the school.
Our school is a large public (~500 per grade) with a somewhat bimodal distribution of students. A good number of students are high achievers with parents who are UC faculty or high tech employees. About 30-40% are low income and native Spanish speakers who end up at the local community college (which is quite good).
Guidance counselors are like anyone else…a wide variety that cannot be lumped together very well. Individually, you will see good ones and bad ones from poor schools to rich, public to private.
The real difference, as I see it, is that in schools where the parents are less engaged or informed about colleges, they tend to abdicate that part of parenting to the schools themselves. Even in our large, upscale suburban district, many parents just go with what the counselors say. Unfortunately, they often give ‘standard’ advice that may or may not fit your situation.
On a side note, @katliamom, vis-a-vis vouchers. It may behoove you to study up on how vouchers work in Milwaukee. It is actually a benefit to the student that moves (giving choice and options) and the school that loses a student. Why? It is simple. The voucher was (a few years ago) around $5000. The cost to educate a student in the district was approximately $7000. The result is a net gain for the ‘losing’ district of about $2000 per student.
I will look into it, @Torveaux, but I will say that right off the bat I’m highly skeptical of any reform coming from Wisconsin, a state that is killing its own higher education system. It’s like telling America, look at Kansas for guidance on how lower taxes are great for public schools.
