Extensive Career and Postsecondary Encouragement Services

Scott Gillie
Executive Director
Encouragement Services, Inc.

Extensive Career and Postsecondary Encouragement Services - developmentally sequenced education and career guidance messages delivered to all middle and high school students, educators, and parents via direct mail, websites, school distribution, telephone, texting, and social media to stimulate, encourage, and support student motivation, career development, educational achievement, and attainment. Key intents of extensive career and postsecondary encouragement services are improved preparation for postsecondary education, timely student participation in critical steps to college, and, ultimately, increased postsecondary participation and success.

Introduction
Contemporary information technology makes it possible for families to receive an array of low-cost information products and services that guide and direct students and parents toward achieving educational and career goals.  An extensive career and postsecondary encouragement system enhances the efforts of intensive interventions (counseling, mentoring, and compensatory programs), contributes to a culture of developmental possibilities, energizes the efforts of key players and programs, fosters an opportunity structure for all students, and reduces perceived barriers to postsecondary participation.

For the most part, efforts to support increased college access and improved college success follow the dominant model of intensive services (as implemented in TRIO, GEAR UP, school counseling, and community-based scholarship programs). These interventions are characterized by one or more of the following:

1. Specialized staff in low (as possible) ratios of clients to staff
2. A defined set of services or interventions often provided in a school-like setting
3. A process or curriculum designed to address client needs
4. A clientele restricted by economic or other exclusionary guidelines for eligibility
5. Resource limitations that severely constrain the number of people served
6. A program design oriented to most-in-need populations
7. A sense of being left out among those who have need but don't receive services

School counselor education programs prepare counselors with one-on-one counseling techniques, small-group counseling techniques, and skills in crisis intervention. Upon graduation counselors often find themselves overwhelmed by the needs of 400 students or more (and a job description that includes many non-counseling responsibilities). The U.S. student-to-counselor ratio in 2007-08 was 467:1 (U.S. Department of Education, Common Core of Data, National Institute for Educational Statistics-Public Elementary and Secondary School Student Enrollment and Staff. Common Core of Data: School Year 2007-2008. Click here for a listing of state ratios).

Limitation of the Intensive Intervention Approach
As TRIO programs, GEAR UP programs, counseling interventions, community-based scholarship programs, and others can attest, the application of highly focused attention to those in need often brings about favorable outcomes. For those in the most serious circumstances of disadvantage or need, intensive services may be the only chance for many individuals to realize their education and career aspirations.  

Since the advent of social welfare programs, disadvantaged people have been the subjects and recipients of a panoply of programs designed to compensate for various aspects of disadvantage. Generally, those programs that have been the most effective have been those with costs that preclude generalization to all, or even most, of those who need the programs. For those fortunate enough to participate in these programs, the programs offer many benefits.

Because of funding limitations, 90 percent of the eligible student population (the lowest quartile of incomes) will receive no intensive postsecondary encouragement services. This is the main limiting factor of the intensive model. Certainly, increased investment could improve upon this situation, but even a quintupling of investment would leave half of the eligible population without services.

The Broad Reach of an Extensive Encouragement System
What could an extensive encouragement system accomplish? An extensive encouragement system would contribute to the establishment of a college-going culture in which postsecondary education is a shared goal of all students, educators, and parents, and which assumes high levels of postsecondary access and success. Consider the behavioral changes that would occur in schools where the students, teachers, and administrators share the belief that college is for everyone who prepares. Extensive encouragement systems provide vital support to existing (intensive) efforts.  The extensive encouragement system aims to develop additional capacity in both students and their parents—capacity to assume responsibility for planning and preparing for the future. And, importantly, all students and households can be included under this model.

Extensive services improve the capacity of students and their families to assist themselves. Characteristic of this model are enumerated below: 

1. Use of multiple mass communications (newsletters, postcards, planning booklets, application packages) delivered to students and parents
2. A staffing ratio of one-to-many households
3. Information and resources intended for self help or parental assistance
4. A developmental process that builds on assets
5. Inclusive of all students and families
6. A program design that breaks down processes into clear steps to achieving success
7. A web of cross-referring components for additional information and services
8. Reliance on technology, including websites, help lines, and database marketing strategies
9. Information and services tailored to the assessed needs and interests of the population served

Data Informs Key Efforts
In order to design messages and services effectively, to sequence messages in accordance with the readiness of the recipients, it is necessary to survey the population to be served with an assessment of needs, interests, experiences, perceived limitations, and readiness for services. ESI has developed an online guidance assessment, reporting, and communications system, the Universal Encouragement Program, which offers online assessments for students in grades 6-8, 9-12, and graduates and former students are available at no cost to schools and education support programs..

Comparison of Intensive and Extensive Encouragement Models
As the following table depicts, there are trade-offs in making investments in intensive and extensive support systems.  The purpose of this comparison is not to favor one over the other but to illuminate key differences.

Benefits of an Extensive Postsecondary Encouragement System
In an environment infused with high-quality education and career information and services, school counselors may apply their skills to higher-level tasks of analysis, synthesis, planning, and decision-making with students.  

Through direct engagement of parents with clearly written educational and career guidance information, parents and guardians can better articulate guidance expectations and rationale and “triangulate” the messages given to students by their counselors and teachers.

Universal assessment of student guidance needs provides individual and group profiles that identify specific needs for targeted intervention. For example, students who indicate they are “uncertain about how to prepare for college” might receive an extensive intervention (an email message that announces an evening workshop and refers students to specific online resources) specifically addressing the indicated uncertainty. Students who indicate they are “concerned about how to pay for college” might receive special financial aid messages that direct students to grants and scholarship information, to special programs that help pay for college, and to consumer information that informs students and families about how to limit their assumption of indebtedness.

Synergies with Other Education Support Systems
An extensive encouragement system provides a structure for linking with other support systems. Through development of a large-scale student database, it is possible to engage meaningfully other delivery systems.

• Linking high school counselors with guidance assessment data
  The assessment process yields group and individual guidance reports. The reports enable schools and education support programs to identify key guidance needs, focus efforts, and identify programmatic and staffing needs 

• Linking high school students with colleges and other postsecondary opportunities
  Through the assessment process, students indicate their interest in specific institutions, programs of study, and careers. 

• Linking students and families with financial aid and other key information
  The assessment process provides the mechanism for providing information by electronic or direct mail, including applications and instructions for financial aid. 

• Linking students with an array of career development resources
  The assessment process enables easy referral to career resources through identifying students who desire assistance in exploring careers, who want assistance in making career decisions, and who want take a career or learning style inventory. The assessment identifies the level of student interest in 16 career clusters.