Schools that began with the goal of helping more low-income students get to college have learned that helping those same students finish college can be an even bigger challenge.
Some of the country’s leading charter school organizations have gotten attention recently for college counseling efforts that don’t stop once students leave high school, as National Public Radio reports:
Top charter schools can often boast of sending virtually all of their graduates to college, even when the majority of their students are low-income or are the first members of their families to pursue post-high school educations.
As it turns out, many of those students don’t earn a degree.
Some of the best charter school networks — places like the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) or Harlem Children’s Zone — are working to change that. They are not only helping their graduates get into college, but are also counseling them once they are on university campuses. The idea is to boost the number of graduates who earn bachelor’s degrees.
These charter school organizations heave decided their efforts to boost students’ academic attainment should no longer stop once they graduate. This realization is also beginning to seep into the world of private school choice, where a growing number of schools emphasize college preparation for disadvantaged students.
A recent report by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice found low-income parents who enrolled their children in Baltimore private schools with the help of the Children’s Scholarship Fund overwhelmingly saw the value of a college education. The report also suggests those students often lacked a support structure that pushed them to prepare for college entrance exams or learn about admissions.
The report suggests organizations that fund school choice scholarships could help.
The results of this limited, exploratory study suggest that students from low-income families who receive scholarships to attend the private elementary school of their choice are, in general, supported by strong home cultures that are oriented toward helping the student pursue higher education. However, the high schools their children attend do not always provide the college-preparatory resources that can help them reach challenging college environments. Scholarship organizations could help their students to pursue college in two key ways: keeping in touch with the families and directing them toward free or low-cost college preparation resources (e.g., free counseling, low-cost SAT test preparation), and developing a network of high schools (in this case that would mean at least 61 schools) attended by their scholarship alumni that can collectively provide the types of free or low-cost college preparation resources that will facilitate their pursuit of higher education degrees.
What should such a support system look like once students get to college? The report suggests private school choice organizations would have to overcome the difficulty of keeping track of alumni after they leave high school.
As private school choice advocates ramp up their efforts to create new and better schools, this is another area where they could draw lessons from high-quality charter networks.
