High School Advising: Exploring Students’ Perceptions of School-Based Support for College and Career Transitions

• In Event: Advising Around Postsecondary Pathways

Abstract

Objectives. Preparing students for both college and careers has been an explicit national policy objective for more than a decade. Recently, the “College for All” discourse prominent in the early 2000s has been superseded by a focus on college and career readiness. In this paper, we examine high school students’ perceptions of and experiences with college and career planning, the extent to which planning support differs across students participating in Career and Technical Education (CTE), and the link between planning support and short-term student outcomes
Perspectives. School counselors or advisors are the second largest group of educators in the U.S. after teachers, influencing student learning and educational attainment through four domains: 1) course selection and teacher assignments (cognitive skills), 2) disciplinary actions or mental health support (non-cognitive skills), 3) information about future pathways, and 4) direct support through letters of recommendations to gain access to these paths (Mulhern, 2023). Yet research on the extent to which students receive information about postsecondary transitions, and whether it differs across grades, subgroups of students, and school contexts, is not well known, particularly for students in CTE settings (Dougherty and Lombardi, 2016). This paper contributes to this area through an analysis focusing primarily on information and direct support avenues.
Methods. This study uses correlational analyses to examine the relationship between CTE- and non-CTE students’ reported measures of school-based support for college and career planning using regression analyses to control for background social and academic characteristics (race/ethnicity, special education, limited English proficiency, prior test score performance).
Data Sources. Measures of student support for college and career planning is drawn from a large, city district’s Senior Exit Survey. Our analytic sample consists of 9,025 seniors in 172 high schools with a response rate of 55 percent. We link survey files with district administrative data to identify demographic and academic characteristics of respondents and non-respondents.
Results. We find that while college and career planning support were present in all sample high schools, students in CTE high schools reported more career-oriented support than students in non-CTE settings. The additional career planning support did not come at the expense of college planning support. Further, in both CTE- and non-CTE settings, seniors who reported more support for the exploration of college and career options often reported less experiential college and career planning support. Students with more experiential support tended to have stronger prior academic performance. We also find suggestive evidence that more reported support is associated with outcomes such as internship participation, on-time graduation, and four-year college enrollment.
Significance. These analyses offer a valuable baseline understanding of college and career support in a large urban district, and how this support differs across settings. The findings highlight challenges that may still need to be surmounted to fully support all students in their college and career preparation.

Authors

• John Sludden, New York University

• James J. Kemple, New York University