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Designing Education
Designing Education
Bridging the Gap: Postsecondary Guidance for Every Student
What does it really take to help all students plan for what’s next after high school? In this episode of Designing Education, Dr. Robert Balfanz speaks with Andy Schmitz, senior managing director of system impact at OneGoal, a national nonprofit dedicated to helping students navigate their postsecondary journeys.
The discussion also explores how improved access to post-secondary outcomes data, leadership networks, and innovative partnerships can help schools provide timely, informative, and actionable post-secondary guidance that help put all their students on real pathways to success.
Don’t miss this insightful conversation about transforming high school post-secondary guidance into a powerful tool that supports all students.
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Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Hello and welcome to season four, episode two of the Designing Education Podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University.
In this episode we are talking with Andy Schmitz, who is the senior managing director of systems impact at OneGoal, a national nonprofit organization focused on supporting students’ postsecondary aspirations. We will be discussing how all students can get the postsecondary guidance they need to be on a pathway to adult success.
We're excited to have him as the second guest of our fourth season, as part of our continuing series of conversations with education leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country. With them, we are talking about what it will take to create an education system that truly educates and empowers all young people.
One of the most important roles high schools play today is enabling students to make informed decisions about the schooling or training they will receive once they graduate from high school. High schools are no longer the endpoint of formal education or training for most students. They are now a key step along a longer journey to adult success. As such, the guidance students receive during the high school years is a key determinant of their future.
High schools, however, were not historically designed to provide good guidance to all students. It just wasn't one of their roles. That is why the work being done by organizations like OneGoal is essential.
Given the pace of change in the world today, schools need support in building their capacity to offer good guidance to all students on future opportunities and the education and training it takes to grab them.
We can't wait to start the conversation, but before we do, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe to the Designing Education podcast and never miss an episode.
Welcome, Andy, it's wonderful to have you here today. We start all our podcasts by asking our guests when you were in high school, what was a good day?
Andy Schmitz: Thanks so much for having me today, Bob. I'm really excited for the conversation.
When I think back to my high school education. The words and phrases that came up for what made a good day were busy and balanced and so I thought, I think really favorably about the extracurricular activities, the sports that I got to be involved in during my time in high school. That kind of back ended and front ended the core academic part of high school. And so, a good day for me was when I was not just in World History and calculus, but also participating in soccer and rugby, going to student council meetings, joining National Honor Society, and really kind of weaving in and out to different activities throughout the day. And that just really helped me feel like I had a well-rounded experience to get to know a lot of different students in different places, and just had a really, really enjoyable high school.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Yeah, when you think about it, and you describe it that way, it makes the case that high school, in a way, is a life experience, right? That's preparing us for future life experiences, and more than just an academic institution, as it's sometimes seen.
Andy Schmitz: That’s right.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: So, let's start our conversation by hearing a little bit about OneGoal, what it does overall, and then some of the work you do within it.
Andy Schmitz: OneGoal’s mission is to lead the movement to transform postsecondary advising and support. We've been around since about 2007. We started in Chicago and then expanded to five additional metro areas across the country, and we support districts and schools primarily through two ways. One is our classroom model. We call it our flagship model which is a curriculum and program for high school juniors and seniors where we train teachers to facilitate a class that's really about providing students a holistic advising experience and going through career exploration lessons talking about your best fitness and financial literacy.
And then, more recently, the work that I lead is called the OneGoal Leadership Network, which is a multi-year partnership with district and school leaders, really about capacity building and systems change so helping them build the systems and structures that advance postsecondary readiness in their community.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: That's wonderful. And we'll get into some more of the details in a minute. But it's important for our listeners to know why organizations like OneGoal are so important and back to this idea that high schools weren't traditionally designed with the idea of having a good guidance to all students of what comes next. Because in a lot of ways it was assumed most of them would go to work, and they would sort of find that work through family connections. And we know that world has changed. It doesn't exist anymore. The pace of change is so great that often families aren't fully aware of all the opportunities that exist because they're different from when they were growing up. So, this ability to build schools capacity to really make sure students are aware of what's out there, what it takes to get there, is so essential.
One of the things that OneGoal talks about is the opportunity gap for college attainment. And you note a statistic that, 20% of low-income students obtain college degrees compared to about 67% of their higher income peers. That's three to one, right? That's a big gap. What are some of the consequences of this?
Andy Schmitz: I think first and foremost it means that our K-12 education system and our higher education system isn't serving as the great equalizer that we want it to for all students, and that for too many students and their families it's the zip code that's determining really not just their education level, but their ability to find a job that gives them purpose and achieve some form of socioeconomic mobility.
The statistic you cited was about college disparity, and I think it also extends to not just two-year and four-year pathways, but I imagine also to students who are entering the workforce through a credential or a certification program.
We work with about 55 partners through the OneGoal Leadership Network across the country and are really fortunate to work with urban districts, rural districts, suburban districts, and in particular, I think our rural districts are often geographically isolated from community colleges, four-year state schools, apprenticeships. And this leads to a different student experience versus kids who are in different parts of the country.
And so, students often aren't based on where they live, able to see themselves not just in different education pathways, but also in different careers. And this is, you know, is just very, very hard for students in many communities across the country.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, that you know, we have to keep reminding ourselves that it's both the school you go to, and where that school is located. There is great difference in just the number of opportunities you're exposed to in sort of your larger local environment. You know, one reason for this gap, is that there's just different - as you were pointing out is the differences in access to high-quality, post-secondary guidance, and also the fact that, lower income students often face a wider array of just life challenges which makes the need for guidance even more essential. But as you started to say, and let's build this out a little more, they're often less likely to get it. So, before we dive into some solutions, why is it that good guidance is tied to where you go to school, and what sort of socioeconomic status of that neighborhood or community is?
Andy Schmitz: You mentioned at the beginning, Bob, that high schools historically haven't been organized or designed to support student transitions after graduation. This is a system level problem that, I think, is a fragmented way that we generally approach supporting student transitions, advising, and counseling. The counselor focuses on application. The career and technical education teacher is making sure that kids are getting the industry credentials, and the assistant principal is working on the partnerships with the local employer. And I think we're also not supporting leaders, be it a counselor or a principal around college and career readiness. And we're just not treating college and career readiness like the school improvement issue it truly is. I'll share just one or two quick examples of this.
When, when there is professional development at the beginning of the of the year, the English teachers go to one room, the math teachers go to another room, the science teachers go to another room, and the counselors are always told that they have work time, as opposed to thinking about how to really develop counselors and others who have that role.
The other quick example that I'll give is I was in Cleveland yesterday visiting a high school. I was at a high school called the Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School, which is an incredible high school. Right on Lake Erie, near an airport, themed around all these flight and maritime pathways, really allowing kids exposure to things like becoming a drone pilot and building boats. And we were talking with the principal and assistant principal about these barriers and what they shared is there’s just so much compliance and regular tasks for us to focus on, who has the time for college and readiness? We're so burned out already. And so, I think there's a lesson to be learned in how we help and develop leaders to get that focus that they need to organize their school around counseling, guidance, and advising.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: I think that's so important and also helping them by helping their leaders, policymakers understand that this has to be an essential feature and goal of high school - is helping folks make it to the next place well informed, right? And with some sense of sort of informed choice and aligned with interests and opportunities. Because, as you point out, in many ways like that in many schools, there were good reasons for this, and it was important to do. But there was such a message given of just: get the kids to graduate. Just make sure they graduate, right? And the time and effort was making sure in higher poverty schools, more cut off from lots of opportunities, focusing on making sure the kids graduate, but not then having time and energy left over to make sure they have a place to go after they graduate.
And we really have to collectively work together and make that the goal now. Right? Because without it, and that really gets us to our next point, for that to happen, schools need good data on what happens to their students. And in an op-ed earlier in the year, you and a co-author, Karla Robles, point out that one reason students are not getting good college or career guidance is their high schools often lack access to good data. And by this, we mean timely data on what happens to their students from that high school. Where do they go? Where do they enroll? What training programs they go to. And most importantly, what happens to them?
So, what are some of the reasons why high schools lack this actionable data on the postsecondary outcomes of their students?
Andy Schmitz: There is a little bit of, I think, just like history and us catching up to the shift of high schools becoming a place to just get kids across the finish line to, to a place that prepares students post-graduation. I think sometimes we forget that things - really big legislation like Perkins and SN2015 are newer. They haven't been around as long as the Department of Education has been around. And that also means, as you were talking about earlier, some of our state accountability systems and report cards are also catching up. There was a really great report earlier this year from a peer organization called Education Strategy Group, entitled Measurement for Mobility. That pointed out that while postsecondary outcomes data is publicly available in almost 50 States, only eight states have accountability mechanisms in place for postsecondary outcomes. So, I think there is a little bit of a gap between the accountability system and what we actually are able to produce from a data system standpoint.
That being said, there is data available to states, districts, and schools around postsecondary enrollment and persistence. There's an organization called the National Student Clearinghouse, that collects data to help districts track where their students went after graduation, and whether or not they are successful, and the states often publish this data.
The challenge is that this data is often outdated by one or two years on state report cards. And so, if I'm a school counselor in a high school, I don't see my graduating class of 2024 publicly available right now, and so I both can't support my recent alumni, through some alumni supports, and I can't think reflectively about what do I need to do differently about the next graduating class, because of the data that I saw last year. And so, those are some of, I think, the challenges that we're seeing at the data system and state accountability level.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Absolutely. So, what are some solutions and examples of effective practices that could help with this and others can learn from?
Andy Schmitz: There are some real bright spots that I think are important to highlight in terms of what some states are doing. For example, the state of Mississippi shares their national student clearinghouse data, real time, with districts directly through a statewide student information system to help improve the real-time use of that data from school and district leaders.
The other thing that comes up a lot for us when we walk our partners through the national student clearinghouse data is, they'll say this is great data on what happened to my students who went to a two-year and four-year pathway. But what about my students who went straight into the workforce or into an apprenticeship program or into a certificate program?
A couple of states, Indiana, Georgia, Colorado, Minnesota, all have organized around also collecting data on students who enter the workforce. And so, they have that data sit side by side the two-year and four-year national student clearinghouse data to paint a holistic picture which helps the counselors, the assistant principals, the superintendents really make sense of where all of their graduates are post-graduation.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: And you know what's really interesting about this, and you were pointing out this, the need of our systems to catch up, and our data access to catch up. When you think about it, a decade ago, if you asked a principal what was the chronic absenteeism rate in their school, they would look at you blankly. They would tell you their average daily attendance, because that's what they know, and that's what their data systems gave them. And now, a decade later, it's much more commonplace for schools to understand what chronic absenteeism is. In some ways, I think, the analog to postsecondary outcomes and where are kids going - It's both for them to know where they're going and succeeding.
But the one question I try out and still sort of get that “we really don’t know” answer from principals is that when I ask how many of your graduating students don't have a pathway at all or just graduating without really anywhere to go next year? And that's sort of the other side of the coin, of the positive outcomes. But how many of your kids are, are sort of left on their own?
Andy Schmitz: That's right. We have very robust data systems around academics and often also around social-emotional learning and behavior. We're still catching up in the college and career space from a data system standpoint.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Absolutely. So, one of the strategies OneGoal uses is the one that you, yourself, are, are sort of leading up to is to create networks of districts working together. And we know it's hard to improve alone, so that alone seems like a good reason to do this. But what are some of the strengths of a network approach?
Andy Schmitz: I think one of the truisms about school and district leadership is that it's very lonely, and it gets even lonelier when you're talking about leadership in the college and career readiness space. A lot of that loneliness, I think, informs the work that we do. And truly only about half of school leaders across the country have access to a peer network, and probably less than half of them have access to some kind of on the job coaching.
I was a former assistant principal, and so that was also kind of my experience as well. And sometimes it really takes you back when you think about how little we invest in this type of support for just critical educational leaders in this country.
When we think about our leadership network work, one of the key components to it is what we call our assemble or across district community of practice, where we bring together leaders across the state for a day of professional learning alongside their peers. We do a consultancy protocol where leaders can discuss problems of practice in the college and career readiness space. I got to join our assemble in Kentucky a few weeks ago. And so, principals, directors of CTE, were sitting around talking about how to better advise students who are also diverse learners, how to kind of make sure that they could honor different pathways and allow kids different on-ramp or off-ramps if they change their mind in a pathway in junior year or senior year. And so, I think that type of just bringing together and convening of school and district leaders can really kind of help them de-silo the work and connect with peers around best practices and shared learnings.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Yes, we've seen this in some of our work, too. Sometimes Just creating the space for people, who, in like roles, to talk to each other is transformative in itself. And then when you give it what a colleague of mine often talks about loose structures, right? So, there's some organization there, but you're not sort of controlling the outcome. A lot of good things result from that.
Andy Schmitz: The other example I'll point out, Bob, is, I think there's a role for nonprofits and intermediary organizations to play in that network convening. And I also think there's a way for districts and, and states to play a role in bringing together networks around college and career readiness.
We work a fair amount in Texas. And one of the innovative things the state of Texas has done is to organize something called their Rural Pathway Excellence Program (RPEP), which is a way to take different rural districts and bring them together in a shared network as a way to expand the number of pathways that are offered to students.
And so, for example, when you are a rural district, we work with a district called Marathon ISD, which has an enrollment K-12 of about less than 60 students. That means it can be difficult to offer multiple pathways to students because of the size of your school. And so, what this RPEP program does is bring together rural districts in a common area. One district offers the welding pathway, another office/hospitality pathway, another energy pathway as a way to pool resources and build a network. So, kids have, have multiple options.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Yeah. So, there's really that coming together of resources to pool our resources so we don't all have to create alone and do everything by ourselves. It seems straightforward. But it doesn't aAs you said, it doesn't happen nearly as much as it could, and it's really powerful when folks like OneGoal and others, and, as you said, states themselves find ways just to create the power of the team and the group as opposed to: good luck on your own!
So, I want to just bring us home today by looking at this. The challenge of good guidance in a slightly different way, which is that it's both a challenge of access and quality of up-to-dateness as we talked about.
But there's also the challenge of the spread of inaccurate information which can come in many guises. I'm just going to share a couple from our work, and then we'll, we'll dive into it. So, a growing number of students that we work with have told us that they get their information about college from Tik Tok, right? First person videos of current students, and you could see how that could be a compelling source. But it's unlikely to tell a complete picture, right? Because you don't know the biases of the student who put together the video on Tik Tok.
In a number of schools, it's always been the common default for guidance to tell students to enroll in their local community college. It's cheaper, it's more flexible, it's close to home. All potentially compelling reasons, but it's often not told that some of these community colleges have challenges of their own. Or because this isn't even their main audience often, only have 20% graduation rates for kids coming right out of high school into them.
And then another one is that, often in some locales, there's this received wisdom that you know, you don't need to go. You could find good jobs out of high school, and usually these are in extractive industries, offshore oil rigs, fracking fields, where it's true, those positions exist, but what's almost never told to the kids is how many are actually open in a given year. And how many students across the state are being given the same advice.
So how do we both provide good information about postsecondary schooling but also combat inaccurate or incomplete information?
Andy Schmitz: The first place I want to go with this question is to just connect on the why students make decisions about what they're doing after graduation is so complex and unique and nuanced that it is hard to get a handle on that.
I was looking at some results from a senior exit survey at one of our district partners. And they asked kids, “why are you going to the place you're going post-graduation?” And they gave them 20 reasons. And basically, every one of them received about between 5 and 20%. There are not overarching reasons for why kids make a decision. It's really complicated and individual and probably varies district by district as well.
That, that being said, I think there are some real opportunities that we have to localize the type of support and guidance that we're giving kids. So, we're not sharing things with them that don't play out locally. And so, for example, there are a lot of states that have invested in state-specific career readiness platforms that help kids find high demand, high-wage jobs that are actually accessible in their particular community and also help them think about community colleges that might have a higher graduation rate compared to another one.
The other thing I'd point out, two other things. One is the Carnegie Foundation, just released their Student Access and Earning Classifications, which is an amazing tool. I would tell everyone to go look at it to help students and counselors really understand whether institutions are enrolling and creating opportunities for students and whether they're earning competitive wages after they attend.
At OneGoal, we use something similar to that called the Quality Enrollment Framework, to help students think about the different factors that might affect their decision around finances, around graduation rate, around academics, to find a best fit option for them. And so, I think those are some tools that district and school leaders across the country can use to address some of the, the challenges that you outlined.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: I fully agree. And the one thing I would add to that is that I think we still have to help our counselors, and even our parents, or our kids. It's both the opportunity and its availability. Because I remember that Kentucky is one of those states that has that really good information on, what job openings? What is their education requirements? How well do they pay? And when I looked at it, I noticed that one of the you know, one of the best well-paying jobs that required only a high school graduation was to be, as it turned out, a high school or college referee or umpire which makes sense that you have to know the sport, but maybe not a lot of, of other academic skills. But it turns out that very few of those positions are hiring 18- or 19-year-old kids to be referees, right? These are often second jobs or second career jobs of slightly older adults, right? So, it's available, but is it really available? So, I think that's like the final piece we have to figure out to make this information really actionable for our kids.
Andy Schmitz: We do a lot of work with the state of Kentucky, and I would agree that they have really kind of been out in front in some of the career exploration resources and in demand and localized jobs and sharing that with students. They have a great new platform that they just launched, called Futurity, which is all about helping students understand the occupations that are available in Kentucky, and the salaries that go along with those, and whether they are trending up from the demand standpoint. And so, all those things that you talked about.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: That's wonderful to hear that they've taken that next step so that's great. This has been a great conversation. Thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to share or tell our audience? Are there websites for our listeners to visit or resources to explore?
Andy Schmitz: Yeah, I would just say, check to see if OneGoal is already at your school or district, and if you don't, let your school know if you're interested in talking with us and you can always find out more at our website, onegoal.org.
Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Thank you. That's wonderful. Thank you, Andy.
As we close, we want to ask that you please subscribe to Designing Education to stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in education, as you heard here today. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a five-star review. Also, please share the show with a friend or colleague or on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center thanking everyone for listening. I invite you to listen to the other episodes of our Designing Education series wherever you listen to your podcasts. Onward and be well.
