At Fulton County Schools, graduation won't end the safety net of support offered by guidance counselors to students who have dreams of going to college.
A team of about a dozen counselors will get contracts to stay on and help graduating seniors who need a hand with the transition. They are prepared to help as many as 2,000 teens find book money, fill out financial aid forms and other important documents.
The idea is a result of new research.
A growing partnership with a research team at Harvard University is providing Fulton Schools with new information on college placement that is helping high schools across the district make higher education possible for more kids. It has the district looking beyond graduation rates and state exam scores to determine what needs to be done to help students succeed academically.
Fulton parent Joseph Rodriguez says giving graduating seniors more time with school guidance counselors is a good way to improve college placement.
“For families who don’t have money for their kids to go to college, it will help them understand what’s available to them,” said Rodriguez, who serves on the South Fulton Council PTA. “Especially if the parent hasn’t gone to college, they don’t have any idea of all of the things their kids can apply for. There are a lot of programs out there. They are missing the boat.”
Using Fulton student performance data and enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research is helping administrators to focus on factors to improve college enrollment. The researchers performed a diagnostic check to determine the impact of a student's ethnic group, economic background, academic performance and high school on college attendance.
That data was shared nationally last week in a report on five school systems -- including Gwinnett County Schools -- that showed the insight that can be gained from such data. Both Fulton and Gwinnett had college placement rates about the national average.
Fulton administrators learned through the Strategic Data Project that overall the district does a good job of sending high-achievers to college -- 90 percent go to selective four-year universities after graduation.
“We want to make sure that our students, if they choose to are going on to college and going on to a college that is going to be challenging for them,’’ said Korynn Schooley, a Harvard data fellow who works at Fulton Schools. “Students who aren’t challenged in college are less like to persist and less likely to graduate.”
At Gwinnett County Schools, nearly 82 percent of high-achievers enroll in four-year selective colleges and about 13 percent don't attend college. The rest enroll in less selective colleges.
Schooley said now that the Harvard study is complete it will lead to other programs as administrators decipher it.
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The Strategic Data Project conducted by the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University revealed that at Fulton County Schools:
- 8 in 10 freshmen who enrolled in a traditional high school from 2003-04 to 2005-06, graduated and nearly 60 percent seamlessly transitioned to college. Fifty-three percent of that group continued to the second year. (By comparison, out of every 100 freshmen nationwide, roughly 70 graduate within four years and 40 immediately enroll in college. Thirty of those students persist to their second year.)
- The college going gap between whites and blacks in Fulton dropped significantly from 24 percent to 2 percent when students of similar backgrounds and achievement levels were compared. The gap between Latinos and whites dropped from 50 percent to 28 percent when the same comparison was made.
In Gwinnett Schools, the college attendance rates of blacks surpassed those of similar white students by 5.2 percentage points. The gap between whites and Latinos dropped from 40 percent to 19 percent when similar students were compared.
Staff writer Nancy Badertscher contributed to this article.
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