This time of year, district leaders, staff, and school board members are working hard to make funding and procurement decisions for the next school year. The central dynamic of these efforts is weighing competing priorities, diverse student challenges, and community goals as administrators figure out how to maximize ever-shrinking budgets to meet ever-growing needs. From increasing employee compensation to undertaking safety and security projects to considering how to deploy technology tools to best support student learning, district leaders have too many needs and not enough time or money.  Difficult decisions must be made about what initiatives should be commenced, maintained, or sunset, and making these decisions is a process that involves many perspectives, advocates, and stakeholders. 

One of the most fundamental goals of schools is to prepare students for life beyond high school. This includes whether they go on to college, trade school, or straight to the workforce or military. Between kindergarten and 12th grade, schools work to ensure that students build skills, knowledge, self-awareness, and other foundational requirements so they are able to earn a living wage, make community contributions, and live an overall fulfilling life. In other words, college and career readiness (CCR) goals are core to a district’s mission and present in nearly all district initiatives. Because of the weight these efforts hold for individual student, district, and community success, this work must be prioritized in each and every district budgetary cycle. 

Supporting CCR efforts in a cohesive, equitable, personalized, and dynamic way for each student across an entire district is a Herculean task. It requires a robust set of common and complementary resources that can be accessed by students, parents, and counselors in an on-demand manner. Without this, the CCR support process becomes a series of adhoc experiences rather than a coherent pathway to success. A high quality, streamlined CCR platform can be this pivotal resource that powers this important work. 

Fueling All District-Wide College and Career Readiness Efforts

A sophisticated and dynamic CCR platform allows all students to set goals and track their progress as they consider both college and career opportunities. It encourages thoughtful postsecondary planning with a system for course selection that invites students to make strategic choices to best meet their individual goals and plans. The best CCR platforms can add layers of efficiency to counselor workloads, allowing them to track where every student is on their college and career planning journey–simplifying federal and state compliance and freeing up time to more directly support students and families in need. And a comprehensive CCR platform can foster family and alumni engagement while also opening portals of opportunity for students as they connect to industry leaders. 

A district adoption of a high quality platform brings continuity to the student experience that can help students to find alignment between their interests, courses, plans, and opportunities across their secondary years. CCR platforms that authentically engage students in middle school foster exploration and self-reflection well before students enter high school, allowing them to enter their four years ready to take advantage of the breadth and depth of offerings to their fullest. By already being familiar with the CCR resources, students are able to build on their middle school experiences, choosing courses, exploring colleges, and learning more about possible careers and fields of interest. This cohesion across grades benefits all stakeholders–with common experiences unifying the work that builds grade to grade.

A Critical Resource to Expand Staff Capacity  

In the context of shrinking budgets and educator shortages, the right CCR platform can create efficiencies for counselors and school staff, fill gaps in supports for students, and create a high minimum standard for connecting families with critical information. CCR platforms that are designed with today’s schools in mind can provide real-time data and insights about students’ college and career readiness that can help counselors to understand what their students need at any given time. The data can be used to ensure strategic decisions about targeting resources and student support throughout the year–allowing counselors to effectively plan and guide the current cohort of students, rather than rely on outdated information about previous cohorts of students only collected at the year’s end. 

Innovative CCR platforms allow counselors to see which students have completed requirements for graduation and college acceptance, monitor students’ 4-year plans, track student certifications, and even offer predictive insights about students at risk of not graduating. Counselors being able to access this data to detect trends and patterns they can respond to in real-time can be the difference between a student falling between the cracks and one making it to graduation with a plan for their future. A district-wide CCR platform also streamlines state-specific reporting requirements, making it easy for district and school staff to meet critical compliance requirements easily and without time-intensive processes. 

Empowering Students to Explore and Plan

A  student-centered CCR platform can dramatically increase the agency students feel in their own planning and goal setting. A CCR platform that takes the student experience into account catalyzes student engagement and utilization; students find value in spending time exploring, learning, and planning and they become more connected to the courses they are taking, more excited about the potential for internships or work-based learning that can inform their future plans, and more reflective about how their work in high school is helping them to meet future goals. With the right tool, students are empowered as decision makers of their own future and they begin to take ownership over their future planning–searching for colleges that are a good fit, securing scholarships to make college financially feasible, connecting with industry professionals, ensuring that all of the details required to graduate and get started with college or a career are not overlooked–and seeing all of these pieces and steps as part of a related plan and process. 

Promoting Equity and Opportunity for All Students

District leaders have a tremendous responsibility to ensure students, families, counselors, and school leaders have access to modern tools and resources that support college and career readiness. Without these tools–or absent the right resource–school staff is left to respond to crises rather than providing proactive support. And students and families are left to piece together information and hope their choices connect them to a fulfilling future. With a comprehensive CCR platform, schools and districts can ensure that all students have access to the information, opportunities, and process of self discovery necessary to purposefully connect who they are, what they have done during their years at school, and what they plan to do with their future, at scale. 

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