There is a growing demand for robust advising systems as states aim to prepare students to navigate pathways and pursue careers in a shifting economy. Research shows that high-quality advising improves GPA and increases postsecondary opportunities, including credential attainment and retention. However, student-to-advisor ratios remain high in a resource-constrained environment and hiring more counselors or advisors is not on the horizon for most school systems. The traditional model—an overextended counselor bearing most of the responsibility for advising 300 or more students—is not a tenable model. This moment calls state leaders and cross-sector partners to rethink how to build intentional advising ecosystems that share responsibilities across roles and partners. These ecosystems are the web of people, roles, routines, and partnerships that together support students to explore careers, make informed choices, and achieve career goals. 

Why We Need to Rethink Advising

States are raising the bar for college and career readiness, expecting each student to graduate with a plan and real exposure to careers. Many states are offering comprehensive education and career pathways aligned to labor market needs, yet too many students still lack the deep navigation support they need to make informed decisions aligned to individual aspirations. 

It’s not just that counselors and advisors are overburdened. The underlying design of their roles and responsibilities isn’t built for modern career advising. Advising today is often a patchwork of roles, not strategically aligned or integrated across systems. Multiple elements of pathways (e.g., career exploration, early college models, career planning) rely on the same staff to design and deliver these experiences. This leads to inconsistent access to high-quality advising and missed opportunities to strategically connect students’ learning and career experiences. 

Rather than starting from scratch or waiting for new investments, states are asking: How can we design a better advising ecosystem with the people and partners we already have? We’re seeing states not only develop comprehensive frameworks and create new training strategies, but rethink how they staff advising. State leaders are shifting their staffing approaches and redefining roles across partners in ways that lead to better alignment, integration, and coordination. 

How States Are Building Coherent Advising Ecosystems

To build an aligned and integrated career advising ecosystem, partners must come together to define and clarify functions and roles. This includes collectively developing a unified advising strategy and defining who is responsible for implementing critical advising activities connected to career awareness and exploration, individualized planning, and work-based learning. Mapping when and how various roles – such as a school counselor, career and technical education teacher, and community college advisor – engage students across different activities and milestones is one step toward building coherence in an advising system. Naming who is doing what, and when, ensures students experience seamless pathways.

This mapping is necessary across agencies at the state-level and within regions and school districts. This helps leaders and practitioners identify overlaps and gaps and then develop solutions to solve for them. Those solutions can include clearer communication and collaboration routines, better alignment of job responsibilities across staff employed by different agencies, and unified frameworks for advisor and educator training and capacity building. 

Through Launch, we’re seeing three states do just this—testing new ways to clarify advising functions, align staff and partnerships across K-12, postsecondary, and workforce, and build routines for communication, training, and shared problem solving. 

Maryland: Shared Staffing Across Systems

Maryland is defining and leveraging partnerships between local education agencies, local workforce development boards, and community colleges to build shared staffing structures for advising. As part of the state’s career counseling initiative, state-level partners developed a common vision and partnership structure through an MOU, while local partners adapt the implementation based on their communities’ unique needs and resources. Counties use different approaches to staffing advising-related roles, with some employed by a school district, some employed by a workforce board, and in a few cases, through a hybrid model. Early lessons indicate that the success of the counseling framework depends less on where the advisor is employed and instead on how roles are defined and partners collaborate. Clearly defined roles, reinforced by strong MOUs and structured meetings, enable teams to align how they design and deliver advising and to resolve implementation challenges in real time. To combat the impacts of turnover and to build cohesion among advisors across entities, many regions have designed standardized onboarding and ongoing professional development, ensuring staff across roles and experience levels receive relevant training and support. These regions report better consistency amid turnover and clearer shared language around advising expectations. This is complemented by a joint state level effort from the Maryland State Department of Education and Maryland Workforce Association to design a comprehensive professional development model for advising-related roles. We’re also seeing new ways partners are working together to engage employers and plan events, which helps balance capacity and reduces duplication of efforts.

Kentucky: Turning Frameworks into Shared Practice

Kentucky’s Council on Postsecondary Education is turning its comprehensive Postsecondary Advising Framework into actionable resources to align advising strategies across grades 6-12 and begin building whole-school advising systems. In these systems, advising is a part of the school culture and all staff have a clear advising role to play. Building on feedback from state agency partners and practitioners across the state, Kentucky created a comprehensive set of advising milestones and an associated advising scope and sequence. This step is helping move from a conceptual framework to on-the-ground action, enabling schools to implement a whole school advising approach across staff and partners. The scope and sequence is now being translated into simple, ready-to-use lesson plans that any educator can pick up, even if they have limited advising experience. The lessons are aligned to existing academic standards and requirements so they strengthen, rather than add to, what educators are already expected to do. While counselors continue to “own” advising, these lessons make it easier for educators and partners to play an active role in advising and ensure students experience a consistent advising journey. Postsecondary and workforce partners are eager to support students alongside educators, and taken together with the framework and resources, should lead to more coherent advising ecosystems and broader postsecondary-going culture. 

North Carolina: Regional Collaboratives Driving Quality Career Planning

In North Carolina, we’re seeing a strong culture of collaboration emerge among newly established regional collaboratives that are driving quality implementation of newly mandated career development plans. These collaboratives include regional representatives from state agencies and intermediaries and local career development experts, including advisors, that work together to define a unified vision for high-quality advising and establish regional action plans to address gaps and scale promising practices. This work is beginning to shift career development planning towards a shared responsibility across school districts, rather than concentrating it in a single career advisor role within each district. 

How You Can Build Your Advising Ecosystem

These pioneering states are demonstrating that by clarifying functions, aligning existing staff, and strategically engaging cross-sector partners, it is possible to build coherent career advising ecosystems even within real-world constraints. 

To get started, state leaders can provide clear guidance and tools, rather than requirements, to support local advising alignment, capacity building, and implementation. Districts, workforce boards, and other local partners can develop routines for ongoing collaboration so that practitioners co-develop strategies and practices centered on the unmet needs of students as they transition across grade levels and institutions. Building coherent advising ecosystems to match pathway ambitions is not only possible, it’s the path forward to ensure students have the comprehensive guidance they need to succeed beyond high school.