Navigating the Navigators

What is the real value in building college and career pathways if students are unable to successfully navigate them? Only 47% of survey respondents who identify as Gen Z say they have enough information to decide what pathway is best for them. Coincidentally, an astounding 53% of navigators and educators admit they only provide support after a young adult asks for help. Many state leaders are beginning to realize that advising is a critical component of their college and career pathways infrastructure. But advising is deeply complex. It requires examining key questions about the role of advisors, how to measure effectiveness, and deciding where advising should live within a pathways ecosystem that spans across K-12, higher education, and the workforce.

What is an advisor?

As certified school counselors face high student to school counselor ratios with limited time for individual career and academic planning with students, a patchwork of advisors has emerged in an effort to better support all students in navigating college and career decisions. In addition to their school counselors, high schools have many adults working as advisors, navigators, coordinators, and specialists. And many others working in a school, like teachers or coaches, are taking on pieces of the advising role without the job title. In some cases, these roles may be distinct and clearly delineated from one another. But more often than not, there is overlap and limited coordination.

From one district to the next, the scope of work for advisors and their counterparts can vary. Further complicating matters, some advising professionals are not employed by the school district and instead work in schools through workforce boards, institutions of higher education, community organizations, or philanthropic partners. This leads to a range of different priorities, training, and qualifications across the field and makes this critical role difficult to define and monitor.

To promote more consistent implementation, state leaders have begun investing in the development of resources that support a more streamlined approach to advising. For example, the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education has adopted a Postsecondary Advising Framework to provide a clear roadmap for implementing a comprehensive advising system. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, in partnership with the Texas Education Agency, has developed an open-source advisor academy as a hub for training and to set the bar for the competencies advisors should have. Additionally, the Colorado Department of Education has developed a Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness (PWR) Playbook that includes a how-to guide for strong individual career and academic planning. Each of these state resources has the opportunity to tighten the role of an advisor. But their reach to local implementers varies widely. Without strong policy and funding mechanisms, many state resources are only used by a coalition of the willing.

How do advisors work together across systems?

Often, they don’t. Since advisors often exist within a single system, their work ends once a student exits that system. For example, a high school advisor does not stay with a student all the way through completion of a postsecondary degree and into their career. Furthermore, a high school advisor rarely coordinates with the academic or career advisors who will begin working with their students after graduation. This fragmentation across systems can lead students, especially those who are most vulnerable, to a dead end with no support available in their transition from one system to the next.

The field desperately needs to identify an appropriate continuum of staffing for advisors that ensures a clear handoff between K-12, higher education, and workforce to ensure all students are able to navigate across systems. As systems break down silos to build effective college and career pathways, advising cannot be left out of the discussion and must be seen as an integral piece of the pathways infrastructure.

Maryland state leaders are on the right track. They have made a significant investment through the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future to establish state-funded advisors that will implement six-year student plans spanning both secondary and postsecondary. This effort is being jointly led by both education and workforce leaders, who have co-designed a career counseling hub to unite all advising professionals across the state. Tennessee has the High School & Beyond Policy that extends the previous requirement for a four-year individual career and academic plan (sometimes referred to as personal graduation plans, career development plans, individualized learning plans, or other) to include the two years post high school graduation. Other states, like Kentucky and North Carolina, have invested in one-stop-shop advising platforms that span K-12, higher education, and the workforce.

How to measure the quality and impact of advising at scale?

State leaders should routinely assess how well advising is being implemented in their state. But doing so requires careful planning to avoid creating incentives that are compliance-driven or drive students to particular high-value outcomes, regardless of fit or suitability.

Many state legislatures have adopted policy that requires all students to complete an individual career and academic plan. Policy such as this can lay the groundwork for quality advising, but compliance alone does not measure the depth of a student’s interest or ability to carry out their plan. Instead, state leaders should consider processes that assess multiple variables of the advising system to get a true picture of whether or not it’s working.

The Texas Education Agency, for example, has developed a diagnostic tool that helps districts measure the quality of advising implementation aligned to the state’s newly adopted Effective Advising Framework. Regional advising coaches are trained to use the tool, work with districts to assess their advising practices, and then share the findings with the agency to support shared learning and growth across the state. The diagnostic is comprehensive and assesses the commitments of advising leadership, how knowledgeable and supported advisors and school counselors are, how tightly aligned internal and external advising partners are, and the quality of the tools and resources being used to conduct individual career and academic planning.

Conclusion

We can’t expect students to navigate pathways on their own. It’s a missed opportunity to invest in sound infrastructure for pathways without also investing in what’s needed to help students navigate them.