College Board Gets $680,000 Grant to Train College Counselors

The James Irvine Foundation recently granted $680,000 to the College Board to support efforts to provide an adequate number of college counselors in California. The funds will be used to train new school counselors, who will help diverse student populations at public schools prepare for and pursue a college education. The program hopes to increase the number of students in participating districts by 20 percent, especially those underrepresented students who will enroll in college over the next five years.

Training counselors provides the best return on this very generous investment. As Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, explained, “We believe that training counselors to be effective in guiding students through the college-readiness and enrollment process will benefit all students, but most of all students from low-income backgrounds — especially first-generation students — who do not have ready access to the information and skills needed to enroll and succeed in college.”

A recent U.S. Department of Education study found that, among students whose parents never attended or graduated from college, only 54 percent enroll in college immediately following high school — only 36 percent for those whose parents did not complete high school. Underrepresented and recent immigrant students are much more likely to have parents in these categories and thus require extra assistance and information.

“With an average of more than 1,000 students per counselor, California has had the highest student-to-counselor ratio in the country,” said Kris Zavoli, senior director for state government relations and regional membership for the College Board’s Western Regional Office. “California state legislative bill AB 1802 authorizes the hiring of approximately 2,500 new counselors to lighten the overall caseload. One of the school counselors’ many tasks is college counseling. The next logical step is to design a training program for counselors to help them in this important work.”

New public school counselors in California will be offered a series of three research-based, field-tested workshops, all of which will employ College Board resources and will be supplemented with a weeklong summer institute. A workshop for district directors of counseling will help them identify the greatest challenges facing counselors in their districts, set priorities for future professional development and ensure that school counseling is central to the education reform efforts in their districts.

To ensure systemic and long-term results, the grant funds will also be used to develop a train-the-trainer model. This model trains experienced counselors to give workshops on effective college counseling to other counselors in their districts so that the skills and knowledge needed are spread throughout the district. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.