TESTIMONY
Kristen Harris on Enhancing College and Career Pathways for NYC Public School Students
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15 min
Kristen Harris discusses efforts to enhance college and career pathways for NYC public school students, emphasizing the partnership with CUNY.
- The Office of Student Pathways, established in 2022, aims to improve college and career advising and increase student success post-high school.
- Initiatives include strengthening college advising, expanding internships and apprenticeships, and providing early college credit opportunities.
- A collaboration with CUNY includes sending personalized welcome letters to graduates, tripling application submissions during the initiative month.
- The office of student pathways invests approximately $16,000,000 directly in schools for college and career advising support.
- Efforts aim to address barriers in college readiness, application processes, financial aid, and affirm students' sense of belonging in higher education.
Kristen Harris
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Kristen Harris, New York City Public Schools Executive Director of College And Career Planning.
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Good afternoon, Chair Denowitz, Chair Joseph and members of the New York City Council Higher Education And Education Committee My name is Kristen Harris.
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I am the executive director for college degree planning in the office of student pathways at New City Public Schools.
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On behalf of Chancellor Banks, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on our efforts to streamline New York City Public School Students application process to CUNY.
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I am joined by my colleagues Melanie Mack, Senior Executive Director for the office of student pathways and John Quintania, Executive Director Pathways Data.
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We are pleased to be here today to discuss our deep sense of urgency and commitment to strengthening our students' college and career pathways and our partnership with CUNY supports that effort.
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I am deeply engaged.
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I've been deeply engaged in this field for over 20 years, and I've witnessed first hand, the challenges that students face in navigating the complex terrain of higher education, and the vital role that a comprehensive approach ensuring high holiday college career advising plays in supporting them through this journey.
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Before I go further, I want to thank both Chair Joseph and Chair generates for their commitment to the expansion of programs through removing barriers and increasing access to higher education for New York City youth.
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We welcome the chance to talk with you today about our programs, strategies, and continue to partnership with the city Council.
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Chancellor Banks has set a bold, North Star goal for New York City Public Schools.
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To ensure each student graduate on a pathway to a rewarding career, long term economic security, equipped to be a positive force for change.
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In setting this bold goal, chancellor Banks, excuse me, has not shied away from the hard truths about our graduate its college and career readiness and New York City Public Schools is deeply committed to improving upon our rates of 58% of seniors graduating college ready, 59% of graduates transitioning to a postsecondary pathway, and 34% of graduates earning an associate's degree or higher within 6 years.
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We would like to share the actions we have taken over the past year to strengthen college and career pathways and to achieve better outcomes.
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The office of student pathways formalized in early 2022 under the leadership of Jade Grieve, chief of student pathways.
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Works with schools, districts, higher education, and employer partners to achieve better outcomes.
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We do this by enacting 4 key strategies to increase student K12 postsecondary success with a focus on long term economic security.
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1st, strengthening college per advising.
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2nd, expanding high quality college career pathways and aligned internships and apprenticeships 3, enhancing 21st century skills like financial literacy, digital fluency, and finally extending Early college credit and credential opportunities to provide more young people with a head start on their future after school.
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Under leadership of under the leadership envision of chancellor Banks and Matos Rodriguez, there is now deeper alignment across institutional values and missions, an even stronger commitment to our shared student body with 41% of our students transitioning to CUNY after graduation.
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New York City Public Schools priority for college and career advising and awareness dovetails with CUNY's efforts to build seamless access and transition points while increasing the readiness of incoming students.
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Today, out of the 64,000 students that graduate annually from New York City Public Schools, roughly 25% of our students leave without a documented postsecondary plan.
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And about 35% say they wish they had more and better support in navigating their their college and career options based on an annual senior survey that we conduct.
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College and career advising is an essential lever to achieving successful post secondary outcomes for students.
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Currently, too few students have the info nation and advising support required to explore and understand how to navigate college and career pathways.
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Pathway options and develop a robust, high quality personalized plan to pursue their desire after high school.
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In order for us to achieve our goal of every student graduating with a strong plan and a head start on their path.
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We must ensure that every student has access to high quality college and career advisement.
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By a knowledgeable adult, that supports the development of a strong personalized plan that activates their passion and their purpose.
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In the over 2 years, since Chancellor Banks took office, we have taken significant strides toward addressing the gaps mentioned above by launching and expanding academic policy that set a standard for individual advising support across a student's high school experience.
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Increased higher education partnerships to increase our access to dual credit courses and options with a focus on courses aligned to high demand degree pathways.
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We convene a pathway's advising coalition, which is a broad based group of organizational stakeholders across the New York City College And Career landscape Now it is 2nd year.
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Coalition goals include defining, agreed, high quality agreed definition of a high quality standard for advising and aligned best practice for implementation, standard metrics for success, and essential training required for these individuals.
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We print a FAFSA guide, translated in all of our official DOE languages, and we distribute it to all our graduating seniors both in English and in their home language.
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Access to stream to a streamlined menu of high quality digital platforms such as Zellow, SCOR, and Overgrad to provide comprehensive data management of students, college and career exploration activities and postsecondary planning.
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These platforms expand the impact and reach of advising programs in our schools.
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And currently, we have 250 high schools that are currently onboard in assessing these tools.
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And finally, CUNY and SUNY welcomed letter initiatives that in support of New York City New York State's College application month initiative in October.
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Both letters featured affirming messages about students' ability to pursue higher education confirmed that they had a place at CUNY and SUNY, and encouraged them to submit an application for free during the month of October.
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Our students face technical and systematic barriers through accessing college ready coursework, completing the college completing the college postsecondary application process, seeking financial aid, and determine winning affordability, ultimately making an informed decision anchored in a sense of belongingness at their future college home.
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The welcome letter initiatives get to the heart of some of these technical and systematic barriers.
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CUNY welcome letter initiative aims to further eliminate barriers and higher education and make applying to college more accessible to New York City Public School Student.
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Building off our well established jointly funded fee waiver program, chancellor's banks and Matos Rodriguez, partner to send a signed personalized welcome letter to over 60,000 graduates across our district.
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We saw significant spike in submitted Q And A applications during this month.
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Over 30 6000 applications were submitted approximately three times the highest volume that we've seen historically.
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We also ran a parallel welcome letter campaign with SUNY.
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The scope and scale was similar with the exception of the 2 week window that SUNY opened at the end of October for the applications to be free for any student.
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In addition to the welcome letter program with CUNY, New York City Public Schools, and and CUNY really collaborated across all phases of the planning scope, drafting the language of the letter, the mode of delivery, and our communication strategy.
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We'd be end this process in the spring of 2023 for our fall launch in the subsequent school year.
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New York City Public Schools provided translations for all the letters, which lived on the CUNY Landing Page.
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New York city public schools also trained and offered office hours for our school staff prior to the launch and during the month.
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To support successful implementation.
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New York City Public Schools also successfully advocated for students to use their OSSIS number in place of the traditional Quni generated fee waiver code during the weeks of the initiative, further streamlining the removal of the cost barrier to our students.
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We also collaborate in response to Pasa delays, which is aligned to the application process to minimize the impact to students and CUNY has officially extended their deadline to June 1st.
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The office of student pathways invest approximately $16,000,000 this year in schools directly through the college and career advising school allocation memo or SAM.
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In order to increase staff capacity for delivery of quality, college, and career advising support across a student's high school experience.
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Schools use these funds to supplement existing efforts to provide students with personalized college of career advising.
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Further, we believe all students should have access to ongoing personalized college of her advising to facilitate their facilitate their progress through key awareness and planning experiences to offer the relational support needed to explore and own a range of future possibilities and to develop a strong personalized plan to pursue their desire after high school.
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To that end, we have curated a robust college and career advising training catalog with over 75 unique sessions totaling just under 90 5 hours of PD.
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Work shop facilitators include a wide range of content experts from the field and at the end of school year 23, over 5000 total schools, staff received training.
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Out of 531 high schools, we saw that 5 14 or 97% have had at least one staff member trained.
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New York City Public Schools And CUNY has established a range of important equity centered initiatives to strengthen advising and early college awareness opportunities for historically marginalized and underrepresented students.
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Those include or, as mentioned earlier, our admissions, fee waiver program, all financially eligible graduating students, applying to CUNY, receive an application fee waiver, over 50,000 application waivers are distributed annually across all high schools.
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Waver allocations are determined by enrollment of free and reduced price lunch eligible students with CUNY in New York City public schools sharing the cost at 65 dollars per waiver.
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In response to the requirements outlined in local law 18, New York City Public Schools has worked closely with MOPD to comply with the law while considering the implications of FERPA and limited availability of resource to the date, the special education office, has taken multiple steps to comply, including the additional the addition of parent letters to every age IEP explaining the process of obtaining accommodations in college.
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Web updates have also been made by both MLPD and New York City public schools to provide additional guidance and support to students and families, and the expansion of the community engagement manager, existing TEC staff position, expanding that job description to act as a student advocate it, who support students and families directly with the college process.
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The short term plan for the electronic data sharing system compliance is expected to be in place by this summer, and infrastructure development considerations are ongoing to respond to a long term solution.
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Looking across cost the efforts of both New York City Public Schools And CUNY.
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We have laid a strong foundation of programs that enable many students to get an invaluable start to their post secondary path.
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Through strong college and career advising, early college exposure, and removal of barriers when applying to college.
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We have learned together with our community colleagues about readiness, transition, and persistence in college, and are clear that there is still more work to do.
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The road ahead with Quni and other higher education partners is to explore how we might push further to streamline admissions through a simplified application and the use of a student OSIS number in place of meeting, accounting application b waiver code.
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We look forward to continuing to elevate the quality of the college of career pathways and programs.
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We are developing collaboratively with CUNY in pursuit of our central mission of ensuring all college students long term at college at college success and economic security.
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We anticipate this work will include strengthening our data infrastructure while broadening opportunities and programming specific to the needs of multilingual and immigrant students.
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As we continue to evaluate our current partnership and ways to grow to meet student needs, we want to build on the strong alignment partnership and collaborative leadership of our chancellor's.
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We thank you for your strong support and interest and look forward to your questions.