QUESTION
What programs help NYC Public School students with the college application and acceptance process?
0:57:25
·
3 min
New York City Public Schools implements programs aiding students in the college application and acceptance process, including personalized advising and diverse support systems.
- The city has adopted policies for students to receive one-on-one advising and graduate with a plan, monitoring this data citywide.
- Schools offer various advising strategies, hiring counselors or forming teams to provide support, with guidance tailored to different student populations.
- Professional training for college and career advising is provided, with 97% of high schools having trained staff.
- Options for professional development and direct support for counselors are offered, including infosessions and office hours for addressing questions and providing assistance with the application process.
Rita Joseph
0:57:25
In speaking, I wanted to know what programs are in place to help students navigate the application and acceptance process across New York City Public Schools.
Melanie Mac
0:57:35
Thank you, Chair Joseph.
0:57:37
We'll start by saying that this is all all three people here from New York City public schools have worked directly with students for many years, and so this comes from sort of life life's work in terms of what we need to do at scale across the city and what we need to do in a way that respects very diverse learners across our schools.
0:57:55
And so as as Kristen shared in her testimony, there have been policy advancements in the in recent years.
0:58:02
So since COVID, have implemented citywide policy around students receiving 1 to 1 advising, graduating with a plan, and that is data that we monitor across the city, that we share with district superintendents, that we share with schools, and that we hold as a really important progress point.
0:58:23
We're we're allocating the college and career advising, Sam, to schools.
0:58:29
Now schools select from a variety of ways to provide college and career advising to their schools.
0:58:36
In some cases, they're you know, hiring CEOs who are going to fill that that niche.
0:58:41
In some cases, they are funding a counselor or an adviser In some cases, there is a team at the school who is supporting strong advising.
0:58:51
We've released guidance that is specific to different populations of students, what are culturally responsive and linguistically responsive approaches to advising for our multilingual learners, for our newly arrived students, what our approaches for students with disabilities in the transition process.
0:59:10
And so across policy, funding, I think, stronger progress monitoring and and data monitoring across the system and provide the training that Kristen outlined, where 97% of our high schools have somebody who has been trained this year as an example.
0:59:29
What that looks like is a person or multiple people at a high school participating in our college and career advising credential, and that's up to 20 hours of training topics.
0:59:41
That's a really diverse offering because we know our our counselors, advisors, college, and career.
0:59:48
Staff in high schools are serving very diverse learners, and so we've tailored the the professional learning credential to to improve the supports and what does financial advising, for example, look like for an undocumented student compared to what financial advising might look like for a student who has completed a CTE sequence and has a set of credits that they're carrying on into, you know, college.
1:00:14
And they've already, you know, kind of starting with a head start on early college credits.
1:00:18
And so I defer if Chris and if there's others that you'd add.
Kristen Harris
1:00:24
The only thing I would add is specific to this initiative.
1:00:27
We provided a menu of options for our counselors to engage with us directly.
1:00:33
We provided the infosessions.
1:00:35
We had PD specific to how to support their students to identify CUNY Campus, appropriate for them.
1:00:43
And we also have an inbox where we are certainly fielding messages and meeting and communicating directly to Arkini partners if there's technical issues with just submitting the application, if there questions about the platform, the the application platform, or if they need help with just determining I have a student that is interested in x, how do I identify a campus that's appropriate?
1:01:07
They work with our team for the that kinda coaching and professional development support and kinda customer service throughout the whole initiative even now.
1:01:16
We have office hours every Monday where folks know that they can come in and get their questions answered.