Improving Educational Attainment through Extensive
Postsecondary Encouragement Services

Scott Gillie
Executive Director
Encouragement Services, Inc.

Extensive Postsecondary Encouragement Services - developmentally sequenced education and career guidance messages delivered to all middle and high school students, educators, and parents via direct mail, school distribution, telephone, and the Internet to stimulate, encourage, and support student motivation, career development, educational achievement, and educational attainment. Key effects of extensive postsecondary encouragement services are increased postsecondary participation and success, timely student participation in critical steps to college, and improved preparation for postsecondary education.

Introduction
Contemporary information technology makes it possible for all families to receive an array of low-cost information products and services that guide and direct students and parents toward achieving educational and career goals.  An extensive postsecondary encouragement system enhances the efforts of intensive interventions (counseling, mentoring, and compensatory programs), opens mindsets about developmental possibilities, energizes the efforts of key players and programs, fosters an opportunity structure for all students, and reduces perceived barriers to postsecondary participation.

For the most part, efforts to support increased college access and improved college success follow the dominant model of intensive services (as implemented in TRIO, GEAR UP, school counseling, and community-based scholarship programs). These interventions are characterized by one or more of the following:

1. Specialized staff in low (as possible) ratios of clients to staff
2. A defined set of services or interventions often provided in a school-like setting
3. A process or curriculum designed to address client deficits
4. A clientele restricted by economic or other exclusionary guidelines for eligibility
5. Resource limitations that constrain the number of people served
6. A program design oriented to most-in-need populations
7. A sense of being left out among those who have need but don't receive services

In school counseling, counselors enter their positions armed with the most sophisticated of intensive strategies--one-on-one counseling techniques, small-group counseling techniques, and skills in crisis intervention. Few counseling programs enable counselors to deal effectively with the guidance needs of 400 students or more. The student-to-counselor ratio in 2006 was 476:1 (American Counseling Association, 2007).

Extensive services improve the capacity of students and their families to assist themselves. Characteristic of this model are enumerated below: 

1. Use of multiple mass communications (newsletters, postcards, planning booklets, application packages) delivered to students and parents
2. A staffing ratio of one-to-many households
3. Information and resources intended for self help or parental assistance
4. A developmental process that builds on assets
5. Inclusive of all students and families
6. A program design that breaks down processes into clear steps to achieving success
7. A web of cross-referring components for additional information and services
8. Reliance on technology, including websites, help lines, and database marketing strategies
9. Information and services tailored to the assessed needs and interests of the population served

Limitation of the Intensive Intervention Approach  

As TRIO programs, GEAR UP programs, counseling interventions, community-based scholarship programs, and others can demonstrate, the application of highly focused attention to those in need often brings about favorable outcomes. For those in the most serious circumstances of disadvantage, intensive services may be the only chance for many individuals to realize their education and career aspirations.  

Since the advent of social welfare programs, disadvantaged people have been the subjects and recipients of a panoply of programs designed to compensate for various aspects of disadvantage. Generally, those programs that have been the most effective have been those with costs that preclude generalization to all who need the programs. For those fortunate enough to participate in these programs, the programs offer many benefits.

Because of funding limitations, 90 percent of the eligible student population (the lowest quartile of incomes) will receive no intensive postsecondary encouragement services. This is the main limiting factor of the intensive model. Certainly, increased investment could improve upon this situation, but even a tripling of investment would leave 70 percent of the eligible population unserved.

The Broad Reach of an Extensive Encouragement System
What could an extensive encouragement system accomplish? An extensive encouragement system may accomplish something larger, might influence broader cultural dynamics, might create a consciousness that both values education and presumes high levels of educational access and attainment. Imagine the behavioral changes that would occur in a place where people believe that college is for everyone who prepares. Extensive encouragement systems provide vital support to existing (intensive) efforts.  The extensive model will develop additional capacity in both students and their parents—capacity to assume responsibility for planning and preparing for the future. And, importantly, all students and households can be included under this model.  

Data Informs Key Efforts
In order to design messages and services effectively, to sequence messages in accordance with the readiness of the recipients, it is necessary to survey the population to be served with an assessment of needs, interests, experiences, perceived limitations, and readiness for services. ESI has developed an online guidance assessment system through its Career and Postsecondary Encouragement (CAPE) Network. Online assessments for students in grades 7-8 and 9-12 are available at no cost.

Comparison of Intensive and Extensive Encouragement Models
As the following table depicts, there are trade-offs in making investments in intensive and extensive encouragement systems.  The purpose of this comparison is not to favor one over the other but to illuminate the possibilities and limitations of both.

Benefits of an Extensive Postsecondary Encouragement System
In an environment infused with high-quality education and career information and services, school counselors may apply their skills to higher-level tasks of analysis, synthesis, planning, and decision-making with students.        

Through direct engagement of parents with clearly written educational and career guidance information, they can better articulate guidance expectations and rationale and “triangulate” the messages given to students by their counselors and teachers.

Universal assessment of student guidance needs provides profiles to counselors of those with specific needs for targeted intervention.  For example, students who indicate they are “uncertain about how to prepare for college” might receive an extensive intervention (an email message that announces an evening workshop or an online resource) specifically addressing the indicated uncertainty. Students who indicate they are “concerned about how to pay for college” might receive special financial aid messages that direct students to grants and scholarship information.

Synergies with Other Education Support Systems
An extensive encouragement system provides a structure for linking with other support systems. Through development of a large-scale student database, it is possible to engage meaningfully other delivery systems.

• Linking high school students with colleges
  Through the assessment process, students indicate their desire to be contacted by specific institutions. Colleges and universities are eager to contact such students.

• Linking high school counselors with guidance assessment data
  The assessment process yields group and individual guidance reports. The reports enable guidance counselors and principals to identify programmatic and staffing needs.
   
• Linking students and families with financial aid and other key information
  The assessment process provides the mechanism for providing information by electronic or direct mail, including applications and instructions for financial aid.