The College Puzzle Blog
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Dr. Michael W. Kirst

Michael W. Kirst is Professor Emeritus of Education and Business Administration at Stanford University since 1969.
Dr. Kirst received his Ph.D. in political economy and government from Harvard. Before joining the Stanford University faculty, Dr. Kirst held several positions with the federal government, including Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Manpower, Employment and Poverty. He was a former president of the California State Board of Education. His book From High School to College with Andrea Venezia was published by Jossey Bass in 2004.

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My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

College Going CultureIn Secondary Schools #3

The last two blogs cover key concepts and issues. Now I have a guide for what secondary schools can do about improving college culture designed by the Center for Educational Outreach at UC- Berkeley-http://outreach.berkeley.edu- look at Realizing the college dream. There is a teacher and school advisory guide that has a step by step implementation plan and specific actions schools can implement.It includes college information and instructional strategies.It includes questionaires and worksheets for students., as well as school check lists to make sure they have covered the key steps.


My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

College Going Culture in Secondary Schools#2

The last blog had the key elements of a college culture. A new study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research found that in Chicago public schools only a third of the students went to a college matching their aspirations for a 4 year college. These students could have been accepted at a 4 year college ,but lacked information on how to apply or get financial aid. So they ended up at community colleges with much lower completion rates. The biggest factor in influencing whether they applied to a 4 year college-the college culture in the secondary school that they intended. Latino students had less college awareness than African Americans. Most students did not understand the difference between a 4 year and 2 year college.
Look at the elements of a good college climate in secondary school in the prior blog. Chicago needs much more attention to these.

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My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

What does a secondary school with collge-going culture look like ?

What is “College-Going Culture” in a Secondary School?

Professor Patricia McDonough at UCLA (mcdonough@gseis.ucla.edu) has visited many low-income high schools to discover the key elements of a school culture that creates better college preparation and enrollment.

In schools where most disadvantaged students go to college, certain common factors are obvious. These schools create a COLLEGE CULTURE that all students and their families experience. Where such a culture exists, all students are prepared for a full range of postsecondary options through structural, motivational, and experiential college preparatory opportunities. In these schools…

  • School leadership is committed to building a college culture

  • All school personnel provide a consistent message to students that supports their quest for a college preparatory K-12 experience

  • All counselors are college counselors

  • Counselors, teachers, and families are partners in preparing students for college

Schools with a “college culture” usually exhibit most or all of the following Nine Critical Principles of a College Culture:

College Talk: Clear, ongoing communication among students, teachers, administrators, and families about what it takes to get to college

Clear Expectations: Explicit, clear-defined goals, communicated in ways that make them part of the culture of the school

Information and Resources: Comprehensive, up-to-date college information and resources, easily accessible by all students, families, and school personnel

Comprehensive Counseling Model: View of counseling that makes all student interactions with counseling staff opportunities for college counseling

Testing and Curriculum: Information about and access to “gatekeeping” tests (PSAT, SAT., etc.) and courses (A-G, AP, etc.) for all students

Faculty Involvement: Informed, active participation from school faculty in the creation and maintenance of a college culture

Family involvement: Meaningful engagement on the part of family members in the process of building a college culture

College Partnerships: Active links in a variety of forms between the school and local colleges and universities

Articulation: Ongoing coordination between counselors and teachers among all schools in a feeder group

Schools that want to change their college-going rates can work to balance their delivery of all nine of these principles. Start with an honest inventory, then move to change.

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My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

Acheive the College Dream Expands to 83 Community Colleges

The Lumina foundation continues its committment to new programs for college success and college completion- http://www.achievingthedream.org/ This impressive effort has different approaches throughout many states. It is primarily institution based rather than state systemic refom. But a new publication is on the website about a framework for state policies to support student success from a conference of fifteeen state policy teams. It also has a state data network.
Achieving the dream is now moving to state policy implications derived from the many local innovations to turn access into success.

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My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

Randomized Trials Provide What Works For College Success

qbnsHow do we know what solutions really work to improve college preparation and completion? One excellent way is to conduct a randomized trial using control groups similar to FDA drug tests. There is a start on this for community college effectiveness and persistence through a top flight research firm MDRC-http://www.mdrc.org/. They found that some types of dual enrollment programs in New york City can prevent remediation. Now they found "learning communities " in which students take several remedial courses together can advance them to credit level college courses. The same group of students took three courses together-remedial English, health or psychology , and an orientation course.The professors worked together to reinforce each other.
These are small scale studies and it is uncertain whether the results can be generalized. But research is moving in the right direction.

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My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

State Scholarships Can Inhibit Challenging Course Taking By Students

College preparation relies in part on students taking the right courses that include content and skills aligned with college completion and persistence. But many state scholarship programs based on grade point averages encourage students to take easy courses where they know that they can get good grades. For example, Kentucky pays a $125 bonus for a 2.50 GPA, but $500 for a 4.o. Sources in Kentucky say this sliding scale incentive pay inhibits students for taking advanced courses with difficult content. Ky weights AP more than other courses, but not much money is involved.
States need to evaluate the impact of GPA incentives in their merit scholarship programs , as well as looking at need more carefully

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My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

Community College Students Do Not Get Federal Financial Aid

The percent of community college students who apply for federal student aid rose 37% between 2001 and 2006, but only half the students apply for federal aid. 4 year college students apply at a rate of about 80% more- see EconomicDiversity.org. Community college students find the aid application process daunting and unclear since they are part time and have little counseling. Moreover, many community colleges have insufficient student services to help students apply. The rates of application in Californias community colleges are all over the map depending on local college priorities.
A new study by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School research found many students from Chicago could have gone to 4 year colleges, but found the aid application process "too intimadating". College completion is much higher at four year colleges.Latinos in Chicago were particularly unlikely to apply for aid at 4 year colleges that they were qualified to attend.
High schools need to do more to help these students apply and create a culture of pursuing financial aid.

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My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

Declining Students Could Cause Decline in Academic Standards

The New York Times ran a front-page story on March 9 emphasizing 2008 was the peak year for the number of high school seniors. After 2008 many states will experience a sharp decline in potential college attendees. As usual, the Times focused on the impact upon the highly-selective colleges that include only 5% of college enrollment.

But the impact upon broad access 4 year colleges that admit all qualified applicants is more important. These colleges comprise a majority of all 4 year enrollment. Many will be desperate to fill their classes and consequently will lower their de facto minimum admission standards. This will send signals to high school students that they do not need to study for high grades or take challenging college prep courses. Students will realize admissions are getting easier, and college remediation will expand.

These trends mean that postsecondary education needs to stress that rigorous academic courses in secondary school aid college success and completion. Starting in a remedial track lessens the chances of college completion. The midwest and mid-Atlantic states will experience the most grade 12 student decline.


My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

High drop out rates. Another youth killed on city streets. Teaching to the Test? Who cares? Too few. That’s our challenge.


Guest Blog, by Daniel F. Bassill, President of Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

Thank you for inviting me to write a guest blog. I’ve spent the past 30 years leading a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago that connects inner city kids with workplace volunteers. I’ve also had an advertising career where my job was to tell people in forty states that we had 400 stores near them, with merchandise they might want. We did this with print advertising, radio and TV, reaching 20 million people three each week, and with a variety of public awareness activities.

What does this have to do with education and preparing kids for college and careers? Everything.

What I’ve learned from my leadership of volunteers is that until we get volunteers personally connected, invested, in an issue, they only provide a minimum amount of time, talent toward their volunteer service. However, when a volunteer bonds with a youth, and with the organization, many become willing to do much more to help the child succeed in school. Some become surrogate parents. Others become leaders.

If we don’t create more leaders, who are personally involved with helping inner city kids to college and careers, we cant make the changes we write about on these blogs and we can’t reach all of the kids who need our help.

We need a marketing strategy, based on collaboration of those who are self- interested in this cause.

This blog has many informative articles about poverty, No Child Left Behind, and other issues related to education and preparing kids for college. One that I found really interesting was an article about the wealth gap, which helps explain the reason kids in poor communities do less well in school than kids in more affluent communities.
The tutor/mentor blog, which I write, has many additional links, and uses graphics like the one I’ve attached to show a goal of connecting people from different groups in common actions that last for many years. You can see this and other concept maps here.

In addition, we use computer generated maps to show where poverty and poor schools are most concentrated, and thus, where more resources are needed to help kids have a better chance of staying in school, and leaving with the education and the adult network, they need to compete in college and in work. However, unless we dramatically increase the number of people reading these articles, reflecting, and then acting, with time, talent, money, and their vote, we won’t build the public will power, and the distribution of resources, needed to make a significant dent in the problem.

This is a marketing and advertising challenge, not just a social service problem. It’s an education challenge, but not just a K-12 one. The challenge is to increase the number of adult learners who read these blogs, follow these links, and then use this information in their own actions and efforts to help poor kids.
I’m passionate about volunteer based tutoring/mentoring because I see it as one of the best forms of civic engagement. This passion has grown over 30 years, as I’ve learned more about the problem and been more personally involved in the solution. Thus, my strategy is to recruit volunteers to become tutors/mentors, and grow their involvement over a period of years.

A comprehensive tutor/mentor program, like Cabrini Connections, is a bridge, connecting youth in poverty, with adults who don’t live in poverty, but who can open doors to jobs and careers, if we can keep them connected to the kids, and our programs, for enough years.

While the Cabrini Connections program has 100 volunteers involved each year, the Tutor/Mentor Connection strategy supports more than 200 tutor and/or mentor programs in Chicago and many more in other parts of the country. If we help volunteers connect in many programs, in many cities, we increase the army of volunteers who become personally connected, and become evangelists who take this strategy back to their workplace, their university, and/or their faith groups and social/civic networks.

It’s a long term strategy aimed at increasing the size of the choir, or the village of people, who need to be helping kids in economically disadvantaged communities move through high school, college or vocational training, and into 21st century jobs and careers. Since we don’t have the $250 million per year that Montgomery Ward spent on advertising, we need a collaboration strategy to generate this type of public involvement.
How can universities help? Stanford and other universities have huge alumni bases in Chicago and other big cities. If business school and alumni teams from different universities adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection as their own strategy, creating learning circles that build better understanding of problems and solutions, we can unleash the talent of top universities who use their advertising, marketing, communications skills to help us get more people involved, informed, engaged.

As we pilot this process in Chicago, the alumni networks of these universities can distribute this type of leadership to every city in the country.

I host a conference every May and November in Chicago and hope that some of the people reading this will participate, as a first step in forming these types of leadership teams, so that as the 2008-09 school year, this leadership is helping mobilize more volunteers for tutor/mentor programs, in all cities, not just Chicago.
It does take a village to raise a child. However, it takes a few organizers to mobilize the village. The future starts with us


My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

High Scoring Massachusetts also Has High Remediation

Massachusetts is among the highest scoring states on k-8 Naep, and is viewed as a national model for reform of k-12. But in a new study published by Boston.Com the state concluded its remediation rates for entering students at public colleges is very high- 65% at community colleges and over 20% at four year colleges. This is about average for all states under my estimates for remediation.-, even though the US Education Dept uses much lower numbers for remediation.
But Ma sends 80% of its high school graduates to postsecondary education which is also among the highest in USA. This may account for some of the remdiation. Ca sends just over 60% of its high school grads to college, and has even higher remediation rates than Ma.

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My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

NCLB and College Preparation: Little Is Funded

Title 1 the main funding source for NCLB provides 14 billion annually, but only 6% of this money goes to high schools and 15% goes to middle and high schools combined ! So not much college preparation can be provided to low income students who are at risk of not completing college because of poor academic skills and knowledge. This needs to be a major focus of NCLB reauthorization. Foundation support for college preparation can not come close to matching the potential of Title 1 as a funding source.
I doubt adding new categorical programs for high schools is the best route. Congress is considering a billion for Success in Middle Schools Act, and 2.5 billion for a Graduation Promise Act. But college prep needs to be at the core of NCLB, not an add on through yet another underfunded categorical.

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My blog discusses the important and complex subjects of college completion, college success, student risk factors (for failing), college readiness, and academic preparation. I will explore the pieces of the college puzzle that heavily influence, if not determine, college success rates.

Thinking About Going to College?

Many students who are in the middle or lower part of their high school graduation class are unsure whether or when they should go to college. The next decision is where. Starting with the first two decisions is correct, but complex. Many students want to delay going or think they are ready academically and cannot. This is analyzed in depth by the publication I co-authored "Betraying the College Dream" at http://brigeproject.stanford.edu. This website has many other studies that discuss these issues. But since then we have added another website to guide prospective college students through their decisions on whether, where, and when to go to college. Just click the website at the right hand top of this blog to begin solving the college puzzle. It asks you questions on many pieces of the puzzle and then gives you summary advice at the end.

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