Ph.D. Candidate in Higher Education, Boston College
“Which colleges should I apply to?” College counselors across the country guide students through this important question every year. Counselors discuss important aspects such as affordability, location, and institutional selectivity as they help students navigate college selection. However, there are other critical considerations for students who are racially underrepresented in higher education.
Historically many predominantly-white higher education institutions limited or altogether excluded access to students of color, instead focusing on educating and meeting the needs of affluent white males. Many of these institutions maintain the same practices, traditions, and environments that have resulted in unsupportive environments and negative outcomes for students who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or Persons of Color (BIPOC). Numerous studies show that Black and Latinx students regularly have their academic abilities questioned, are tokenized in class, and face various levels of racism from peers and faculty. Further, Anti-Asian racism and hate crimes have escalated since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic which has further alienated these students. Perhaps now more than ever, we must help high school students to make more informed decisions on where to apply to college.
Below, I’ve noted some steps that students can take as they start to look at colleges.
Reach out to the student affairs office to ask for a list of affinity groups or cultural organizations that are active. Are there different activities or resources that students might want to tap into?
Look at the multicultural/diversity office website(s). What kinds of support (e.g., academic, personal, financial, social) are available? Try to contact a staff member to learn about what the office’s role is in supporting students who experience challenges on campus. Also ask for the breakdown of staff, faculty, and students by race, ethnicity, and gender (look closely at the department you’re interested in)
Ask to be connected with students whom you identify with to determine what it’s like to be in different spaces on campus (social gatherings, labs, in class, experiences with faculty and within departments) and what support mechanisms exist
Check out the institution’s student conduct website to see how bias-related incidents and hate crimes can be reported and to learn about the overall procedure. What are the different steps involved? What support mechanisms are available to victims? How do they ensure your confidentiality?
Contact the career services and/or alumni office to learn about the career outcomes for underrepresented students, including salary and placement information
Executive Director Center for Equity and Postsecondary Attainment
We know that access to the best information influences students’ college decisions. Yet, Black, Brown, and Indigenous students, and those residing in low-income homes or who are the first in their family to attend college experience the cradle to career pipeline differently. Lacking access to pertinent material and key sources of support to make informed decisions about whether and how to pursue a college degree, they must fend for themselves and sort through an endless amount of data and discordant information.
School counselors have long been viewed as pivotal actors in supporting students as they make the transition from high school to college or career, however what that looks like varies significantly from high school to high school. With over more than 1.7 million students attending schools with police but no school counselor and school counselor to student ratios and job expectations varying widely, how are students sorting through the complex array of information? Researchers Laura Owen (San Diego State University), Tim Poynton (University of Massachusetts-Boston) and Raeal Moore (ACT) partnered to better understand students’ sources of college and career information and the most effective communication method for receiving this information. The entire study and its findings can be found in the Journal of College Access.
Sources of Support: People
According to the survey findings, school counselors and college admissions counselors are the most preferred source (65% prefer HS counselor; 63% prefer admissions counselors) for college and career information. Students who prefer to receive college and career information from their school counselor describe their school counselor as the most knowledgeable and best positioned to share accurate and personalized information regarding college and career opportunities.
Students also expressed that the amount of information available to them was completely overwhelming and they expect their school counselor will help them sort through all of it. Students who ranked their school counselor as the most preferred source of college and career information also viewed their school counselor as the most knowledgeable and trusted that the school counselor had their best interest in mind. However, students also shared concerns about the lack of access to their school counselor, often when they need them the most.
Students who prefer to receive college and career information from someone other than their school counselor also trust their advice and believe they have the students’ best interest in mind.
Regardless of who students identified as their preferred source of information, they perceive this person to be the most knowledgeable provider of college advice and they see them as an expert who they can trust.
Having a trusted adult to rely on for postsecondary guidance is essential, however assuming that anyone can provide this support or that all college and career advice is equal is not only misguided, it’s dangerous. Researchers, practitioners, parents and students have long noted that the postsecondary counseling and advising system was never designed to serve all students. It is unacceptable to acknowledge these glaring problems, yet continue to sit back and watch it unfold, as if admitting the problem absolves us from finding solutions. Until we commit to reviewing and dismantling school policies and practices that lead to inequitable and decreased postsecondary opportunity, we are all just accomplices in holding up an advising and counseling system designed to support the most affluent, educated and predominantly White communities. What do we need to do differently?
Hire diverse school counseling practitioners whose lived experiences align with, provide context and celebrate the communities, students and families they serve.
School counselor training programs must recruit and train more Black, Brown and Indigenous school counselors and college and career advisors to fill these new positions.
Improve the preparation of all professionals who provide college and career information. From pre-service training to professional development, the need for ongoing, equity centered training must be non-negotiable. School counselors should be allocated time to attend professional development that is directly aligned to college and career counseling – and professional development needs to be embedded into their jobs as it is for teachers and administrators.
COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated long standing systemic, structural and institutional educational inequities. We must be intentional in our pandemic recovery to dismantle these inequitable practices and replace them with interventions and practices that promote enrollment, persistence and completion for all students.
New postsecondary advising and counseling models should challenge existing Eurocentric practices, elevate diverse perspectives, call out racist policies and practices and ensure substantive counseling and advising support is provided to disenfranchised families and students.
Given the especially critical role school counselors play in helping students attending high minority, high poverty schools, professional development is not only needed to increase counseling skills and knowledge, but it is also requisite that all school counselors challenge the inequities built into the educational system, call out the policies and practices that perpetuate racism, ableism and other discriminatory practices and acknowledge their role in changing the deficit lens through which too many children are viewed.
Preferences for information and perceived helpfulness would most certainly shift if we embraced these changes. Currently, perceived helpfulness does not line up perfectly with student preferences for information. While students prefer to receive college and career information from their high school counselor, they do not find them to be the most helpful. This could be in part because students consistently mentioned how difficult it is to meet with their counselor. First generation students and students from low-income families ranked their school counselor as the most helpful source of information, however as parental income levels and postsecondary degree attainment increased, viewing school counselors as their preferred source of college and career information decreased in lock step fashion.
Media
Students indicated that the internet is their most helpful source of college and career information. Although information is readily available on the internet, it does not mean students have knowledge, access, or understanding of what is available or how to discriminate between accurate, helpful information versus harmful guidance on the internet. While the Internet was rated to be a helpful source of information, it was also among the least-preferred information sources, with interpersonal communication methods (email and one-on-one) being the most preferred. Students (and adults) need help determining which internet resources are useful, accurate and meet their needs.
Communication
Email and one on one conversations were the most preferred means of communicating college and career information (69% prefer email and 48% prefer one on one). This finding was replicated in another study and upon further conversation with the students, it was discovered that students were using email as a protective shield to help them sort out communication in which they did not want to engage in. This is somewhat alarming given the high rate of communication that higher education institutions send out through email. Many students miss key pieces of information because they are not opening their inboxes.
Understanding the ways in which students are engaging with technology is an important piece of the advising puzzle. We can educate college and career advising professionals on this common practice so they can begin to help students understand how email is used by higher ed institutions and why engaging with email to filter unwanted contact can cause problems that may potentially lead to the loss of key opportunities. Also, we may be seeing another manifestation of the role relationships play in their decision-making process. Students prefer one-on-one contact, which makes complete sense given the complex yet personal nature of navigating the postsecondary pipeline. They prefer to open email from someone they know, just as they engage in conversations with someone who they find as knowledgeable, trustworthy, and accurate. We need to ensure that we are building a system that provides access to knowledgeable and trustworthy college and career advising professionals, one that ensures support for all students especially those who have been discriminated against. We are all responsible for calling this out and demanding the college counseling changes that must happen now.
The findings of this study are useful for K‐12 education, college access, and higher education professionals to consider when developing policies and programs to provide college and career information to students.
*This blog is printed and posted in collaboration with ACT.org here.
Doctoral Student, Educational Leadership & Higher Education, Boston College
The transition to college is fraught with challenges, particularly for students who have been underrepresented and marginalized in higher education. Far too many students who plan to attend college do not matriculate or do not persist. Lack of support or knowledge, problems with financial aid, and insufficient academic preparation could all contribute to this summer melt phenomenon. College transition and support programs, however, can potentially mitigate some of these issues during a pandemic that has severely affected postsecondary enrollment for students attending high minority and high poverty schools.
There are a wide range of transition and support programs. Some are mandatory while others are optional. Some programs are free and some are not. They exist at two-year and four-year colleges, can be of varying lengths and intensity, can serve specific student populations, and can have different goals. Of these, summer bridge programs in particular have gained momentum and have the potential to address issues related to summer and COVID melt. Held during the summer before a student’s first year of college, summer bridge programs support students in their transition from high school to college. They provide the opportunity for students to explore available resources at their college, acclimate to their new environment, form relationships with peers, faculty, and staff, develop self-efficacy, and build essential academic skills.
High school counselors can and should discuss these programs with their students when guiding them through the college selection process. On the other side of the desk, higher education professionals can and should reach out to, and build relationships with students and high school counselors to encourage participation. In 2020, many summer bridge programs moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic, making them potentially more accessible to students.
While there does not appear to be a comprehensive list of summer bridge programs in the United States, students can use the following search phrases to find out if the colleges they are interested in or have been accepted to have a program that fits their needs and interests as they transition to college.
“Summer bridge program” and “(insert college name)”
“Transition program” and “(insert college name)”
“Summer transition program” and “(insert college name)”
Or, many public school systems have a web page dedicated to college transition programs offered across their campuses
For students who have attended a summer bridge program, particularly during the summer of 2020, what was your experience like? For those who run summer bridge programs, what did you learn when adapting them to a virtual format? What advice do you have for other institutions running programs this summer? College Counseling Now would love to hear more about your perspectives and experiences!
“I believe everyone is born into the world to do something unique and distinctive.”
Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays
We echo the sentiments of Dr. Mays. Every individual has the ability to contribute something special and unique to society, particularly our students who live in urban settings. To help students maximize their abilities, certain skills and training are needed for them to optimize their potential. Therefore, an education at the secondary and postsecondary levels are an important part of the process given that the majority of individuals use their gifts and talents in their careers, fulfilling their purpose, or in their life’s calling. Moreover, we believe a postsecondary education can play a vital role in the lives of one of our most vulnerable populations from urban settings.
Attaining a postsecondary education can lead to improved career opportunities, higher salaries, and a better quality of life (Carnevale et al., 2015; Hines et al., 2020a). Former First Lady Michelle Obama created the Reach Higher Initiative (now Better Make Room) during her tenure to encourage ALL students to pursue an education or training beyond high school as former President Barack Obama’s North Star initiative centered around being a global leader in producing the higher proportion of college graduates by 2020. Currently, the Biden-Harris Administration priorities include positioning the middle class to compete in a global economy by improving the United States’ global standing in the world. A postsecondary education is vital in order for the aforementioned to be accomplished. More importantly, we must ensure students of color, women, and potential first generation students are not left out of the equation, especially those from urban school settings.
Preparing students in urban schools for postsecondary education must be innovative and transforming. We must engage them and meet them where they are rather than trying to get them to meet educators where they are. Therefore, we propose integrating hip-hop based practices with college and career readiness activities as a method to ready urban students for postsecondary opportunities.
Hip-Hop based practices in education, broadly, span decades (Morrell & Duncan-Andrade, 2002; Stovall, 2006, Alim, 2011; Ewing, 2014, Levy & Adjapong, 2020) all calling for the need to infuse culturally sustaining approaches into our school curricula. Hip-Hop based approaches are often rooted in a foundational understanding of hip-hop culture as a movement that amplified Black and Brown voices against systemic ills (Chang, 2005), using documents like mixtapes to protect the culture from erasure (Ball, 2011). Drawing from the reality that the educational system in America has historically weaponized assimilative praxis to minimize the voices of Black and Brown youth, Emdin (2016) calls for the use of hip-hop based approaches to support youth in reclaiming knowledge, culture, and history. Therefore, contemporary understandings of hip-hop in educational spaces believe in activating youth as change agents, who pull from their intra- and interpersonal network of resources to engage in the creation of multimodal hip-hop projects that simultaneously advocate for social justice and spur academic, career, and social and emotional development (Adjapong, 2019; Levy & Travis, 2020; Washington, 2018). This social justice or strengths-based hip-hop scholarship pulls from the core belief that hip-hop is resilience, leverages joy, and corrals the community to make sense of and combat external realities – the proverbial rose that grew from concrete (Shakur, 1999). As hip-hop practices have been more trendy, particularly in the realm of counseling and therapy, practitioners need to be careful to not frame Black and Brown youth solely as traumatized, broken, or in need of saving. Both education and counseling often operate from deficit models which pathologize youth experience, label concerns as internal, and then call for interventions to fix said problems. This is the antithesis of hip-hop which is a response to ecological contexts that produce feelings, and illustrates how the education system can erase culture through pulling hip-hop based practices into the matrix of assimilative praxis if its practitioners are not intentionally critical. Use of hip-hop practices in school counseling argues for a shift away from a deficit lens, seeing youth as complex, irreducible (Hannon & Vareen, 2016) and asset-rich (Bryant & Henry, 2012), human beings who can optimize their internal capacities if we as educators create the systems to do so (and abolish the ones that don’t). Therefore, Bettina Love’s (2019) call for the centering of joy and love in our education practices is essential in hip-hop because it allows educators the ability to see youth as complex individuals and foster their knowledge and capacity to actualize.
In school counseling practice, we’ve seen hip-hop leveraged as a small-group intervention (where students write, record, and perform emotionally themed music) to support students with navigating stress, anxiety, depression (Levy & Travis, 2020) and developing coping skills (Levy, 2019). In collaboration with teachers, hip-hop lyric writing interventions around science content have enabled the simultaneous acquisition of academic content and the processing of social and emotional concerns (Emdin et al., 2016). Youth have led initiatives to design physical school spaces, in the form of hip-hop studios, as potential safe-havens to express themselves authentically, process difficult emotions, and build relationships with peers (Levy & Adjapong, 2020). In each of these interventions, youth were positioned as experts of their own stories and development, who called on educators and schools to relinquish control and allow them to display their brilliance.
Some researchers (Lee & Goodnough, 2018; Lunenburg, 2010) note that schools are systems. Moreover, these systems have subsystems (e.g., community, family, and district) that impact the academic, socioemotional, college, and career outcomes of students (Bronfenbrenner, 2005). For this reason, we have adapted an integrated, systemic approach with programmatic intervention levels created by Lee and Goodnough (2018) to incorporate college and career readiness activities with hip-hop based practices to prepare students in urban school settings for postsecondary options. See table below.
System Level
College & Career Readiness Activity
Hip-Hop Based Practices
Individual
Instill the belief that college or a postsecondary pathway is a viable option; Working with students at the middle and high school levels to choose college and career ready courses for postsecondary preparation (academic/educational planning); Working with a student through career assessments to help them understand their career options, gifts, interests, and talents.
Lyric Writing as Emotive Journaling: Lyric writing can be used as an assessment, where school counselors co-select an instrumental beat with youth, and have them reflect lyrically on their strengths, areas of growth, and then goal setting. For example, students might construct a song titled “5-year plan” where they set long-term and short-term goals. This inherently narrative and aspirational verse can illuminate myriad student assets that can be used in the college and career planning process.
Group
Discussions around navigating the postsecondary process with students from urban school settings on topics such as potential barriers, advantages-learning how to thrive in new environments, and learning to code switch.
Collaboration as Role-play is a hip-hop and school counseling tactic that engages students in the discussing, processing, and co-constructing of a song around a shared emotional theme. In the content of CCR work, students can collaborate on songs around transitions to college, financial planning, or imagining how they would navigate the slew of barriers that exist on college campuses. The act of having students engage in this work in pairs to help students preemptively develop skill to navigate future barriers, but also learn from their peers about alternative tactics.
Classroom
Show movies/documentaries on postsecondary institutions (e.g., Higher Learning or School Daze) to discuss the nuances of being a student in those postsecondary settings, especially students of color, first generation, and English Language Learners.
Mixtape Making as a school counseling large-group process tasks students with highlighting a social justice theme of importance to them (retention issues on college campuses), which they then research, discuss, and plan a multimodal music project around. This might mean students, over the course of a series of classroom counseling lessons, construct multiple songs, a music video, artwork, and/or a social media campaign which helps them disseminate their findings. Germane to mixtape creation however, the research has to be strong. Meaning students need to be able to understand, and report out on retention issues, even developing personal solutions to navigate external challenges. Ancillary skill development is also apparent here including research and writing skills, public speaking, social media marketing, tangible art making skills, and many others.
Grade Level
Bring guest speakers who live/or from urban areas with postsecondary credentials. Also, have guest speakers who have backgrounds in hip-hop and pursued and attained a postsecondary education.
School counselors might organize a panel of speakers who have drawn from hip-hop to construct innovative careers across disciplines. Notable professionals exist across scholarly disciplines, as well the fields of business, architecture, the nonprofit sector, and service industries who have each leveraged hip-hop sensibilities to transcend music and art and find success in other fields. However, grade level hip-hop interventions should not be limited to external guest speakers or experts. Students who have engaged in rigorous and creative mixtape making can share-out their research and findings via grade-level shows. This offers each grade level the opportunity to digest the relevant mixtape content. For example, homerooms at each grade level can then process the show with guide breakout discussions that future explore the college and career process.
School Wide
Create a college going culture throughout the school (signs, posters of postsecondary institutions, positive/inspirational messages); College/Vocational night; College virtual/physical tours; Partner with local colleges universities, and vocational schools for programming (Hines et al, 2020b).
Immersive College Tours can follow the creation of student-made mixtapes. School counselors deploying Hip-hop informed CCR must form partnerships with college campuses, prior to college visits, to carve out opportunities for students to share their work. For example, a school counselor might identify a Black Student Union on a college campus to collaboratively hold an open-mic event where college students and high school students can perform. Then, in addition to the normal tour activities, an experiential/immersive open-mic event can occur where students share out their rhymes about retention, transitions, and/or five-year plans, while also building community within otherwise potentially isolating campuses. Much like a post-tour reflection that artists engage in, a post-college tour reflection can be facilitated by school counselors. Here school counselors guide youth though processing their college visit, reflection on the open-mic event, but also fit. The immersive nature of the tour should increase the depth of the reflections, as students are offered a genuine opportunity to assess feelings of connectedness or lack thereof. Pictures or documents from the college-tour performances can then be displayed across the school building to create a college-going culture that looks and feels relevant to students.
District
District school counselor supervisors can align the college and career readiness curriculum (district wide) where all school counselors are using the same pedagogy to merge hip-hop based practices and postsecondary readiness.
Experts in hip-hop based practices can come in and facilitate a district wide training for ALL school counselors. For example, a recent study explored a hip-hop based active listening skill professional development that focused on practicing the dialogical skills needed to engage in hip-hop work individually and in groups (Levy & Lemberger-Truelove, 2021).
Family
Meet with family to talk about shared aspirations and goals of their child’s postsecondary future.
At the family level, hip-hop based practices can be used as a tool to engage parents/guardians in dialogue around youth’s career and college aspirations. Opportunities in this arena are vast, including parent meetings where students share songs (like their five-year plan) with their parents and then discuss the content. This can happen in an individual students and family context, or as a larger listening party where a small-group of students share their entire mixtape with parents, to facilitate a larger discussion around the college and career process. Viewing family as an asset in supporting student development, opportunities may arise for parents to lead workshops (across music, art, research, business and marketing disciplines) that help elevate mixtape projects.
Community
Facilitate college and career readiness workshops at a local community center or church.
Community engagement opportunities include: Developing a college and career festival featuring local hip-hop artists who have postsecondary backgrounds to perform and/or speak on a panel about topics on college and career readiness. Paying local community members to run after-school programming that focuses on beat making, music engineering, clothing design, graphic design, social media marketing, etc.
Our integrative approach to college and career readiness using hip-hop based practices is not exhausted and can be a foundation for helping students from urban settings with postsecondary planning. Hip-Hop can be a remedy for helping students aspire to education and training beyond high school that will not only give them optimal career outcomes, but reinforce that a culture rooted in love and asset-based can play an important role in their personal development.
Ian Levy, EdD is an Assistant Professor and Director of the School Counseling Program at Manhattan College, a New York City native, former High School counselor, and the Vice President of Counselor Educators for the New York State School Counselors association. His research interests include the examination of mental health practices in urban schools, which entails exploring the effective use of the school counselor and other school staff to support the emotional lives of young people. Most notably, Dr. Levy piloted the development, implementation, and evaluation of a Hip-Hop based counseling framework that engaged students in small-group counseling through the writing, recording and performing of emotionally-themed mixtapes. His work has been featured on various news outlets including the New York Times, and CNN, and published a variety of reputable academic journals. In 2016 he was named the New York State School Counselor of the Year. Ian is a co-editor of the HipHopEd: The Compilation on Hip-Hop Education, Volume 2, and author of a forthcoming research monograph with Routledge titled Hip-Hop and Spoken Word Therapy in School Counseling: Developing Culturally Responsive Approaches (in May, 2021). Ian is also an emcee, and released his album – And Then It Glistens – in 2020.
Erik Hines, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at the Florida State University as well as the coordinator of the Counselor Education Program and School Counseling Track. Dr. Hines prepares graduate students to be professional school counselors. Dr. Hines’s research agenda centers around: (a) college and career readiness for African American males; (b) parental involvement and its impact on academic achievement for students of color; and (c) improving and increasing postsecondary opportunities for first generation, low-income, and students of color (particularly African American males). Additionally, his research interests include career exploration in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) for students of color. Dr. Hines has secured research funding to study the college readiness and persistence of African American males to improve their academic and career outcomes. His research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Counselingand Development, Professional School Counseling, The High School Journal, and Urban Education. Equally important, Dr. Hines is an ACA Fellow. Dr. Hines received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park in Counselor Education with a concentration in Urban School Counseling. Finally, he has worked as a counselor in various K-12 settings and for the Ronald E McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program.
References
Adjapong, E. (2019). Towards a practice of emancipation in urban schools: A look at student experiences through the science genius battles program. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 6(1), 15–27.
Adjapong, E. S., & Emdin, C. (2015). Rethinking pedagogy in urban spaces: Implementing hip-hop pedagogy in the urban science classroom. Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research, 11, 66–77.
Adjapong, E.S., & Levy, I. (2020). Hip-hop can heal: Addressing mental health through hip-hop in the classroom. The New Educator. 10.1080/1547688X. 2020.1849884
Alim, H. S. (2011). Global ill-literacies: Hip hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of literacy. Review of Research in Education, 35(1), 120-146.
Ball, J. A. (2011). I mix what I like! A mixtape manifesto. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (2005). Ecological models of human development. In M. Gauvain & M. Cole (Eds). Readings on the development of children (4th ed.). Worth.
Bryan, J., & Henry, L. (2012). A model for building school–family–community partnerships: Principles and process. Journal of Counseling & development, 90(4), 408-420.
Carnevale, A. P., Cheah, B., & Hanson, A. R. (2015). The economic values of college majors. https:// cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors/
Emdin, C. (2016). For White folks who teach in the hood… and the rest of y’all too: Reality pedagogy and urban education. Beacon Press.
Ewing, E. L. (2014). Schooling Hip-Hop: Expanding Hip-Hop Based Education Across the Curriculum. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 125–128.
Hannon, M. D., & Vereen, L. G. (2016). Irreducibility of Black male clients: Considerations for culturally competent counseling. The Journal of Humanistic Counseling, 55(3), 234–245.
Hines, E.M., Hines, M. R., Moore, J.L. III., Steen, S, Singleton, II, P., Cintron, D., Traverso, K., Golden, M. N., Wathen, B., & Henderson, J.A. (2020a). Preparing African American males for college: A group counseling approach. TheJournal for Specialists in Group Work, 45(2), 129-145. https://doi.org/10.1080/01933922.2020.1740846
Hines, E.M., Moore III, J.L., Mayes, R.D., Harris, P.C., Vega, D, Robinson, D.V., Gray, C.N., & Jackson, C.E. (2020b). Making student achievement a priority: The role of school counselors in turnaround schools. Urban Education, 55(2) 216-237. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085916685761
Lee, V.V. & Goodnough G.E. (2018). Data-driven school counseling practice and programming for equity. In B.T. Erford (Ed). Transforming the school counseling profession (pp. 67-93). Pearson.
Levy, I., & Adjapong, E. S. (2020). Toward culturally competent school counseling environments: Hip-hop studio construction. Professional Counselor, 10(2), 266–284. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1259697.pdf
Levy, I. (2019). Hip-hop and spoken word therapy in urban school counseling. Professional School Counseling, 22(1b).
Levy, I, & Travis, R. (2020). The critical cycle of mixtape creation: Reducing stress via three different group counseling styles. Journal for Specialists in Group Work, 45(4), 307–330. doi: 10.1080/01933922.2020.1826614
Love, B. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuitof educational freedom. Beacon Press.
Lunenburg, F.C. (2010). Schools as open systems. Schooling 1(1), 1-5.
Morrell, E., & Duncan-Andrade, J. M. (2002). Promoting academic literacy with urban youth through engaging hip-hop culture. English Journal, 88–92.
Shakur, T. (1999). The rose that grew from concrete. Simon and Schuster.
Stovall, D. (2006). We can relate: Hip-hop culture, critical pedagogy, and the secondary classroom. Urban Education, 41(6), 585–602.
Washington, A. R. (2018). Integrating hip‐hop culture and rap music into social justice counseling with black males. Journal of Counseling & Development, 96(1), 97-105.
Associate Professor, Educational Leadership & Higher Education, Boston College
Sadly, high school students’ zip code and their family background are the best predictors of whether and where they begin higher education. We all want to change this disgraceful picture for the sake of our students and our society. Even before the pandemic, our usual face-to-face methods have been unsuccessful in moving the needle on equity in college access. School counselors have large caseloads and responsibilities beyond college advising. Intensive out-of-school college access programs are expensive and reach relatively few students. Even these in-person connections largely disappeared for the pandemic era graduating classes of 2020 and 2021. Now and in the future, we need to find affordable ways to reach hundreds of thousands of college-intending students with effective application and financial aid assistance.
Enter text message college advising. Today’s youth live on their phones. According to the Pew Foundation, 95% of U.S. teenagers own a cell phone. About half say they are on their phone “almost constantly.” Delivering advising fully or partly through cell phone text messages has the promise of reaching students with timely, individualized, two-way communications. Text message college advising campaigns have begun to emerge over the past decade and the first results from these large-scale interventions are just beginning to be published.
The founders of College Counseling Now studied one of the most ambitious text message interventions to date: Digital Messaging to Improve College Success—DIMES. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, DIMES involved nearly 75,000 students from over 700 high-poverty high schools across 15 states. DIMES was intended to influence college application behavior and enrollment outcomes as measured by the difference between treatment and control groups at the end of the trial. Like other recently reported trials, overall results were disappointing. We set out to understand why by analyzing the content of the advising: the 400,000 text messages that students sent to their advisors over the 15 months of DIMES. What kinds of topics do students raise with advisors through text message? Is it possible for students to establish relationships with advisors via text message? Are student needs and concerns sufficiently similar in content and timing that advising could be automated? How do DIMES student participants experience this mode of advising?
We learned a lot—about how text message advising works and about why and when it does not. Our analysis of the messages showed what advisors might mistakenly assume that students know and understand. It showed what students need, and when they need it. You can read about our findings and recommendations in the Journal of College Access and see a video of our recent presentation on text message advising at the National School Counseling Leadership Conference.
Text message advising is not yet the great equalizer we’ve all been seeking. Not yet. It is too soon to abandon the promise of this wide reaching, cost-effective strategy, however. My co-researchers and I will share the many important lessons from DIMES in future blogs. We call on others to join the College Counseling Now conversation about what we are all learning about effective text message advising.
