Area schools to add career, college plan

Program to help high school students

Every nine weeks, Lindsey Graham calls parents of seniors in three high schools in Newton County to tell them about the opportunities their teenagers have to go to college and start a career. She meets with the students once every nine weeks, too.

“A lot of them will start with, ‘I have no idea what I want to do when I get out of high school,’” Graham said. “I’m able to hold their hand and walk with them.”

Graham is among 46 career coaches working statewide with the Arkansas Works Initiative, which began January 2010 with Gov. Mike Beebe’sWorkforce Cabinet, and involves a handful of state business and education agencies.

The Arkansas Works program benefits at-risk public high school students in 21 counties. The counties chosen struggle with low family incomes, high unemployment and poverty rates; and low percentages of adults with college bachelor’s degrees, said Arkansas Works Associate Director Sonja Wright-Mc-Murray.

“The presence of the career coaches and the support of the school districts has made the big impact,” Wright-McMurray said.

In the first semester ofArkansas Works, the 21 counties selected showed an 18.6 percent increase in students going to college, Wright-Mc-Murray said.

Taken from the same idea, the Northwest Arkansas Career and College Program will begin next fall as a pilot project in Benton and Washington counties.

The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s College of Education and Health Professions will hire 15 career coaches who will be assigned to 17 public high schools in the 15 school districts in the two counties.

The Walton Family Foundation in Bentonville gave $1.5 million for the three-year pilot program, which was announced last week.

“As we invest in projects that enhance the quality of life for Northwest Arkansas residents, we know that education is a critical driver of economic and community development,” said Rob Brothers, home region program director for the Walton Family Foundation. “This project is an opportunity to raise academic achievement with a regional strategic plan, and through collaboration, provide at-risk students with resources that otherwise may not have been available.”

Kim Davis, a spokesman for the Northwest Arkansas Council, said educators and community leaders were inspired by the Arkansas Works Initiative’ successes - students with higher ACT scores and more students enrolling in college.

“We think we’ll be able to get more students in the pipeline for higher education or technical education,” Davis said. “We want to make sure every student has an opportunity to walk across the stage,”

Northwest Arkansas Career and College Program Director Kristin Higgins - a UA assistant professor of counselor education- said coaches will be UA students pursuing master’s degrees or doctorates in counseling. They will spend at least a year working with 20 to 30 high school juniors and seniors and their families, Higgins said.

School counselors will select students for the program who are at-risk, perhaps those from poor families or who are failing high school courses. Candidates also can be students who would be the firstgeneration college graduate in their family.

With a career coach, the students will identify career interests, set goals, identify the education and training required for their chosen career and prepare for the ACT, Higgins said.

“Sometimes it’s just a lack of knowledge,” she said. “It’s definitely an option.”

GRADUATION RATES

Northwest Arkansas’ largestshe said. Many students have told her they worry whether they can afford college or whether they are smart enough to succeed. That leads to conversations that offer hope that they can afford college and they can succeed, she said. She also works to convince their parents.

“They usually say, ‘If you can help them through this, then that sounds like a great plan,’” Graham said.

A grant from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a federal assistance program, pays for most of the $4 million Arkansas Works program, Wright-McMurray said. The program consists of the career coaches, as well as an Internet tool for college and career planning and ACT academies.

A grant from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation allowed the program to expand to three Little Rock high schools: Hall, J.A. Fair and McClellan, Wright-McMurray said. The foundation’s website lists a $258,500 grant for the project.

Wright-McMurray said she hopes other communities will follow Northwest Arkansas in developing local career coaching programs.

“Many of our high schools and middle schools really feel they would be at a detriment if the career coaches weren’t there,” she said. “We’ve seen great success in our 21 counties, and now we’re in Little Rock. They’ll be able to serve those students we haven’t been able to serve.”high schools exceed the state and national graduation rates that hover around 75 percent, but even with a graduation rate of 88.2 percent in Bentonville for 2009-10, that means dozens of Bentonville seniors are not graduating, said Gary Ritter, director of the Office of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas.

“This kind of program is intended to help those kids who [we] might miss,” Ritter said.

Graduation rates for the Fayetteville, Rogers, Springdale and Siloam Springs school districts ranged from 80 percent to just under 90 percent for 2009-10, according to the Arkansas Department of Education.

With about one counselor for every 400 students, the addition of a dedicated career coach will lower that ratio and ensure every student has plotted a path after high school, Springdale Superintendent Jim Rollins said.

“The key word here is personalization,” Rollins said. “Every young person has their own set of personal challenges that need personal attention.”

Graham, the Arkansas Works career coach in Newton County, is responsible for assisting 350 seventh- through 12th-graders in determining career interests and preparing for college. She spends three days a week at Jasper High School and one day each at Mount Judea High School and Deer High School.

The majority of her time is spent with juniors and seniors,

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 12/18/2011

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