1. I
t’s early September, and Leslie Moore, superintendent of a high-perform-
ing, affluent school district outside New York City, contemplates how she
will meet the goal her school board gave her — to land more graduating
seniors into Ivy League institutions and other highly selective colleges.
In a nearby middle-income district where 98 percent of graduates enroll
in postsecondary studies but only 40 percent complete a college degree
within five years of leaving high school, Doug George, the superintendent
and a 35-year educator, is thinking about how he can dramatically improve
those outcomes.
Likewise, Keith Francis, an assistant superintendent for curriculum and
instruction in a nearby district, wonders how he and his colleagues can reach
the growing number of students from low-income families who believe col-
lege is an unattainable goal.
These real-life scenarios (the superintendents’ names are pseudonyms
because of their part in a recent research study) reflect the challenges leaders
face when contemplating how to educate students and families about the full
range of postsecondary options. How can they support teachers’ and admin-
istrators’ efforts to promote and enable these options? In particular, they
wonder how they can leverage their respective districts’ guidance director to
reach the stated goals.
Counseling
Leadership
in College Readiness
Leveraging this districtwide capacity varies
among schools’ socioeconomic profiles
BY STANTON L . BROWN
August 2016 SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR 29
2. Researching Roles
From my 2013 study of the district guidance
director’s role in creating and sustaining a college-
readiness culture at three small school districts
located in the vicinity of New York City, I found
district guidance leaders tailor the way a college-
readiness process is developed and managed to
account for socioeconomic profiles and students’
social and cultural capital.
Social capital refers to the who you know and
how information is communicated within social
circles. Cultural capital is the what you know and
how that knowledge is transferred from families
to students.
Though located within close proximity, the
three K-12 districts had distinct and disparate
levels of social/cultural capital and student
demographics. The low-income district of 3,000
students has pockets of dire poverty in a com-
munity where the median household income was
$81,000. Working class families predominated,
and about 30 percent of students qualified for the
federal lunch program. About half of the student
body was white, and 40 percent were Hispanic or
African American.
The middle-class district had 1,200 students
in a community of about 4,000 residents. Fewer
than 15 percent of students qualified for lunch
support. About 19 percent were Hispanic or
black, and another 7 percent were Asian.
The affluent school district served more than
5,000 students in a community of 40,000.
Median household income was $120,000. About
10 percent of the students were Asian and fewer
than 4 percent were Hispanic or black. On stu-
dent test measures, it had the highest achieve-
ment levels of the three by a significant margin.
Defining the Role
District guidance leaders played a critical leader-
ship role in building and sustaining a college-
readiness culture in seven areas: administrator/
supervisor, program facilitator, data aggregator,
strategic planner/innovator, relationship builder/
manager, advocator and other (miscellaneous).
These distinct but related tasks supported the
work of the school district’s guidance office.
A critical part of preparing students and
families for postsecondary options is providing
them with information about the preparation
process. The school counseling leader can enable
the exchange of this information and manage the
learning process around how students and their
families understand this information.
In my analysis, two overarching role-types
described what school counseling leaders do in
regard to college readiness: (1) they act as insti-
tutional information agents and (2) they serve as
navigators for students, families, administrators
and faculty.
Information and Navigation
Students and their families generally rely on
the guidance office for college preparedness.
District counselor leaders manage this process.
They create the master schedule of classes that
place students in the appropriate sequence of
courses, including prerequisite college courses.
They organize financial aid workshops and man-
age relationship protocols between families and
school counselors and teachers to ensure quality
advising.
The counselor’s role of institutional informa-
tion agent was more critical in a low-income
district. The deficit of social and cultural capital,
relating to students’ motivation for pursuing col-
lege and their knowledge of college preparation,
was more prevalent. Students who received little
insight about college preparation from their fam-
ily or social circles had a limited understanding of
what was required to be ready for college or how
to access this information.
District leaders in all three districts noted this
distinction about families’ or social circles’ access
to the best information about preparing for col-
lege admission.
In the role of navigator for college readiness,
the district counseling leader influenced how
students and parents were steered through a
complex process. The leader designed processes
to shepherd students in middle and high school
PHOTOBYVALERIETHOMSON
Stanton Brown
SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR August 201630
