SEATTLE —To get more low-income students to go to college, the College Success Foundation had a tried-and-true model.
For years, counselors from the Washington-based nonprofit would work one-on-one with a select number of public school kids who’d applied to receive intensive support to plan for their education beyond high school. As of a few years ago, the foundation was serving around 2,700 students across the state.
The numbers were steady, and the program was successful. In the 2021-22 school year, 95% of CSF students graduated from high school, about 20 percentage points higher than that of the state overall. Even during that pandemic year, more than half of those graduates enrolled in college after high school. By comparison, about 37% of Washington’s low-income high school graduates directly enrolled in college that year.
But the pandemic was still sending college enrollment numbers around the nation into free fall, and the foundation decided it needed to do more. Around eight times more.
Backed by $11 million in funds from the state’s share of federal pandemic relief aid, the College Success Foundation expanded its counselors’ services to each of the more than 20,000 students enrolled at 28 Washington public schools. (The foundation also provides services to all students at several middle schools and has advisers stationed at state colleges.) Today, students at those schools no longer need to apply to benefit from the foundation’s programming.
“A student can engage at any point in their journey,” said Danette Knudson, vice president of program strategy at the College Success Foundation.
Changing from that small-scale model was a scary idea at first, said Knudson. But there are some signs that it’s working.
Since the expansion last school year, around 61% of the students at high schools with CSF staff went to college within a year of graduating. That’s 10 percentage points above both the statewide average and the rate of students participating the year prior.
CSF counselors do some of the traditional work of a high school college counselor. They evangelize about important deadlines for financial aid and guide students through their college decisions. In some cases, where a school already has a dedicated college counselor, the CSF counselor will help in sharing the load.
While focusing on all students, the foundation is also tailoring some of its offerings to particular student groups — a principle called targeted universalism. At the Port Angeles School District, counselors invited Native American students on a tour of state college campuses that have dedicated spaces for Indigenous communities, including longhouses. In Spokane, counselors hosted financial aid nights specifically for immigrants from the Marshall Islands.
What will this switch mean for the long term? The foundation is still figuring that out, with help from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is now studying the efficacy of this approach by examining how the program works at each school. (The Seattle Times Education Lab receives funding from the Gates Foundation.) After those findings come out, Knudson said, they’ll know more about what’s worked.
