The Solutions to College Completion Challenges Start in K–12

Much of the current higher ed conversation—from FAFSA disruptions to the enrollment cliff to student success initiatives—focuses on what happens once students reach college.

But what if many of these challenges are rooted earlier, in how K–12 systems are designed to produce (or fail to produce) college readiness?

For more than a decade, I have been thinking about this question as a first-generation college graduate, a former K–12 educator and now an educational researcher. My research stemmed from a question that practitioners at the pseudonymous Clayton High School, an urban, special-admission public high school, faced: Nearly 100 percent of Clayton’s graduates enrolled in college, but fewer than half completed their four-year degree.

This is a problem that hundreds, if not thousands, of high schools face. Thousands of high school students aspire to enroll in and graduate from college, but far too many never complete their degrees, often leaving with debt and without the credential they hoped to earn. In other words, college attainment is not simply an aspirational challenge. It is a structural challenge—one that starts years before students enter higher education.

I worked with my trusted colleague and friend Zach Cairns (also a pseudonym), Clayton’s principal, to co-create a multiyear partnership that sought to mitigate this challenge.

In our work, we thought critically about listening to and learning from the people who understand this challenge best: current and recent high school youth. For more than a year, I conducted classroom observations, shadowed students and interviewed alumni, students and educators about the school’s strengths and shortcomings. What did Clayton do well to prepare students for their postsecondary lives? What could Clayton have done better?

This information set the stage for what happened next. Together with Clayton educators and youth, we designed, implemented and evaluated a series of reforms to strengthen what worked and address what didn’t. This required tinkering with the school schedule to create a senior seminar, where students received one-on-one support from classroom teachers, school counselors and school staff to help them apply to and enroll in college. We also expanded academic courses, including Advanced Placement and elective courses, and increased the number of extracurricular activities and after-school programs.

We created pathways for students to think about how to exercise choice and agency in their high school experience and college placement, so they understand how to do so when they enter their postsecondary institutions. Clayton educators implemented structures and processes to help students and their families plan a four-year high school program, asking them to think and plan intentionally about what they wanted to take and why. We also strongly encouraged them to plan their courses so they could spread out their honors and AP classes across their high school tenure instead of concentrating them in their junior and senior years, which created unnecessary stress and anxiety.

We also pushed students to engage in project-based learning that allowed them to develop their voices and practice the time-management skills they would need in high school and, of course, in college.

As we thought about what else the high school could do, we also considered ways to bring higher education educators and staff in, to help us co-create activities, programs and reforms to support Clayton youth as they moved from high school to college. We started with small but significant changes.

First, Clayton educators collaborated with more than 100 college admissions counselors to design and host a schoolwide college fair for students in grades nine to 12. To do this well, Clayton and college counselors worked together and thought intentionally about how to scaffold the fair so that ninth- and 10th-grade students had an opportunity to explore different college types freely and openly, while 11th- and 12th-grade students had the time to think more critically about what colleges really matched their needs and interests.

Clayton educators provided support—in the form of instruction—about what students should do during this fair. The younger students, they instructed, should ask open questions about the nature of the college and explore an array of college types—sizes, missions and locations. The older students should be a bit more targeted, narrowing down the colleges they wanted to apply to and why.

Students role-played speaking with admissions officers, practicing how to introduce themselves and the questions they might ask. Clayton educators, with input from the college admissions counselors, designed a list of questions that students could use. They also created grade-specific scavenger hunts for the students to complete during the fair, which brought a little more joy to the event and forced students to engage with a diverse set of colleges and admissions officers.

Second, we listened to students who said they knew little about the colleges outside their city. This makes sense. Clayton students pass several college campuses on their commute to school; their families also know about the local colleges. While we felt that many of these colleges were good fits for our students, we also know that there were wonderful institutions just beyond the city limits.

So, we exposed them to these institutions. Clayton educators hosted schoolwide college visit days, collaborating once again with college admissions counselors to make the experience generative. They deliberately selected a mix of colleges located in the city and some just outside it to give students a broader selection of schools. This mattered. Most of the colleges in the city that Clayton students knew were large, research-intensive institutions. While these colleges might serve many youth, some realized through this process that they would be happier at a smaller college.

To reinforce this possibility, Clayton hosted a small-college night, during which representatives from three local small liberal arts colleges visited the school, presented the benefits of their institutions and answered questions families and students might have.

Again, the goal was not to tell them where to go to college. It was to open up their options and opportunities so that each student had the chance to make an informed decision about where to apply and ultimately where to enroll.

Finally, Clayton educators worked with admissions counselors from a local, highly selective liberal arts college to offer a professional development workshop on teacher recommendations. In this workshop, college admissions officers shared ideas and tips on what they look for in the recommendations teachers write. The admissions officers urged teachers to be honest about the challenges that students have faced in high school; they did not want recommendations about perfect youth who do everything right.

One Clayton teacher called this workshop the “most useful professional development of my career.” That is because it equipped teachers with the insider knowledge they needed to write the strongest recommendations possible for their students. After all, that is what teachers want to do.

Student testimonies and school-level data illustrate how these reforms shaped the Clayton students’ educational experiences in high school and beyond. When the study began, the school offered six Advanced Placement courses with about 100 students enrolled. A few years later, the school had 15 AP courses with more than 250 students enrolled. When the study ended, the school had established a culture where students were expected to take at least one AP course before graduating.

Additionally, by the end of the study, 92 percent of students reported being connected to an extracurricular program at the school. And in 2019, about 200 Clayton graduates received $14.3 million in merit scholarships to attend some of the most selective institutions in the country. This financial support would make it much easier for more Clayton youth to enroll in and graduate from college.

Many more students enroll in college than graduate from it. For decades, colleges have been searching for ways to better support youth from enrollment to graduation. Yet many of the challenges students face begin before they set foot on their college campuses. That is why it is so critical for K–12 institutions to provide support to prepare their college-aspiring students to not only apply to college, but also to graduate from it.

The work we did at Clayton High offers ideas and solutions for how K–12 institutions could do this, in partnership with colleges. It took trust, patience and care, but the reforms we implemented strengthened the student experience and provided the support these students needed as they transitioned from high school to their postsecondary lives.

If we’re serious about improving college outcomes, we need to stop treating college readiness as an individual trait and start treating it as a system we design, long before students arrive on a college campus.