Don't Let This Happen

happymomof1
Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:45:46 +0000

School district superintendents, HS principals, HS guidance counselors, HS teachers, and even families that just live down the street who are invested in the game of “my school/district is better than that one”, gain many more points based on the numbers of students accepted at Fill-In-Favorite-Colleges-And-Universities-Here than they do for actual college attendance. They gain even fewer (if it is possible to imagine that small a number of points) for college completion. This means that there is very little incentive for the high school staff members to pay attention to affordability, other than for those students who can score ginormous merit scholarships (which add to the points score of course).

Changing the way the game is scored would be a good start. Tracking college completion is extremely difficult given the unexpected turns that lives can take, but many high schools have a solid notion of which colleges and universities their students do intend to enroll in by the day of HS graduation. Perhaps there is a way to add this into Naviance with a code for “chosen because of cost to student”.