The High School Counselor Challenge

As someone who cares a great deal about issues of equity and inclusion, I created The High School Counselor Challenge to find a way to include underserved public high school counselors in the yearly national gathering of college admissions professionals: The annual NACAC Conference.

NACAC is the premiere development opportunity for our profession, but the reality of public school budgets has created impossible barriers for many high school counselors.

The end result is the worst of all worlds: Underserved students are seeking assistance from counselors who, themselves, have almost no access to the kinds of professional development opportunities their own students would most benefit from. It is a vicious cycle, indeed.

The High School Counselor Challenge seeks to change that by leveraging college and university partners – and a bit of healthy competition between colleges – to bring an entire cohort of public high school counselors to the annual NACAC conference, each year.

This year - when NACAC heads to Salt Lake City - we intend to bring the largest group of public high school counselors from Title 1 schools to NACAC - with a special focus on identifying counselors of color who want to take on leadership roles.

Here's a bit of our story:

The High School Counselor Challenge - Seattle Times

Social-Media Challenge Takes Aim at an ‘Inequity’ in Admissions - The Chronicle of Higher Ed

I'm often asked: "You created this challenge for colleges to fund high school counselors, but HOW CAN I HELP?"

So, this year, I've added a GOFUNDME so that EVERYONE can participate in the challenge and do their part to ensure that Public HIgh School Counselors can attend NACAC.

Funds will be distributed to counselors to pay for travel and registration costs.  Any additional funds that aren't spent at the end of the campaign will be sent to NACAC for their IMAGINE FUND grants, with a specific focus on providing professional development assistance to public high school counselors.

Please join me - and help public high school students achieve their college dreams!

And be sure to follow the challenge on twitter @hscc2018 and with the hashtag #hscc