Guest opinion: College Spark has helped many, but not enough

A decade ago, College Spark Washington changed from the state’s student loan guarantor to a foundation dedicated to helping low-income students become college-ready and go on to finish their degrees.

Since then, we’ve made more than $45 million in grants throughout Washington – to schools, districts, community-based organizations, colleges and universities and education nonprofits – to nurture innovative programs large and small. Some of these investments have been very successful.

For example, we wanted to challenge the problem that too few low-income students were going to college, and that too many of those needed to take remedial classes before they could do college-level, credit-earning work.

So College Spark invested $9.5 million over nine years to bring two promising programs – Navigation 101 and Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) – to middle and high schools that serve low-income students around the state.

At places like Grandview High School near Yakima and Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Navigation 101 helps low-income students understand the opportunities that college offers, and AVID helps them develop the skills they must attain to get there. With proper guidance, students choose challenging college preparatory courses instead of taking easier classes, and learn the life and study skills that will help them succeed in college. College Spark funded the initiative at 45 schools throughout the state, and the programs grew to reach more than 700 Washington schools.

For ten years, we supported Achieving The Dream: Community Colleges Count, a national initiative to increase the success of underserved students, at 19 community colleges in Washington. The program has helped students like Laura Yanez, a Columbian immigrant who came to the United States speaking no English at all. Today she is the student body president at Highline College, thanks to the college’s Jumpstart scholarship program for immigrants and ELL students, which helped her plow through the developmental courses that discourage so many students. Next year Laura plans to transfer to the University of Washington, where she hopes to jump into a fast-track program toward a master’s degree in social work.

But not all of our investments have paid off, and despite the hard work of our grantees and the students they serve, gaps in college readiness, college access and college success between low-income students and their more affluent peers remain. Low-income students are still far less likely to get a bachelor’s degree than high-income peers.

Through our grantees’ experiences, we’ve learned that optional, out-of-class services don’t close achievement gaps. The students who most need the help often don’t show up to receive it.

We’ve learned that small pilot projects that rely on the dedication of a handful of committed educators don’t necessarily grow to help more students. Effective strategies need to be scalable to entire schools and districts.

We’ve learned that persistent problems hold students down, such as low math achievement and overly harsh disciplinary policies that disproportionately keep low-income students and students of color out of the classroom.

We’ve learned that districts need help using technology to tap data on attendance, discipline, and academic performance so educators can reach students with targeted interventions before they fall behind.

And just getting kids to college isn’t enough. On campus, they need help identifying and navigating clear pathways to completion.

Going forward, our new College-Ready Math Initiative is tackling the persistent problem of students leaving high school unprepared for college-level math, often unaware that they are headed for remedial classes that don’t earn college credit.

At the college level, we’re working to improve systems that help students achieve important markers of progress toward their degrees.

At every level, we’ll continue our search for promising new ideas and proven best practices that can help all Washington students succeed. But we need help in this vital work. We need partners in school districts, principals’ offices, classrooms, and collaboration with colleges to formulate good policy, design great programs, and do the critically important work directly with students. Most of all, we’ve learned that improving college success is going to take all of us.