DIGEST - Volume 9, Issue 4- FULL DIGEST

15 TPC Digest Angela K. Tang, Kok-Mun Ng High School Counselor Contacts as Predictors of College Enrollment P ostsecondary enrollment is currently a major focus in K–12 education across the nation. It has been identified that students who pursue postsecondary education earn more over a lifetime than individuals who did not continue their education. In recent years, there have been national and statewide initiatives focused on encouraging K–12 students to pursue postsecondary education through a variety of strategies. Former First Lady Michelle Obama initiated the Reach Higher campaign, a national campaign to encourage first-generation students and students of color to pursue higher education. The state of California recently introduced legislation to provide free community college education to first-time students. At the district level, educators are being informed by their district strategic plans to encourage postsecondary enrollment. As part of this larger framework, the school counseling profession is striving to collectively utilize best practices and demonstrate how school counseling services positively influence and impact their students. School counselors have historically been overlooked when college readiness conversations occur as it is assumed that they do not have the skills to support students in these areas. This is not accurate and as a result, the school counseling profession seeks to produce more literature to highlight how they support students. This study examined certain types of student–school counselor contacts from an urban district dataset. The dataset was based on a student-report high school exit survey with 2,209 responses, and the school district also supplied subsequent data on 2- and 4-year college enrollment within 5 years of graduating from high school for those students. In addition to this information, ethnicity, GPA, and free and reduced lunch status were used to identify other trends in the data that might exist. Analysis of the information demonstrated that there were statistically significant group differences between certain school counseling contacts and subsequent student postsecondary enrollment. There also were interesting trends uncovered upon examining GPA, ethnicity, and free and reduced lunch status in relation to postsecondary enrollment. These findings provide implications for the school counseling profession as they highlight the positive effect school counseling services can have on K–12 students. This can help practicing school counselors advocate for more time to concentrate on the school counseling contacts that were found to have the strongest relationships with postsecondary enrollment and help districts identify professional development that can support school counselors in honing more skills in those areas. Angela K. Tang, NCC, is an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco. Kok-Mun Ng is a professor at Oregon State University. Correspondence can be addressed to Angela Tang, 2130 Fulton St., San Francisco, CA 94117, atang15@usfca.edu. | TPC Digest