Achieving Milestones in Grade 12 and Beyond

The postsecondary planning process is daunting for most students. Not only are students making major decisions about their future, they also have to complete numerous postsecondary planning milestones on top of their coursework during senior year. This includes everything from applications to essays to the FAFSA to letters of recommendation to assessments.

Prior to the RISE Data Hub, counselors lacked a way to track students’ postsecondary plans and the milestones necessary to pursue those plans. For example, students planning to enlist in the military need to meet with an enlistment office and take the ASVAB exam. Students planning to enter the workforce must prepare a resume and identify potential job opportunities. The Hub now provides counselors with data to provide personalized coaching for all of the students on their caseloads, and Grade 11 and 12 Data Teams use the data to monitor progress toward school goals.

At Platt H.S. in Meriden, Principal Dan Corsetti and his team meet biweekly to review student data in the Hub. The team identifies next steps to ensure students in all pathways are completing their milestones to reach their postsecondary goals. This process begins with plan identification and includes several supporting milestones for each pathway.

“As the Principal, I am always telling students and families that my job is to make sure they graduate with two things — a diploma and a solid plan for life after high school,” said Corsetti. “Grade 12 data meetings, with the assistance of the Data Hub, allow my team to remain focused on this goal. Our meetings provide a level of structure to enable actions that open doors of success for all of our students, regardless of their life goals.”

An important milestone for many seniors is completing and submitting their applications for higher education. RISE works in partnership with schools on application campaigns, which encourage all students to apply to at least one college or program, providing them with guidance and clear and actionable steps to do so. Application campaigns aim to maximize the number of students who submit strong applications and access future opportunities. At the end of Grade 12, these campaigns culminate in Senior Signing Day events that celebrate students pursuing a diverse array of postsecondary pathways.

FAFSA Task Forces: From Change Idea to Changed Outcomes

This past year, the RISE Postsecondary Success Team (PST) prioritized FAFSA completion as a focus area. Trends in our data had shown that far fewer students were completing the FAFSA to unlock resources making higher education more affordable and accessible, than those who had originally planned to do so.

As an improvement network, PST leaned into this opportunity area and pursued the change idea of launching FAFSA task forces in all core network high schools. FAFSA task forces are teams of educators, counselors, and administrators who each take responsibility for a small caseload of seniors who have not yet completed the FAFSA. Task force members work with students and families to complete the application, and meet on a regular basis to review data, share practices, and troubleshoot challenges.

By the end of the 2022-23 school year, because there was strong momentum among the few schools piloting this strategy, this change idea grew into a highly successful endeavor network-wide. The FAFSA completion rate among core network schools increased 7.6 points from 58% in July 2022 to 66% in July 2023. In fact, Maloney H.S. in Meriden achieved its highest end-of-school completion rate ever, with 74% of seniors completing the FAFSA before graduation!