Brown S.D., Lent R. (Editors). Career development and counseling: putting theory and research to work

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need academic remediation, they chose to attend more college preparatory activ-

ities than their peers.

IGH

CHOOL

ROGRAMS

HAT

ERVE

OHORTS OF

TUDENTS

Three programs, AVID, Puente Project, and Gateway to Higher Education, of-

fered college preparatory classes during the school year to cohorts of high school

students.

Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) The AVID program was cre-

ated in 1980 by a high school English teacher in San Diego, California, to coun-

teract the common school practice of tracking low-income and ethnic minority

students into general and vocational education classes. The program has been

implemented by more than 1,500 schools in 21 states (AVID, n.d.). Eligibility cri-

teria for participation in AVID include average to high scores in standardized

achievement

tests of basic skills, C-level grades, regular school attendance, good

self-discipline, and parental support for program participation. The AVID pro-

gram places underachieving, academically capable low-income and ethnic minor-

ity middle school and high school students (seventh through twelfth grade) with

their high-achieving peers in college preparatory classes and provides them with

social and academic support services. The cornerstone of these support services

is an AVID elective class that students take every day from seventh to twelfth

grade that focuses on reading comprehension and abstract thinking, test-taking

skills, and essay writing. The program also offers tutorial assistance, committed

teachers who meet with parents and students before and after school hours, field

trips, college visits, and guest speakers.

In the earliest published evaluation of AVID (Mehan, Villanueva, Hubbard, &

Lintz, 1996), researchers located 248 of 1,053 students who had participated in

AV ID for three years in eight San Diego schools. Forty-eight percent of these stu-

dents reported enrolling in a four-year college right after high school graduation

whereas 37% of students in the local school system had enrolled in four-year col-

leges. The program seemed to have its greatest effects among ethnic minority stu-

dents. Forty-three percent of Hispanic and 55% of African American AVID

graduates enrolled in four-year colleges compared to 25% and 38% general enroll-

ment rates, respectively, for Hispanic and African American students in the San

Diego schools. A more recent survey of 100 AVID participants from California high

schools indicated that one and two years after finishing high school, 95% of survey

respondents were enrolled in a postsecondary institution, 77% were attending

four-year colleges, and almost 80% had been enrolled in college continuously since

leaving high school (Guthrie & Guthrie, 2000). These impressive results must be in-

terpreted cautiously because it is not known to what extent AVID students attend-

ing college were overrepresented among respondents to the surveys.

Wat t, Yanez, and Cossio (2002–2003) examined the implementation of AVID in

26 Texas junior high and high schools during two academic years (1999 to 2001).

Findings showed that during this time, AVID students increased their participa-

tion in rigorous coursework (92% were placed in the school’s college preparatory

track), outperformed the general school population on state-mandated standard-

ized achievement tests (e.g., algebra and biology), and earned high grade-point

averages (above the 80th percentile) in rigorous coursework. Because AVID stu

dents

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Promoting the Career Development and Academic Achievement of At-Risk Youth 537

were compared to the general school population, it is not possible to determine to

what extent the program interventions or the characteristics of students selected

for the program were most responsible for students’ outcomes.

Puente Project The Puente Project (from the word bridge in Spanish) started in

San Diego in 1993 to help Hispanic students navigate the transition from high

school to college. Puente currently operates in 36 schools in California where it

recruits motivated ninth-grade students of different academic achievement levels

(GPAs ranging from 1.4 to 3.5) whose parents agree to participate in the pro-

gram’s activities (Puente Project, n.d.). Each Puente class has about 25 to 30 stu-

dents. The program emphasizes three major components: a two-year English

college preparatory class that substitutes for students’ English requirements in

ninth and tenth grades, intensive college preparatory counseling, and assignment

to a mentor. Students also participate in college visits, field trips, and other social

activities. To help infuse the program with cultural sensitivity, the two-year

glish class incorporates community-based writing and Hispanic-authored lit-

erature into the college preparatory curriculum. In addition, the program’s staff

(English teacher, counselor, and community liaison) and mentors are recruited

from the Hispanic community.

A four-year longitudinal evaluation compared 75 Puente students from three

schools with a control group of 75 non-Puente students from the same schools

matched on age, ethnicity, sex, eighth-grade GPA, and reading scores (Gándara,

Mejorado, Gutiérrez, & Molina, 1998). Students were followed up from the begin-

ning of high school to the end of their senior year. Findings revealed that even

though by the end of the twelfth grade the two groups did not differ in high

school retention, school grades, or enrollment in college preparatory courses, a

larger proportion of Puente (84%) than control students (75%) attended a postsec-

ondary institution right after high school. Puente students were also more likely

to enroll in a four-year college than their peers in the control group (43% versus

24%). Consistent with their higher college enrollment rates, while in high school

Puente students reported more knowledge about and active involvement in the

college preparation process than students in the control group; twice as many

Puente students reported being knowledgeable about the college application pro-

cess in the eleventh grade (75% versus 36%) and had taken the SAT exam by the

twelfth grade (72% versus 34%). Gándara et al. (1998) concluded that Puente stu-

dents were able to exploit their academic potential better than students with sim-

ilar academic profiles who did not benefit from the network of supportive adults

and peers and other services offered by the program.

Gateway to Higher Education Started in 1986 and administered by the City Uni-

versity of New York, Gateway operates in 11 schools in New York City with the

purpose of preparing primarily African American and Latino high school stu-

dents for careers in science, medicine, and technology. From 1986 to 2000, Gate-

way served 3,500 students (Slater & Iler, 2000). To be eligible for the program,

students must have scored at least in the 50th percentile in the seventh-grade

standardized math and reading achievement tests given in New York, have regu-

lar school attendance, and a grade-point average of at least 80/100. Gateway pro-

vides cohorts of students with four years of intensive instruction in math and

science, after-school tutoring, and summer academic enrichment programs.

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Other Gateway services include counseling, internships, college visits, cultural

activities, SAT preparation workshops, and participation in advanced placement

courses.

To assess the impact of Gateway, evaluators compared outcomes for 136 Gate-

way students who expected to graduate from high school in 1993/1994 to a

con

trol group of 136 nonparticipant students matched according to gender,

race/ethnicity, math and reading scores, and family income (Campbell et al.,

1997). Compared to the control group, Gateway students were more likely to

graduate from high school (93% versus 73%) and to take the SAT test (93% versus

15%). In 1992, Gateway students were much more likely than high school gradu-

ates in general to have taken advanced courses in math (98% versus 52%), chem-

istry (97% versus 56%), and physics (83% versus 25%). In 1993, 92% of Gateway

graduates went to college, with 51% of them attending competitive four-year in-

stitutions (Campbell et al., 1997). Findings from an internal report of the program

(Slater & Iler, 2000) revealed that in the academic year 1999/2000, the average

math SAT score of Gateway students was higher than the national SAT means for

African American (520 versus 426) and Latino (530 versus 460) students and sim-

ilar to the mean for White students (530). By the spring of 2000, 97% of Gateway

graduates had been accepted to four-year colleges (25% of them into highly selec-

tive schools). These findings indicate that most Gateway participants complete

the steps in the college pathway and enroll in college.

ROGRAMS

HAT

NSTITUTE

CHOOLWIDE

HANGES

Two programs, Dare to Dream and Project GRAD, instituted school wide changes

to increase college access among all students.

Dare to Dream: Educational Guidance for Excellence The Dare to Dream program

uses educational counseling as the lever for school change. It brings together ad-

ministrators, teachers, counselors, students, parents, and local college and com-

munity representatives to develop school-specific strategic plans to strengthen

counseling services with the goal of increasing academic success and college ac-

cess among low-income and at-risk students. Funded by the Lilly Endowment

and the Jesse Ball DuPont Foundations, Dare to Dream programs have been im-

plemented in more than 50 schools across the United States.

The evaluation of Dare to Dream consisted of intensive case studies of seven

sites (six high schools and one middle school) that had implemented the program

successfully. In these schools, educational guidance services were taken out of

the counselor’s offices and incorporated into all school activities. In addition,

centers with information about higher education were installed in different

school locations, and academic tracks were made less rigid so that at-risk stu-

dents were mixed in classrooms with their higher achieving peers (Snyder, Mor-

rison, & Smith, 1996). Results indicated that within two years of program

implementation, African American high school students substantially in

creased

their participation in advanced placement courses and in freshman and senior

college preparatory English classes, and Hispanic students almost doubled their

enrollment in precalculus and calculus classes. Two schools experienced an in-

crease in college-going rates. In one school, the rates increased from 50% in

1986 to 72% in 1994. In a high school located in an Appalachian community, the

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Promoting the Career Development and Academic Achievement of At-Risk Youth 539

per

centage of students attending a four-year college increased from 31% in 1989

to 53% in 1996. Finally, from 1990 to 1992, students from the only middle school

included in the evaluation nearly doubled their enrollment in freshman algebra.

In sum, in implementing the Dare to Dream program, counselors used educa-

tional and college counseling as the lever for school change to provide greater

postsecondary options to at-risk students.

Project GRAD The purpose of Project GRAD is to change the school climate and

academic achievement patterns of school systems that serve low-achieving inner-

city children, with the ultimate goal of increasing high school graduation and col-

lege enrollment rates for all students. The program is implemented across a

feeder pattern of schools, that is, a high school and the middle and elementary

schools that feed into it. Project GRAD started in Houston schools in 1993 and by

the close of the 2001/2002 school year, it was serving more than 130,000 students

in 10 urban school districts in seven states (Project GRAD USA, n.d.). At the ele-

mentary and middle school level, Project GRAD implements several research-

based educational reform initiatives designed to improve reading and math

achievement, classroom management and discipline, and parent and community

involvement. To facilitate college access among high school students, Project

GRAD works with schools in enriching the academic curriculum and provides

students tutoring services and preparation classes for college entrance examina-

tions. In addition, the program guarantees college scholarships ranging from

$4,000 to $6,000 to all high school graduates who have completed three years of

math coursework (beginning with Algebra I), have at least a 2.5 grade-point aver-

age, have completed two university-based summer academic institutes offered by

the program, and have graduated from high school within four years of freshman

enrollment.

An evaluation of Project GRAD in the two school systems where the program

was first implemented in 1994 and 1996 revealed that by 1999 students in both

feeder systems had increased their passing rate on the Texas Assessment of Aca-

demic Skills (TAAS; Opuni, 1999). Students who had started kindergarten in one

of the systems in 1994 outperformed their peers from other Houston schools with

similar demographics in math and reading standardized achievement scores. By

1999, disciplinary referrals were reduced by 74% and by 22% in the two systems,

respectively. From 1989 (when Project GRAD scholarships were first offered) to

1999, college enrollment among graduates from one of the high schools increased

from 12% to 50%. The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation is cur-

rently undertaking a five-year evaluation of Project GRAD in Newark, New Jer-

sey, examining the program’s impact on school functioning and student

achievement (Ham, Doolittle, Holton, Ventura, & Jackson, 2000).

OLLEGE

PONSORSHIP

ROGRAMS

The I Have a Dream program is built around guaranteed college scholarships of-

fered to an entire class of middle school students to motivate them to stay in

school and to complete the steps in the college pipeline.

I Have a Dream (IHAD) One of the trends in preventing school failure and

dropout rates among younger adolescents is privately funded programs that

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com

bine a financial aid guarantee for postsecondary education, one-on-one men-

toring, and intensive academic enrichment activities. The best known of these

initiatives is Eugene Lang’s I Have a Dream program started in New York City in

1981 and now replicated nationally. There are more than 180 I Have a Dream Proj-

ects in 27 states and 64 cities, serving more than 13,000 students (I Have a Dream

Foundation, n.d.). In the IHAD model, an individual or group sponsor guarantees

college tuition funding (usually last-dollar scholarships) for an entire class of ran-

domly selected at-risk sixth or seventh graders. Funds are also provided for sup-

port services including tutoring, counseling, summer programs, field trips, and

hiring a project coordinator, who takes on a mentoring and case management role

with the students from their initial participation in the program until they grad-

uate from high school (Higgins, Furano, Toso, & Branch, 1991).

Kahne and Bailey (1999) conducted a two-and-a-half-year study of two IHAD

programs in Chicago that served primarily low-income Hispanic and African

American students who had started the program in sixth grade. Researchers

followed the students from the eleventh grade until their high school gradua-

tion and initial college enrollment. Results revealed impressive outcomes.

IHAD participants showed twice the graduation rate of students from previous

sixth-grade classes at the same school (approximately 70% versus 35%). About

65% of the IHAD students attended a postsecondary institution (approximately

78% of them enrolled in four-year colleges), three times the average enrollment

for African American and Hispanic students in the Chicago public schools

(about 19%).

Kahne and Bailey (1999) noted unique features of the implementation of the

IHAD program in these two Chicago sites that may have contributed to their suc-

cess. In both sites, the project coordinators had remained in the program for its

entire duration, whereas in other IHAD programs in the Chicago area, the aver-

age duration of the program coordinator was about two years. In addition, about

half of the IHAD students in the two sites had been placed by the program’s staff

in parochial schools. This practice, which was not as common in other IHAD pro-

grams, makes it difficult to disentangle the effects of the other program’s activi-

ties from those of the parochial schools that students attended. For example,

enrollment in four-year colleges versus two-year colleges was more than four

times higher among the IHAD graduates who attended private schools than

among their peers who remained in the public schools.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM PROGRAM EVALUATION EFFORTS

For the most part, evaluations of college access programs have examined the im-

pact of program participation versus nonparticipation on the following outcomes:

academic achievement in reading and math, school retention and high school

graduation, enrollment in college preparatory high school courses, changes in ca-

reer and educational goals, rates of college admissions and enrollment, and re-

ceipt of financial aid. In most cases, evaluators have not followed students long

enough to determine the program’s impact on college persistence and gradua-

tion. Because most college access programs provide a combination of interven-

tions and do not carefully track each student’s level of participation in each

intervention, the relation of specific program components to students’ outcomes

is not known. Nevertheless, reviewers of evaluations of college access programs

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Promoting the Career Development and Academic Achievement of At-Risk Youth 541

have drawn conclusions about effective practices and challenges faced by these

programs (Arbona, 1994; Cunningham et al., 2003; Dryfoos, 1990; Gándara, 2001;

James, 1997, 1999; James et al., 2001; Swail, 2000). Results of these reviews, summa-

rized next, are organized in four areas: (1) program structure and services, (2) in-

tensity and length of interventions, (3) eligibility criteria for participants, and

(4) program evaluation strategies.

ROGRAM

TRUCTURE AND

ERVICES

Research findings and field experiences suggest that comprehensive services are

needed to increase college attendance and persistence among low-income and

at-

risk students. Even though lack of information and college costs represent two

significant barriers to attending four-year colleges for these students, just provid-

ing college-related information or offering college scholarships does not seem to

be enough to increase at-risk students’ attendance and persistence in four-year

colleges. Three types of services have emerged as crucial in helping at-risk stu-

dents pursue postsecondary education: (1) adult support and mentorship, (2) aca-

demic enrichment, and (3) career counseling and college advising.

Adult Support Effective youth programs connect students with knowledgeable

and caring adults who serve as role models and provide advisement, mentorship,

and encouragement. The experience of many programs with middle school and

high school students suggests that the effectiveness of other services is enhanced

by a one-on-one mentoring experience. Even though there is little evidence that

mentoring improves academic performance directly, it seems to have beneficial

effects on school attendance, educational aspirations, and college attendance

(Flaxman, 1992). Several reviewers of intervention programs for underrepre-

sented youth have concluded that an important feature of effective programs is a

close, caring relationship with an adult (program director, teacher, counselor, or

mentor) who monitors the student’s progress over time (Dryfoos, 1990; Gándara,

2001; Kahne & Bailey, 1999). However, it is not clear who is better able to provide

this kind of long-term relationship, paid program staff or volunteer mentors. In

any case, for a mentorship program to be successful, carefully selected and prop-

erly trained mentors need to be consistently available to students for an extended

time period.

Parents are also important adults in students’ lives. As described earlier, at-

risk high school graduates in the NELS:88 study whose parents reported speak-

ing frequently with them about school issues were more likely than their peers

with less involved parents to attend a four-year college (Horn, 1997). Therefore, it

is crucial to help parents understand early on the steps their children need to

complete to attend college. However, many programs report that involving par-

ents of low-income, at-risk adolescents in activities and workshops related to

their children’s career development is very difficult. Two approaches that have

shown success with low-income parents are home visits and recruiting them for

meaningful roles within the program. Project GRAD, for example, implements a

community outreach program called Walk for Success where program’s staff and

volunteers visit families in their homes to raise awareness of the program. Parents

are also recruited to participate in Project GRAD’s decision-making committees

that manage the project in the feeder schools.

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Academic Enrichment Completing a challenging high school college preparatory

curriculum that includes high-level math courses is among the strongest predic-

tors of college access and attainment among at-risk and first-generation students

(Adelman, 1999; Warburton, Bugarin, & Nuñez, 2001); therefore, a strong academic

component is an essential feature of effective college access programs. Evaluation

efforts show that successful programs, rather than watering down standards to ac-

commodate at-risk students, maintain high expectations for academic achieve-

ment and behavior at the same time that they provide a strong support system to

facilitate students’ success. Strategies to provide academic support for students in-

clude smaller classes, creating small learning communities of program partici-

pants, one-on-one tutoring, and extended learning time during longer school

hours and Saturday and summer courses. Programs such as Upward Bound and

AV ID have shown more significant academic improvements among high school

students with lower academic achievement and educational expectations, whereas

results of more selective programs, such as Gateway to Higher Education and

Puente Project, indicate that academically capable students with average achieve-

ment can be challenged to perform at still higher levels.

Career Counseling and College Advising Researchers have concluded that low-

come and at-risk students need help in dealing with the career development

tasks appropriate for their age. Even though most students express high academic

and occupational aspirations, often they are not aware of the training require-

ments for their preferred occupations or of the importance of high school grades

and curriculum choices to their probabilities of attending college and attaining

their occupational aspirations in the future (Arbona, 1994; Ingels et al., 2002).

High school students whose parents have not attended college also need guidance

in completing the necessary steps in the college pipeline (Berkner & Chavez, 1997;

Horn et al., 2000).

Practically all the high school college access programs that have been evalu-

ated implement activities to disseminate information and provide advising con-

cerning the college-going process. In some cases, such as Gateway to Higher

Education, activities focus on careers in specific fields such as science and engi-

neering whereas most programs provide a broader focus. College advising activi-

ties engaged in by most programs include individual consultations with students

to help them plan their high school curriculum, speaker events where college rep-

resentatives and students talk about college opportunities and campus life, and

assistance with college and financial aid applications. Some programs also offer

career counseling to help students acquire occupational information and identify

careers of interest. As part of the career counseling process, students complete

terest inventories, participate in career fairs, attend speaker events with repre-

sentatives from various occupational fields, and participate in internship pro-

grams with corporate sponsors. (See Turner & Lapan, Chapter 17, this volume, for

information on interventions designed to promote the career development and as-

pirations of school-age youth.)

To help students deal with life stressors that may interfere with their academic

achievement, some programs offer personal counseling as well as referrals to so-

cial service agencies in the community. Programs that work with middle school

students provide extensive personal and social counseling to facilitate students’

retention. For example, in the I Have a Dream program, the project’s director and

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Promoting the Career Development and Academic Achievement of At-Risk Youth 543

the program’s paid mentor assigned to each participant closely coordinate stu-

dents’ access to personal counseling and social services. Project GRAD brings to

the schools the extensive counseling, community outreach, and family case man-

agement services provided by Communities in Schools (CIS), a social services

agency that places full-time social workers in schools.

NTENSITY AND

ENGTH OF

NTERVENTIONS

To be most effective, college access programs need to carefully select the types of

needs they will address and plan the intensity of services accordingly. Because

programs have limited resources to serve a population with great needs,

providers face a dilemma about the range and intensity of services offered. Prac-

titioners must choose between offering less extensive services to more students

versus providing more intensive, long-term services to fewer students. Program

evaluation efforts have consistently shown that participants who receive more

services for longer time periods tend to show better outcomes than their less ac-

tive peers (e.g., Upward Bound, Career Beginnings). Therefore, it is very likely

that short interventions will not be very effective even if they reach large num-

bers of students.

Research findings have indicated that by the sixth grade most disadvantaged

students require individualized attention and intensive instruction to improve

their academic performance (Levin, 1986). The literature on prevention efforts

also suggests that early interventions without follow-up are not very effective in

helping high-risk children succeed as adolescents and young adults (Dryfoos,

1990). Therefore, to enhance the academic achievement and school persistence of

younger adolescents, comprehensive and long-term academic and personal sup-

port services, such as those provided by Project GRAD and I Have a Dream, are

needed. Relatively intensive services and continuity of support, as offered by

ward Bound and the Puente Project, are also necessary to significantly in-

crease college attendance among low-income high school students who show sat-

isfactory school adjustment.

LIGIBILITY

RITERIA FOR

ARTICIPANTS

Practitioners must identify eligibility criteria for program participation such as

students’ age and level of academic achievement. Programs that work with at-risk

students in middle schools, such as Project GRAD and I Have a Dream, tend not

to be selective, offering their services to entire classrooms. On the other hand,

most college-access high school programs primarily recruit students with either

average (e.g., Career Beginnings, AVID) or above-average academic achievement

levels (e.g., Puente Project, Gateway to Higher Education). None of the college-

oriented high school programs found in the evaluation literature targeted the

most educationally disadvantaged at-risk students; therefore, no conclusions may

be reached about the effectiveness of these programs in increasing college atten-

dance among students showing very low academic achievement or high rates of

school absenteeism.

The research literature suggests that attempts to remediate low academic

achievement in the high school years are for the most part unsuccessful (Dryfoos,

1990; Levin, 1986). At the same time, the greater the needs of participants, the

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more difficult it is to demonstrate significant program effects. It seems that to

show better outcomes, high school college access programs tend to recruit at-risk

students whose academic records and motivational dispositions suggest a

stronger college potential versus casting a broader net to capture students whose

potential may be less certain. While such practices increase the programs’

chances of success, they probably do not substantially increase the pool of poten-

tial college students among the most disadvantaged low-income and at-risk

youth. Prevention efforts in the preschool and early school years may be needed

before it is too late to reach the most at-risk children. Evaluations of early devel-

opmental programs such as Head Start and Child Parent Centers in Chicago have

yielded encouraging results. Compared to control groups, low-income children

who attend early childhood enrichment programs are more likely to remain in

school, complete more years of education, and are less likely to attend special ed-

ucation (James et al., 2001).

ROGRAM

VALUATION

TRATEGIES

The literature on program evaluation suggests that even though many college ac-

cess programs are able to demonstrate positive outcomes, documenting the net

impact of these outcomes is difficult (Gándara, 2001; Swail, 2000). Most rigorous

evaluations employ an experimental random-group design like the one exempli-

fied by Upward Bound and Career Beginnings. However, evaluation efforts that

include random assignment of eligible applicants to the program and to a nonpar-

ticipant control group are complex and difficult to conduct. The idea of denying

services to a group of eligible applicants, which is required in true randomiza-

tion, is distasteful to many practitioners. Another problem with experimental de-

signs is that eligible applicants denied participation in the program often seek

similar services elsewhere. In the evaluation of both Upward Bound and Career

Beginnings, a large number of students in the control group reported receiving

services such as counseling, college advising, tutoring, and help with college ad-

missions and financial aid applications from other sources. Therefore, results of

these rigorous evaluations indicate the incremental effect of the program over

and above other available services in the community and not the impact of the in-

tervention versus no treatment at all.

Many program evaluations used for comparison purposes an existing group of

students considered similar to the treatment group but who did not attend the

program. To ensure the comparability of the groups, it is necessary to carefully

match students in the treatment and control group on demographics, socioeco-

nomic status, and prior academic performance. This strategy was used by the

evaluators for Puente Project and Gateway to Higher Education. Another com-

mon strategy is to compare program outcomes with normative student informa-

tion obtained from national, state, or local databases as was done in the

evaluations of AVID, Project GRAD, and I Have a Dream.

IMPLICATIONS FOR COUNSELORS

Promoting the career development of at-risk youth and facilitating their access to a

college education is a complex task that requires comprehensive and extensive ser-

vices. Even though career counselors are key players in this endeavor, they cannot

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Promoting the Career Development and Academic Achievement of At-Risk Youth 545

do it alone. Practically all college access programs provide the typical career coun-

seling and advising interventions (e.g., career interest assessment, academic plan-

ning counseling) offered to students in American high schools as described in the

taxonomy of career development interventions developed by Dykeman et al. (2001).

(See Juntunen & Wettersten, Chapter 24, this volume, for a detailed description of

this taxonomy.) However, reaching at-risk students and engaging them in college

advising and career development activities presents several challenges.

Because at-risk youth often lack adult role models who provide them guidance

and encouragement concerning higher education, many of them may not aspire to

college or be aware of the necessary steps in preparing themselves to succeed in

four-year institutions. Rather than waiting for students to come to their office, ca-

reer counselors need to reach out to youth in school or community settings to en-

courage and facilitate their development of college aspirations, the first step in the

college pipeline. Turner and Lapan (Chapter 17, this volume) provide examples of

interventions designed to help school-age youth develop positive career-related self-

efficacy expectations and attribution styles that may be useful with at-risk students.

Early on in the career counseling process, it will be important to provide low-

income students and their parents with information about financial aid opportuni-

ties for college to help them start visualizing college as a real possibility. To reach

out to parents of at-risk students, counselors need to take a proactive stance. The ex-

perience of several college access programs indicates that calling parents at home

and involving them in meaningful activities, such as volunteer work in the coun-

selor’s office and as members of school teams and advising committees, are useful

in increasing the participation of parents of at-risk children in school activities.

Networking and coordinating services with other resources in the school and

community will increase the effectiveness of career counselors in reaching at-risk

youth. For example, counselors may collaborate with teachers in offering classroom-

based introductory career interventions, such as guidance lessons on academic

planning, exploration of the world of work, and identification of career interests

(Dykeman et al., 2001). Some of these introductory career interventions can be inte-

grated with academic subjects such as language arts or social studies. Reaching out

to the local business community will allow counselors to develop internship pro-

grams and partnerships with corporate sponsors who can provide volunteers to

mentor students.

Access to a challenging curriculum in high school has emerged as one of the

strongest predictors of college attendance and graduation. Counselors, who in

many schools are the gatekeepers of students’ academic schedules, can play a

very important role in encouraging and placing at-risk students in college

preparatory and advanced placement classes. However, to achieve this goal, coun-

selors may need to enlist the collaboration of other professionals in the school.

Results obtained by the Dare to Dream program, described earlier, show the piv-

otal role that professional counselors can play in fostering schoolwide changes to

provide greater access to a college preparatory curriculum for traditionally un-

derserved students. In the schools where the program was implemented success-

fully, changes were made in the curriculum so that students considered at risk,

and those who were not, participated in the same rigorous academic courses.

Counselors can also promote the academic achievement of students by facilitating

their access to services, such as tutoring and college entrance preparation work-

shops, that may be provided in the school or in other agencies in the community.

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