A common response is that school counselors are responsible for that task. In Metro Nashville Public Schools, the current student-to-counselor ratio is 251 to 1, which aligns with national best practices. Providing personalized and dedicated postsecondary advising is one of a school counselor’s many responsibilities. In addition to advising, counselors are responsible for student academic planning and goal-setting, course requests and scheduling, facilitating support and/or intervention meetings for students, addressing mental health and wellness needs, etc., all of which are competing priorities. As a result, many high schools rely on other school staff, community partners, and grant partners to support their postsecondary advising efforts.
In recent years, MNPS has participated in several postsecondary advising investments. During the 2023-2024 school year alone, MNPS is involved in five grants that provide dedicated postsecondary advising supports for MNPS students.
Advise TN is a state-operated and state-funded college access program with the mission of increasing the number of Tennesseans accessing higher education by partnering with high schools and providing college advising services to up to 10,000 junior and senior students across Tennessee. Currently, Advise TN provides one dedicated staff person to MNPS who supports Hunters Lane High School.
GEAR UP Nashville is a $13.1 million federal partnership grant to MNPS designed to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. GEAR UP Nashville provides dedicated in-school staff in seven MNPS high schools: Antioch, Cane Ridge, Glencliff, John Overton, Maplewood, Pearl-Cohn, and Stratford. GEAR UP staff have supported the classes of 2024 and 2025 at the local feeder middle schools since they were in the 6th and 7th grades. The current grant expires at the end of the 2024-2025 school year.
GEAR UP Tennessee is a federal grant to the State of Tennessee also designed to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. This grant provides staff and support to multiple schools across the state of Tennessee. For MNPS, GEAR UP Tennessee has a coordinator supporting students at Whites Creek High School. The current grant expires at the end of the 2023-2024 school year.
New Skills Ready Nashville is a $7 million grant from JP Morgan Chase focused on four key priorities, two of which are building seamless transitions to support postsecondary success and closing equity gaps. The grant currently supports at least one College and Career Readiness (CCR) coach at Overton, Glencliff, Maplewood, Pearl-Cohn, and Whites Creek high schools. The grant expires at the end of the 2024-2025 school year.
The Innovative School Model Grant provided an opportunity for high schools to apply for up to $1 million, and middle schools to apply for up to $500,000, to increase opportunities for career readiness and student success after graduation With the liberty to apply these funds in a variety of ways, three schools chose to add a College and Career Readiness Coach for the year: Antioch, Big Picture, and Hillsboro high schools. The grant expires at the end of the 2025-2026 school year.
With the expiration of many of these grants on the horizon, the committee took interest in how students will continue to receive needed guidance and support going forward. While there may be opportunities to reapply for grants and seek out new funding sources, there is no guarantee that the current level of support can be sustained. Furthermore, even the current patchwork of funding does not provide equal access for students at all high schools.
For five years, TCASN produced a report titled Bridge to Completion, in partnership with the Nashville Public Education Foundation. These reports analyzed and provided insights into college-going and persistence data for MNPS and called out best practices. is a predictive pipeline from the 2022 Report to give a sense of what currently happens to students as they pursue postsecondary opportunities:
MNPS also has partnered with Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development to create the Nashville Partnership for Educational Equity Research (Nashville PEER) to study inequities and work toward solutions.
MNPS will have hard choices to make as it approaches a fiscal cliff due to expiring grants and ESSER funds intended to support COVID relief and recovery for school districts. Simply suggesting that they absorb the cost and expand key advising roles would mean having to reduce key personnel in other areas, which is not the intent of this recommendation. However, the committee does hold two firm beliefs.
First, dedicated and consistent postsecondary advising is necessary to support student success. While community partners have played a crucial role in supporting this work, not every school receives equal access from external partners. The committee believes every student should be heard and guided by a caring and knowledgeable professional in a way that helps them best prepare for their next steps after graduation. This would be difficult in the absence of trained staff with the capacity and bandwidth to provide direct support, especially given the diversity of needs of MNPS’ students.
Second, advising roles should be consistent in how they support schools and must align with the district’s overall strategy. The committee is encouraged by the CCR division’s efforts thus far, recognizing that grant-funded positions have different approaches given the context of their schools and the various collaborations and priorities attached to each. As the work continues to evolve, MNPS must use data to drive the analysis of the existing advising efforts that are most effective and where internal positions and community partners can best support student postsecondary success.
This committee is also aware of and commends Dr. Battle’s effort to include a $2.25 million College and Career Readiness investment as a part of the district’s aspirational budget proposal to the school board last year.
