Nationally, COVID-19 has highlighted the instability of relying on a small number of school counselors to guide hundreds of students through academics, prep them for the future and triage increasing mental health challenges.
The Colorado School Counselor Corps Grant Program (SCCGP) is intended to assist local education providers to access effective school counseling in order to increase graduation rates, decrease dropout rates, and increase rates of matriculation into institutions of higher education. SCCGP has shown promising results in achieving all of its stated goals over the past 10 years of implementation. The goal of this project is to develop a plan and prepare to conduct a rigorous evaluation of program effectiveness and measure the program’s ROI.
As the pandemic challenges all students seeking to succeed in college, a new study examines the barriers that young people in foster care have long faced, and the supports that make a difference for them. These findings guide the way to the policies and practices that will benefit all youth in these difficult times.
Almost 13% of the population in Mesa County, Colorado lack access to or have limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods. This project developed a training video to enhance the ability of medical professionals and educators to identify and discuss food insecurity with their clients and families. The efficacy of the video at increasing access to food assistance programs among the food insecure will be tested as part of a future project.
Nationally, there is limited information on how many youth formerly in foster care go to college.This generates better data on postsecondary participation and persistence rates and offers insights into how to improve them. This project includes two studies: longintudinal analysis of state administrative data and phenomenological study of lived experiences of youth.
Smart state investments in dropout prevention can be informed by examining the outcomes of prior investments. This project looks back at data from a five-year federal grant called “Colorado Graduation Pathways (CGP)” to inform new state investments made under the Student Re-Engagement Grant Program.
The four-year graduation rate for Colorado students in foster care decreased substantially from the 2015-16 school year to the 2016-17 school year, from 33.2% to 23.6%. This study examines trends in state-level child welfare and education data to uncover possible explanations for this decline.