By Nick Fouriezos for the Mile Markers newsletter via The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Lily Böhlke for Commonweath News Service for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

Rural students are the least likely to attend college or earn a degree - a problem exacerbated in recent years by persistent shortages of both rural educators and rural guidance counselors.

"The pandemic has pushed college and career readiness to the back burner, if it's even on the stove at all anymore," says Rick Dalton, the CEO and President of CFES Brilliant Pathways.

Short for "College for Every Student," his New England-based nonprofit trained more than 2,500 College and Career readiness advisors in 2021, including teachers and parents, secretaries and coaches, school bus drivers and cafeteria workers.

The concept: If rural areas can't staff up to address counselor shortages, they can at least equip their current educators with the knowledge they need to offer counsel.

"It takes a village," Dalton says. "Let's make sure the village has the knowledge it needs."

These "quasi-counselors," as Dalton calls them, attend four 30-minute virtual courses, learning about everything from FAFSA completion to nontraditional careers within growing fields like health care.

They graduate with a professional certificate from Middlebury College and have continued access to online resources with the latest information about college and financial aid.

That education is especially valuable when you consider that only about 25% of the counselors at high schools have received any professional development around college advising.

"Everybody who has contact with our kids needs to be delivering that message," Dalton says. "You can do it: Here's how."

Dalton has ambitious goals to expand the program, hoping to train 50,000 advisers in the next five years - a goal that's been made more attainable by the widespread adoption of virtual instruction during the pandemic.

When Dalton first began his work, a lot of the national focus was on the needs of students in urban areas, where 65% of the students that CFES Brilliant Pathways come from.

As of late, though, his organization has increased need with rural students who are getting "the short end of the stick," as Dalton says.

Rural students graduate from high school at slightly higher rates than their urban or suburban peers, but it remains challenging to get the resources needed to help them take that next step.

"People want to spend money where there is a significant density of students, and where they think they can have better bang for your buck," says Dalton, who knows a few things about rural challenges himself.

The Essex, New York native's regular commute includes a 20-minute ferry ride across Lake Champlain and then a half hour drive - hardly abnormal for him or other upstate New Yorkers whose work often centers around Middlebury or Burlington in Vermont.

"Just to let you know how rural life is here," Dalton quips, while taking our Zoom meeting from the front seat of his pickup truck.

Students Earn Degrees with College Coaching

Counseling is taking on new forms in other ways, and not just for high schoolers.

A number of organizations have formed in recent years to provide college coaching to nontraditional students.

One such company is ReUp, which specializes in helping people who have dropped out of college to finish their degrees.

Most of these students are adult learners over 25, now working full-time jobs.

Working with its own 500,000-person database and information provided by partner schools and states, ReUp reaches out and provides free coaching to those still interested in earning their degrees.

There are 110 million Americans that could have access to greater economic opportunity right in the areas they live with more education, says Terah Crews, the CEO of ReUp.

The need is particularly great in rural areas.

"Anecdotally, we see rural working adults have some of the greatest opportunity for financial security growth - and they are being left behind the most in that journey," Crews says.

I've been surprised in my rural reporting to discover that there are vast resources available to rural students, particularly low-income students, to help them earn degrees ... if they know about them.

That's the gap programs like ReUp can fill, a challenge colleges are struggling to address with limited marketing, recruitment, and advising budgets.

In four years, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania has been able to re-enroll 133 students through ReUp, says Thomas Fletcher, vice president for enrollment management.

ReUp doesn't charge the students it coaches. Instead, it charges the school, and each contract is different: for Bloomsburg, it charges 28% of the student's tuition each semester, then 37% their graduating semester.

"The decision, in my mind, was pretty simple," Fletcher says. "Do we want 72% of tuition and revenue, or zero of it?"

ReUp has roughly 50 partners, a number of which are rural serving, including places like Arkansas Technical University and Texas State University.

Most schools work with ReUp to increase enrollment across majors, but some focus on just one area. And in some cases, states will contract with ReUp to try to fill a specific workforce need.

That raises the question of whether ReUp might steer students into the degrees or professions that their partner institutions are paying for, regardless of whether it's in that student's best interests.

However, Crews says they work to match students with programs for which they have already completed some credits.

That means the student has already shown interest in that profession - and that it would be more affordable for the student to try to finish that degree, rather than completely restart on a different track.

"These are populations that most institutions won't even touch, because they say it's way too hard," Crews says.

Nick Fouriezos wrote this article for the Mile Markers newsletter via The Daily Yonder.


get more stories like this via email

An elementary school educator from Pennsylvania has been named this year's Education Support Professional of the Year, one of the highest honors in the field.

Becky Marszalek, a paraprofessional at Avonworth Elementary School in Pittsburgh, received the Pennsylvania State Education Association's Dolores McCracken Education Support Award. For 18 years, Marszalek said she has dedicated herself to assisting teachers and students in the classroom, providing the support needed for everyone to succeed.

"I've worked with kids that have been in a wheelchair. I have kids that have had autism," Marszalek pointed out. "It's a matter of if they need help with their work, whether they need help maneuvering through the school sometimes, sometimes just a comfort person to go to and be, like, 'I need a break. I'm having a tough time.'"

Marszalek recently attended the association's annual meeting in Philadelphia, where she addressed more than 500 members and was presented with the state award. The achievement now qualifies her to compete at the national level. In March, she will join other state winners in Louisville, Kentucky, vying for the National Education Support Professional of the Year award.

Chris Lilienthal, assistant director of communications for the association, said it has given the award for more than 20 years and it was recently renamed in honor of McCracken, the first association member who was an education support professional.

"She was herself a paraprofessional in Bucks County and she rose in the ranks to become the first president of PSEA," Lilienthal explained. "When she passed away, unfortunately, in 2018 we renamed the award in her honor, to recognize and remember her amazing work."

With the teacher shortage in Pennsylvania and across the country, Marszalek emphasized being an education support professional is an important field and encourages others to consider a career in education. As she said, "It's all about the kids."

"It's a tough job," Marszalek acknowledged. "But my thing is, you want to be there for the kids and to help the kids and just see them thrive, see them learn, and be willing to help them and have that in your heart to be able to do that."

Marszalek recalled many rewarding experiences, but two stood out. One was a nonverbal kindergartner who began speaking after years of working with the child and melted her heart by calling her "Miss M." Another was a second-grader with behavioral challenges whom she mentored, building a strong rapport, which led to significant improvement and a request to continue mentoring him in fourth grade.

Members of the teacher's union, the Texas branch of the American Federation of Teachers, are celebrating the signing of the Social Security Fairness Act.

President Joe Biden recently signed the legislation into law. It boosts retirement benefits for some school district employees and other public servants nationwide.

Zeph Capo, president of Texas AFT, said Texas is one of 15 states that denied public servants Social Security benefits, because of money paid into pension plans.

"We had people actually leave education and go back into other industries when they found out this was the case," said Capo, "so that they made sure that they didn't incur these penalties. So, we were actually losing good, qualified people."

He added that teaching is a second career for about 40% of teachers in the state, and they shouldn't be penalized for changing careers.

Capo said he believes the legislation will help school districts recruit more teachers and assist in easing the teacher shortage.

"They're bringing their experience from the workforce," said Capo, "they're bringing their experience from other places - whether they were scientists in different industries or worked in the healthcare system, and are now coming in to teach math and science and workforce classes in our public schools."

He said educators aren't the only ones benefiting from the change.

"They may have made $20,000 or $30,000 their entire career," said Capo. "Cooking lunches, cleaning our classrooms, driving our buses, and they're going to get on average about a $360-a-month increase -- which, for many of them, is the difference between buying groceries and buying medication."

Connecticut educators and other public sector workers are celebrating passage of the Social Security Fairness Act.

The new federal law repealed two provisions which had reduced Social Security benefits for some public sector workers who also receive a pension and who will now be eligible for benefits they would have earned in 2024.

Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, said passing this law rights a 40-year-old wrong.

"The government chose, erroneously, to penalize public service employees to try and balance Social Security, and it was never a just cause," Dias asserted. "It's great to see this overturned; money returned to people who have rightfully earned it."

Supporters of the change said the biggest challenge to passing the law was many people were unaware of these limits for public employees. Some critics charged it could speed up the timelinefor Social Security's insolvency.

Dias feels there's more work to do, including higher teacher salaries to reflect the education required to do the work. Reports show most Connecticut salaries do not keep up with the cost of living.

Feedback on the law has been overwhelmingly positive. Dias noted the money being reimbursed to public sector workers will enable some to retire who otherwise could not, without losing certain benefits.

"We have teachers that are in their 70s that haven't been able to retire," Dias observed. "This is going to enable them to do that. We've gotten the stories from people who called us and said, 'I've been living moment to moment, paycheck to paycheck, and been collecting food stamps, and now I'm not going to have to do that. I'm not going to be a burden to my family.'"

The new law may also help Connecticut recruit second-career teachers, people with previous careers as accountants, engineers and in other in-demand fields. Since the state is in the third year of a teacher shortage, Dias added it could help close widening gaps.

"In terms of retention, those second-career educators we have brought into the profession often have to leave before they are vested in the pension so they don't get penalized," Dias pointed out. "That's a problem as well, because they're only with our profession for a short period of time, as opposed to being able to have a long career."