{"id":3098,"date":"2022-06-06T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T16:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americancompass.beckandstone.com\/comprehensive-support-for-low-income-students\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T15:37:50","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T20:37:50","slug":"comprehensive-support-for-low-income-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americancompass.org\/comprehensive-support-for-low-income-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Comprehensive Support for Low-Income Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
As a trained social worker, when I reflect on the failure of American education to prepare young people to build strong futures, I think of Yolanda. I will never forget a day back when I was serving at Catholic Charities Fort Worth (CCFW). I was spending the morning in the Hope Center, a place at CCFW designed to help triage the complex challenges of people struggling in poverty, assist them with the resources they need, and ultimately, to accompany them on a journey out of poverty\u2014usually involving increasing their education or earning a credential. In walked Yolanda, with whom I was quickly assigned to work. We sat down together, and Yolanda politely answered my few initial questions. Two minutes in, though, she stopped answering. She started shaking her head instead, tears streaming down her face, shoulders hunched. Finally, she whispered, \u201cI just can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She pushed a stack of envelopes across the table and asked me to open them for her. As we opened and read through each piece of mail together, I too became overwhelmed. First was a utility bill that had ballooned to more than a thousand dollars of past-due charges and came with a threat that her electricity was about to be shut off. Next was an eviction notice giving her and her son 30 days to vacate their apartment. Then, a notice about the restraining order against her ex-boyfriend. Last, a letter notifying her that her child support account was in arrears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The image of Yolanda and her stack of envelopes will forever stay with me as a tragic portrait of the toxic stress of poverty, a force so powerful it can make a person nearly inarticulate, palpably tense, and virtually myopic. It stifles one\u2019s ability to see the steps necessary to build a decent life\u2014much less to take them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “For students trapped in poverty, even the most well-designed and generous higher education institutions are stymied by complex factors outside the classroom.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n Most of us learn in school about Maslow\u2019s hierarchy of needs. We understand that it is difficult to feel safe or have a sense of belonging, esteem, and self-actualization if our most basic human needs such as food and shelter are unmet. The solution Yolanda needed that day was similar\u2014first focused on immediate needs and then oriented toward a decent life she could build.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same is true of our higher education system. For students trapped in poverty, even the most well-designed and generous higher education institutions are stymied by complex factors outside the classroom. The solution, as we are finding again and again in research being conducted across the country, must include a comprehensive approach to promoting the wellbeing of low-income students. A comprehensive approach means meeting a student where they are, learning about their future goals, sequencing services with them, and taking steps forward week after week to achieve them. It requires a framework for working with students and for building support systems that does not address education in a silo, but recognizes outside forces that might jeopardize academic success. Designing that approach will require research into the root problems that low-income students face and a reassessment of the metrics that matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A college degree is sadly one of but a few ways to gain economic security and break poverty\u2019s cycle in today\u2019s economy. Because community colleges are more affordable, closer to home, and generally more accessible than four-year institutions, they give more people the opportunity to tap into the economic benefits of higher education\u2014especially those trapped in poverty. A community college degree signals career and technical experience to potential employers and can open a path to four-year colleges, where students can pursue a bachelor\u2019s degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But America\u2019s community colleges face an ongoing completion crisis. Less than 40% of community college students graduate within six years<\/a>. Completion varies considerably by income. Most students (54%) from households in the top income quartile complete a degree, while 32% in the third quartile, 21% in the second quartile, and only 9% in the lowest quartile do. Dropping out marks a tragic setback for students, who not only incur debt, but also forego the economic gains that come with a degree. They are worse off than when they started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notre Dame\u2019s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) helps service providers apply scientific evaluation methods to better understand and unleash effective social service innovations. It is grounded in a belief that research serves people, not the other way around. Soon after it was founded in 2012, LEO launched one of its first research projects at CCFW\u2014the organization where I first met Yolanda. CCFW was concerned about students in poverty overcoming barriers to college completion. LEO shared some national statistics<\/a> that mirrored what CCFW was seeing in Fort Worth: only 5% of students in two-year colleges graduated on time with a two-year degree; 16% of students pursuing a certificate program graduated on time; and 38% of recent high school graduates who enrolled in a two-year college completed a degree within six years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Dropping out marks a tragic setback for students, who not only incur debt, but also forego the economic gains that come with a degree. They are worse off than when they started.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n CCFW hypothesized that low-income students faced both concrete, non-academic barriers in their lives, like childcare, housing, and transportation, as well as more intrinsic barriers like a lack of belief in oneself, an absence of hope, and the culture of poverty. The experience of CCFW suggested that money wasn\u2019t the solution; instead, the college completion crisis demanded a comprehensive approach. This took the form of Stay the Course, a program involving intensive case management to help students navigate the complexities of life and to help them reinstate hope and belief in themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the hypothesis underlying Stay the Course needed testing. Collaboration with LEO enabled CCFW to begin a rigorous evaluation and launch a randomized controlled trial\u2014the gold-standard study design for impact evaluation. The trial generated causal evidence and isolated the effects of Stay the Course on outcomes for our local students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The research results corroborated CCFW\u2019s hypothesis: Low-income community college students who received intensive case management\u2014the comprehensive solution\u2014outperformed their peer groups. Students who received Stay the Course case management and financial assistance were 25 percentage points more likely to persist in school through their sixth semester and 16 percentage points more likely to earn an associate\u2019s degree. Women, in particular, benefited from case management. They were 2.7 times (36 percentage points) more likely to persist in college and 32 percentage points more likely to earn an associate’s degree. Though the program cost $5,640 per student, the earnings gains of graduates offset the program cost after about four years in the workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CCFW took the findings to the Fort Worth community and invested mightily to expand Stay the Course from a few hundred students to a few thousand each year. More students today benefit from comprehensive case management and Stay the Course because of the research led by CCFW and LEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What CCFW and LEO observed in the Fort Worth community about barriers to academic success and ultimately learned through impact evaluation has since been backed by a decade of evidence. Researchers come to understand that there are four main reasons why students don\u2019t graduate: a shaky academical foundation, unaffordable tuition costs, college institutional barriers (e.g., understanding course and graduation requirements), and personal crises.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMaking Sense of the Completion Crisis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n