Despite extensive research, policies, and practical efforts to improve college readiness in the United States, a large proportion of low-income students remain unprepared to enter and succeed in higher education. This issue draws on the human ecology theory of Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917–2005) to offer a fresh perspective that accounts for the complexity of the interacting personal, organizational, and societal factors in play. Ecological principles shift the focus to individual differences in the ways that students engage environments and to the connections across students’ immediate settings and relationships. Viewing college readiness within an ecological system also reveals how the settings where development occurs are in turn shaped by more distant environments. The aspirations and behaviors that affect students’ college preparation originate in opportunities, resources, and hazards beyond their immediate environments. The ecological lens illuminates the need for coordinated, comprehensive efforts that affect students across the various levels of their environment and provides a framework for advancing college readiness research, policy, and educational practice. This is the 5th issue of the 38th volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

Examines how states, schools, and postsecondary institutions might best help improve college readiness and completion. Though more students are entering college, many drop out, especially those who are low income and/or of color. To address this problem, educational stakeholders have focused on the concept of “college readiness,” or the preparation a student needs to succeed in college. However, what it means to be college ready and how to help more students become ready are questions without clear answers. By way of historical and contemporary analyses, this book uses California as a case study to demonstrate how the state has endeavored to make postsecondary opportunity accessible for all students. The contributors also explore the challenges that remain and address what states and schools can do to improve college readiness and completion. “This book adds important information to the debates and discussions around this critical topic.” — Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner, coeditor of Understanding Minority-Serving Institutions

Praise for the First Edition: "Serves as an excellent foundational text...I am very thankful that the authors wrote this text. [It] is written for school counselors by school counselor educators!" -Gene Eakin, PhD, School Counseling Program Lead, Oregon State University "The school counseling focus makes it unique... This is...a great improvement to other texts I’ve used and I plan to continue using it." -Dr. Carolyn Berger, Chair, Department of Counseling, Nova Southeastern University Fully updated to serve the needs of school counselors in training, this remains the only text to present a comprehensive, developmental, and practical approach to preparing school counselors to conceptualize the career development and college-readiness needs of P-12 students. The second edition reflects the ASCA’s new Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success, which focuses on college and career-readiness standards for all students, 2016 CACREP Standards, and the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act. The text is uniquely grounded in developmental, ecosystemic, and career theories as a basis for career interventions. Considering the range of psychosocial, cognitive, and academic development spanning P-12 students, the authors review relevant developmental and career theories as a foundation for the design of sequential and developmentally appropriate career and college-readiness curricula and interventions. The text provides school counselors and educators concrete examples of how to select, implement, and evaluate the outcomes of interventions grounded in various career counseling theories and addresses career development and college readiness needs by grade level. Also included is expanded information on diversity; reflections and advice from actual school counselors; updated statistics, references, and appendices; and an updated Instructor’s Manual, test bank, and PowerPoint slides. New to the Second Edition: Features a “Building a College-Going Culture” section that expands coverage on college readiness counseling Reflects updated legislation and policy information including ASCA’s new Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success, 2016 CACREP Standards, Every Students Succeeds Act, and the Reach Higher Initiative Completely new chapter on college and career decision making "Voices from the Field" highlighting experiences from actual school counselors Enhanced instructor resources including Instructor’s Guide, test bank, and PowerPoint slides Key Features: The only comprehensive text devoted to career and college counseling for school counselors; written by former school counselors Disseminates current data and research focusing on college readiness needs of diverse populations Includes interventions grounded in theory and connected to national standards

Despite the promise of competency-based education (CBE), learner-centered issues related to support, retention, and program completion rates remain problematic. In addition, the infrastructure for higher education, including issues related to faculty (intellectual property, workload, and curriculum), pose barriers and challenges in the design, development, implementation, and delivery of CBE. In response, administrators, faculty, designers, and developers of competency-based experiences must incorporate innovative strategies that are foreign to the traditional institution. A strong emphasis on retention and graduation rates must surround the student with support, starting with the design and development of the CBE system. There are few resources that can help prepare instructional designers, advisors, academic administrators, and faculty to meet the many challenges of designing, developing, implementing, and managing CBE. Career Ready Education Through Experiential Learning is an essential reference book that includes strategies for design and development of competency-based education (CBE) programs, as well as administrative and delivery strategies as examples of how CBE can be implemented. Through a strong theoretical framework, chapters present the best practices, strategies, and practical tips as examples and scenarios that can be used in higher education settings. While highlighting education courses, programs, and lessons across various institutions and educational domains, this book is ideal for higher education administrators and policy designers/implementors, instructional designers, curriculum developers, faculty, public policy leaders, students in curriculum and instruction and instructional technology programs, along with researchers and practitioners interested in CBE and experiential learning in higher education.

Help students identify and apply the real-world math skills they need for lifelong success. Math for College and Career Readiness provides grade-appropriate practice that offers early preparation for a variety of career paths. For each career, your students will strengthen fundamental math skills while gaining background information and becoming proficient problem solvers. Mark Twain Media Publishing Company specializes in providing engaging supplemental books and decorative resources to complement middle- and upper-grade classrooms. Designed by leading educators, this product line covers a range of subjects including math, science, language arts, social studies, history, government, fine arts, and character.

Here is a book that challenges the very basis of the way psychologists have studied child development. According to Urie Bronfenbrenner, one of the world's foremost developmental psychologists, laboratory studies of the child's behavior sacrifice too much in order to gain experimental control and analytic rigor. Laboratory observations, he argues, too often lead to "the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time." To understand the way children actually develop, Bronfenbrenner believes that it will be necessary to observe their behavior in natural settings, while they are interacting with familiar adults over prolonged periods of time. This book offers an important blueprint for constructing such a new and ecologically valid psychology of development. The blueprint includes a complete conceptual framework for analysing the layers of the environment that have a formative influence on the child. This framework is applied to a variety of settings in which children commonly develop, ranging from the pediatric ward to daycare, school, and various family configurations. The result is a rich set of hypotheses about the developmental consequences of various types of environments. Where current research bears on these hypotheses, Bronfenbrenner marshals the data to show how an ecological theory can be tested. Where no relevant data exist, he suggests new and interesting ecological experiments that might be undertaken to resolve current unknowns. Bronfenbrenner's groundbreaking program for reform in developmental psychology is certain to be controversial. His argument flies in the face of standard psychological procedures and challenges psychology to become more relevant to the ways in which children actually develop. It is a challenge psychology can ill-afford to ignore.

Going to College tells the powerful story of how high school students make choices about postsecondary education. Drawing on their unprecedented nine-year study of high school students, the authors explore how students and their parents negotiate these important decisions. Family background, finances, education, information—all influence students' plans after high school and the career paths they pursue, as do the more subtle messages delivered by parents and counselors which shape adolescents' self-expectations. For high school guidance counselors, college admissions counselors, parents and teachers, and public policy makers, this book is a valuable resource that explains the decision-making process and helps adults to help students make appropriate choices. The authors identify predisposition, search, and choice as the three stages in the student decision-making process. Predisposition refers to the plans students develop for education or work after they graduate from high school. The search stage involves students discovering and evaluating a variety of colleges and universities. In the choice stage, students choose a school to attend from among a list of institutions that are being seriously considered. Understanding exactly how students move through the predisposition, search, and choice stages of the college decision-making process can help students and parents prepare themselves for this process and consider a wider array of options. For education professionals, understanding this process can lead to new initiatives to guide students and families effectively—by providing better incentives for college savings, for example, or devising more effective early information programs about postsecondary education. Going to College is the first book to seriously study over an extended period the decisions that have a pervasive and lasting impact on individual careers, livelihoods, and lifestyles. The authors conclude with important recommendations for improving academic support, exploring various financial options, providing early encouragement—in other words, for recognizing the factors that influence students' decisions, and knowing when to pay attention to them.