Closing the black-white – and the rich-poor – achievement gap is a frequent topic of conversation on this blog. Economist Christopher Avery takes a look (ungated version here) at one intervention aimed at closing the gap: providing college counselors for high-achieving, low-income students. The counseling didn’t have much effect on application quality, but Avery did find that “students offered counseling were 7.9 percentage points more likely than students not offered counseling to enroll in colleges ranked by Barron’s as ‘Most Competitive,’ though this effect was not statistically significant.” One big problem with the pilot program? Over one-third of the students matched with college counselors didn’t follow through on all of their counselor’s advice. “[O]ur statistical analysis suggests that counseling would have had approximately twice as much effect if all students matched with counselors had followed the advice of the counselors,” concludes Avery. So how about combining counseling with a few well-placed nudges? [%comments]
College Counseling and the Achievement Gap
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Really people? Just because 30% of 17 year-olds didn’t listen to an adult you are going to make these assumptions?
This is an excellent study, but by NOT addressing the issue of not listening the author does himself a disservice. Students who choose not to listen likely did so rationally-we do not know what other factors, what information and misinformation trusted sources were giving them, or if the counselors (used to working with upper middle class students based on the quotes) were not able to adjust their style to the constraints which poor high school students face.
Concerning nudges.
I’m a high school teacher and my world revolves around nudges. The truth is that most students from any background would not apply to college without nudges coming from peer pressure, what they read or see on tv, from family and from teachers. Cultural and environmental factors play an enormous role, and sadly parental involvement for kids on the wrong side of the gap is often lacking. Perhaps this is the nudge gap.
We can blame parents, urban schools, neighborhoods, culture and media, but it doesn’t accomplish anything. Seems to me like the actions taken in the survey are non-trivial. Selective colleges have higher graduation rates—their matriculated students are immersed in a culture of graduation.
Motivation is a learned behavior. This is a step in the right direction.
The last thing we need in college are students who are not intellectually capable, or do not have the necessary level of intelligence, regardless of skin color, race or gender. The next step is logically quotas and a lowering of academic standards.
Wait a second. The researchers counted as “receiving counseling” every student who was *offered* it, regardless of whether the student accepted?
So what we actually have here is that being selected for the study — NOT having the counseling itself — might, maybe, sorta have correlated with enrolling in more selective colleges, only the effect wasn’t statistically significant, so perhaps not?
And from that we extrapolate that following all of the counselors’ advice would have had a significant effect?
The researchers could have gotten the same results and a cookie by just asking their moms.
.” One big problem with the pilot program? Over one-third of the students matched with college counselors didn’t follow through on ALL of their counselor’s advice. ”
why is that a problem? They are called counselors not decision makers..but wait there’s more…
if over one-third did not follow ALL the advice, does that imply that about two-thrids followed ALL of the counselors’ advice? WOW how many HS seniors follow ALL the advice of anyone?
but Avery did find that “students offered counseling were 7.9 percentage points more likely than students not offered counseling to enroll in colleges ranked by Barron’s as ‘Most Competitive,’ though this effect was not statistically significant.
So our best guess is that the 7.9 percent difference was likely due to random chance of the sample selection but we never understood that part of statistics anyway.
I’m not against the counseling. Most of these kids have little input from their parents since very few of these kids have parents who went to college themselves. Its not so much that the parents aren’t “involved” but that they don’t know what to tell the kids on their own. They don’t know the ins & outs of applying to college.
Yes, a kid might “fill in an application” (not really all that easy with need for essay, etc.) but if few of their peers are doing it, their parents can’t advise them, etc, what’s wrong with a knowledgeable counselor helping (nudging)?
It’s shocking, but some kids in tough neighborhoods don’t even know about the SAT’s. One charity working to help inner city kids with preparing for college admissions is UCAN: http://www.theucanprogram.com