Impactful College & Career Planning w/ NYC Public Schools

How does the largest school district in the country set students up for postsecondary success? In this episode, we are joined by Kristen Harris, Executive Director of College & Career Planning at New York City Public Schools. She shares how they navigate postsecondary planning and the impactful practices they’ve implemented for student success.

 

Transcript

Matthew Sterenberg (00:01.187)

All right, I’m here with Kristen Harris, Executive Director of College and Career Pathways at New York City Public Schools. Kristen, welcome to the podcast.

 

Kristen Harris (00:11.576)

Thank you so much for having me.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (00:14.064)

So I wanted to bring you on because you’re doing some really cool things with navigating college and career for students. So tell me a little bit more about your work and yeah, some of the cool things you’re doing. Specifically, I want to highlight the work you’re doing at very early ages, like as soon as they get to high school, you’ve got plans in place for them. So can you describe the work that you’re doing and yeah, some of the impactful practices that you have going on?

 

Kristen Harris (00:42.574)

Sure, I’d love to. So I think I have the best job in the house. I get to work every day with incredible educators, college and career advisors, counselors, teachers who are supporting this work, school leaders, district level staff. And all of that is around supporting high quality, high dosage, personalized advising practice in schools.

And so the college and career planning team really works to support a really strong professional development and capacity building. We work directly with schools to support their ecosystem within their schools to make sure that the staff across all grades have the resources and supports that they need. We work with

our academic policy leads to make sure that there’s not just practice and professional development, but this is really hinged on policy. And it’s not something that’s nice to have. It’s not something that in good times we do, but it’s something that is a standard and that is an expectation of everybody. And we have it written into our policy that everybody is supposed to have these things. We also work with our higher ed and

community-based organizations, again, to make sure that we’re working across the landscape. Our district is very big. We have a million students across over 1,800 schools, K to 12. And that’s for high schools, we have over 500 high schools and high school programs. And so it’s really important that, one, we have some standards.

and we have the resources and supports and we have the data infrastructure and we’re sharing information with our schools on a regular basis on these kind of benchmarks and how their students are doing. Are they applying for financial aid? Are they applying to CUNY? Are you meeting with them one-on-one and is that documented? So we’re really making sure that we have both the checks and balances, but really we’re taking a human perspective at this and we are

 

Kristen Harris (03:01.122)

meeting schools where they’re at to build their capacity so that they are doing this at a high quality, no matter what kind of students they have, no matter where a student chooses to go after high school, and making sure we have a standard for when we do that. So you mentioned early, right? And the earlier, the better. Right now, we are focusing on our high school, so nine through 12, and we have a career navigation roadmap.

And that really is our blueprint. That is our framework for defining what we mean when we say the term high quality. We say that, but what does that really mean? What does that mean for the experiences that students need to have? What does that mean for the way schools need to program a day? And how do they incorporate that in their day? And so our roadmap really outlines how students need to examine and explore and prepare and apply.

to make those informed decisions, no matter where they choose to go. And those decisions are informed by experiences that they’ve had across their high school journey, not just what happened at the very end of their high school journey.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (04:15.239)

You hit on so much there. The word that jumped out to me was personalized. There’s a lot of people listening to this and you’re in New York City public schools, right? So the scale of what you’re doing is massive, but you talked about one-on-one. You talked about personalized. How are you scaling this? How are you actually giving students the attention that they need? Cause there’s a lot of people out there, school counselors listening to this that are thinking to themselves. We don’t.

 

Kristen Harris (04:28.952)

That’s right.

 

Kristen Harris (04:32.547)

Yeah.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (04:44.755)

Like our caseload is I have so many students, like I can barely keep my head above water. How are you doing it in New York City?

 

Kristen Harris (04:52.802)

Yeah, we’re not immune to that. And I keep going back to we’re creating a standard in a place where there haven’t been nationally. Folks are trying to do this in the best way they know how. And I think what is unique about what is happening in New York City and New York City public schools is that we have an entire office.

that’s focused on making sure that students have what they need to land firmly in a pathway of their choice that they’ve had some experience with, that they maybe have had a little bit of a head start where they’ve gotten some internships or some work-based learning and early college credit. And so they are being informed across that journey. And so it’s really not about one person.

And that’s what is important also. This is not about a person doing this. This is about a school taking an approach to support this work. And it happens in a lot of different ways. I mentioned our citywide ecosystem. We have incredible partnerships with our CBOs and our higher ed partners. And so some of that work to scale means that we have to be innovative and we have to be collaborative.

because these are all of our students and this is not a us challenge, this is not a New York City public schools challenge, this is an all of us challenge and we all need to come to the table to figure out solutions and so some of the ways we do that is with partnerships with CBOs. We have CBOs that work directly in our schools to build that staff capacity to help fill in the gap of the students who have some of the most need, some of…

some of our students who really need high intensive one-on-one support, we utilize our community partners to do that work. Another way is citywide partnership.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (07:29.721)

So the personalized approach and just making sure everybody gets the resources that they need, because you’re such a large, like everyone’s worried about their caseload and like, how do we actually give the one-on-one time without it costing us something?

 

Kristen Harris (07:48.844)

Right, so I talked about our ecosystem, I talked about our CBO partnerships and our higher ed partnerships. It’s really about everybody coming to the table to create some solutions. And so we have a lot of different ways where we have large scale initiatives, we have approaches and work that we do directly with schools to figure out how do they use the resources that they have and everything in between.

schools have access to digital advising tools. And so they have platforms that they use to help maximize efficiencies, right? And be able to share information, help students move through the exploration process through those digital advising tools. And so some of that creates the efficiencies. And so one-on-one personalized

doesn’t only mean me, a counselor, is meeting with you, a student, and it has to happen, and that’s the only way it happens. It happens in a lot of different ways to personalize an experience for a student. And so what we want to do is have these resources and tools to maximize the time that counselors do have one-on-one.

with students and so we help them figure out how do you do this in class? How do you push in? What are the workshops you need to do? What’s the information that everybody needs to have? And then what are the conversations that you need to have individually because there’s all of those things that need to happen. We also have large-scale initiatives that are campaigns just to make sure students know that you have a place at a higher institution and so we have we’re in our second year of a welcome letter campaign with both our

city university system and our state university system. And what that is, is essentially an affirming message, a letter that goes to every single graduating senior saying, you have a place at CUNY, you have a place at SUNY. And during this period of October, you can apply for free. so that is, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (09:54.803)

I love this idea because it works for everybody, right? If you’re a CUNY or a SUNY and you’re in the admissions office, phenomenal. Like we want people to know that we are an option. That’s what every admissions office wants, right? We want you to think about us as you’re thinking about college. So for them to get a letter, I think it makes it way more real for them. Like I’ve got something, I’ve got something here.

 

Kristen Harris (10:11.595)

Exactly.

 

Kristen Harris (10:21.42)

Yeah, and so we use those as those momentum builders for the work that both our students need to do and our counselors need to reinforce and facilitate. And so it’s a multi-pronged approach to make sure that schools can maximize what they’re doing and how their programming experiences for students and counselors and advisors can maximize the time that they have with those young people.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (10:50.129)

One of the things that really sticks out to me, and you’ve got a great post-secondary planning kit. Like you’ve got a great document that starts in ninth grade. It breaks down with examine, explore, engage experience. And you’ve already highlighted how important experience is. But like that’s phenomenal. I think one of the takeaways for other school counselors is just to have a plan.

 

Kristen Harris (11:17.901)

Yeah.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (11:18.131)

to have it be built in instead of saying college and career readiness is important. It’s like, well, what’s our methodology? So it doesn’t have to be the exact methodology that you have in New York City, but have a point of view of how we’re gonna do this, because then it holds you to something like, did we actually examine? Do we have the experiences? And that because you’re now measuring it, then you’re like, okay, what are our work-based learning experiences?

Like we’re making this part of the ecosystem rather than just doing everything ad hoc, which I think is phenomenal.

 

Kristen Harris (11:55.458)

Yeah, yeah, we’ve kind of outlined the recipe, but with any recipe, you have the base and then you figure out how you make it your own. figure out, well, maybe I’ll add a little bit of this and less of this, or I’ll add something that they didn’t even think about because that makes the most sense for my palate. Right. Same thing with a school. Schools have very unique cultures and specific needs of their students that change year to year, depending on the cohorts you get.

or are unique to their neighborhoods, right? Or the makeup of the school or the theme of the school. And so while this is a blueprint, a frame, but it offers enough specificity and generalization so that you can make it your own and really do what makes the most sense for your students and your community and the resources that you have. But it’s accessible for everyone to dig into and see how they can.

can embed the practices into what they’re doing with their students. And again, it’s across the student’s experience. Creating a strong plan is not a point in time. Creating a strong plan means you’re developing over time and over a number of years with all of those components so that you have an informed decision. And we call it a career navigation roadmap on purpose because every student is choosing career.

We all are in a career. Everybody is choosing a career ultimately. And so how do we help students see the different ways, the different options, the possibilities of the pathways that are available to them as early as possible so that they can make informed choices throughout their high school journey, not at the end, not knowing that the things that they did in ninth grade impacted what was going to be available to them in 11th grade. So it’s really about

 

Matthew Sterenberg (13:50.651)

I love the way you frame that because what’s been the conversation over the last many years, are you college or on the career pathway? It’s like this binary, like either or, and the way you’re framing it is it’s all career. Like, unless you want to go to college for the next 12 years and get your PhD and like just be a forever student, that framing I think needs to be.

 

Kristen Harris (13:51.554)

breaking it down.

 

Kristen Harris (13:59.458)

Right, it’s not or.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (14:15.537)

more prevalent because we’re so often what box are you in and the focus is no it’s always career. It’s always career it’s just a matter of what what’s your pathway to get there.

 

Kristen Harris (14:24.864)

Right. And I said career, not job. We’re not tracking into jobs. We’re helping students understand on ramps and off ramps into the sectors and the fields of interest or the sectors and fields that they didn’t even know existed because they’ve tapped into some things that speak to them early on before they even get to.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (14:28.775)

Yeah.

 

Kristen Harris (14:49.484)

whatever that next step is after graduation. So we’re looking at the next step, but we’re looking beyond the immediate next step after graduation so that they really feel like they have a firm understanding of how to navigate that because it’s more of a jungle gym than like a straight track. And so we wanna make sure they know how to navigate that.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (15:08.251)

One of the challenges of being a school counselor is you become the overflow of a lot of things, right? It’s like social, emotional, academics, college and career. It’s like the school counselor does so much. And I know you’re so aware of this because you’re very involved in NACAC. And so if I’m a school counselor listening to this, I may like have a negative reaction to some of this, not because I don’t think it’s all great, but it’s like,

the more good stuff we plan, the more it falls on me, right? It’s almost like you’re giving yourself a penalty. You’re like, I could do so much more, but then I’m doing so much more. How do you balance? Like we have to treat our people well so that they can serve students. It’s a fine line. How do you begin to conceive of that in your position?

 

Kristen Harris (15:43.118)

That’s right.

 

Kristen Harris (15:48.195)

That’s right.

 

Kristen Harris (15:52.674)

Hmm.

 

Kristen Harris (16:01.666)

That’s a great question. And I’ve been doing this work for a long time, and I wasn’t always at Central. I was doing this work in a school for many, many years before coming here. So that resonates deeply with me. And this is not work for one individual person. This is an approach to the way school is done. This is a reimagining of how we

have students experience school. And that means everyone has to be a part of this and everybody has a role to play. This is not all work for a school counselor to do. This is not all work for one person to do. And that also is how we are approaching this work in our professional development and how we’re tuning schools into the roadmap. We’re bringing school teams together. This is a school team approach. In addition to the…

the content of how to do this work. We’re also teaching schools how to team. How do you do this in a team? How do you work as a team? School leader, how do you identify priorities, identify resources, both financial resources, but also just staff resource? Places in the building for you to do these activities, right? All of that is required for this to be done well. It can’t only be

It can’t live within one person because when that one person decides to transition, all of the institutional memory leaves with that person. So it’s really about embedding this into the practice of the school and the culture of the school and the way the school functions and programs its experiences for students. And this is embedded in many different places, not just in the conversations that a student will have one-on-one with a counselor.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (17:57.351)

Making it college and career everybody’s responsibility, making it more missional rather than the role of one department. think that’s a great framing. Yeah. I mean, what are we doing this all for anyways, right? It’s like we’re ultimately getting someone to the next step. And that’s true of college, right? It’s like, well, what am I here for? It’s to get my next step. So you talked about giving data back. what’s the feedback loop? How do you know?

 

Kristen Harris (18:05.474)

Yeah. Well, it’s all connected. It’s all connected, right? And we have to help them. Right. Exactly.

 

Kristen Harris (18:17.506)

Exactly.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (18:27.087)

overall, like your office, like, what are we doing well? Where can we improve? Are we making progress? What are the data points you’re looking at? Because I think that is sometimes a challenge. Like they leave your building and you’re like, I wonder what happened. know, wonder what they ended up doing. So this is a big challenge for a lot of people. What are you looking at to measure success?

 

Kristen Harris (18:41.656)

Yeah.

 

Kristen Harris (18:46.38)

Yeah, well, first of all, I will say that we really are trying to change the perception of data. We are sharing this in order for you to do your work better. It is a no-blame approach. The way that we share data, this is not a gotcha. This is a, you need to know where you are so that you can move differently. Or you need to know where you are so you know, need to keep doing this thing I’m doing because it’s working and it’s working well, right? We have to make sure that folks aren’t

afraid of data. We have to make sure that folks understand that we need to be informed just as much as the students need to be informed. And we need to understand what we’ve done in order to make good strategic planning practice. And so we share a number of data metrics across our office.

And so students that are participating in early college coursework through our partnership with CUNY and College Now. And so we’re able to give that information to schools who’s registered, who’s passed, who’s applied to those things. We know if students are participating.

in work-based learning, we have a way to capture that information and be able to share that back with schools. We have a dashboard or a workbook that pulls the data that goes to schools from a lot of different sources. know, CUNY will send a data report to individual schools about applications. We pull that into the workbook. So it’s all in one place. Our state entity,

the Higher Education Services Corporation that monitors and tracks all of our FAFSA completion and our New York State financial aid award called TAP, Tuition Assistance Program. They share completion reports with us so that we can then share that back to schools so they know which students are moving through the financial aid application process and which students are being held up by verification or.

 

Kristen Harris (21:04.814)

or other things that hold up application processing, we’re able, again, to share application completion and those kinds of things. And there are documentation of those one-on-one engagements and plans. Some of those things happen across 9th through 12th. And then documenting the plan and saying, OK, a student knows what they’re doing. This is what they’re intended. Next step is.

those things happen with seniors, but the one-to-one advisement sessions, that’s part of state policy. And so making sure that every student has an individual progress review or an IPR, that’s required by New York State. And so that has to be documented in our data warehousing system.

And our city policy requires that there’s an additional one-on-one for students that focuses on post-secondary planning. So the IPR is really about across the ASCA model, across what school counselors need to work with students. So that’s academic, that’s social, emotional, and post-secondary planning. So it covers those three components of the ASCA model. That’s the IPR. And then we’ve added to that. there’s

state policy and city policy around making sure that students have access to a knowledgeable adult in their building. And that’s how we’re recording it. That’s what we’re spinning back to schools and working with them to say, all right, you’re having difficulty here. How do we help you? How do we work with you? Have you been to our training? Have you attended whatever meeting? And so that’s how we’re able to just be able to support.

all 500 schools and those kind of ways to make sure that they have the information they need to make the right decisions at the right time with the right information. And that information is also rolled up to the district level. So our superintendents have that information also for their set of schools that are in their portfolio. So we really make sure everybody has is on the same page and all of the, again, all of that is aligned to the ways that we already support schools.

 

Kristen Harris (23:21.356)

So we’re not giving you this information and then, right. That’s how we make it everybody’s problem or everybody’s opportunity. It’s not everybody’s problem. It’s everybody’s opportunity.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (23:21.529)

And it speaks to making this everybody’s problem, right? Until you socialize the data with everybody. Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah. See, that’s way better framing than what I said. So let’s go back in time, So first day on the job, your future self, your today self, I should say, can go talk to yourself your first day as executive director.

What advice would you give yourself? Someone starting off, like what have you learned in this role kind of being at the, it’s called the district office? Like what advice would you have? What are the challenges maybe you wish you would have seen more clearly?

 

Kristen Harris (24:04.898)

I think what I would say to young Kristen, you’re on the right track. These are the things that are important. These are the things that people need to know about and see as priorities, but trust the process, because it’s going to take longer than you anticipated. 22 years later, we are leaps and bounds further.

than we were when I started this work in a CBO, running an after school program, a college prep program is what all of them were called at that point. Where nobody knew what that meant. Nobody knew what a college counselor was. Nobody knew what college and career planning was. And now it’s being talked about at the highest levels of our government.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (24:52.943)

And you have to be so adaptable. feel like even in the last 10 years, the conversation around college has shifted. Like what good opportunities look like. You at the outset said high quality. And I think we have to always reassess, like, what are we viewing as high quality?

What is it to each student? What are our values and what are our goals for these students? I think that’s the biggest challenge. We don’t want to direct and steer students too much. But there is an element where we’re the adults in the room and we’re trying to put them, help guide them to the right pathway. And that’s a really difficult task, isn’t it? What is a good life? What is the best next step for you?

 

Kristen Harris (25:28.779)

Yeah.

 

Kristen Harris (25:41.602)

We are, yes, for sure, for sure.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (25:46.353)

And it is different for a lot of students. Like that is such a huge challenge and it shifts based on all these other factors.

 

Kristen Harris (26:19.31)

Yes, so the meeting the need for.

 

Kristen Harris (26:31.638)

identifying the changes in the landscape and being able to serve students and define quality, I think. What is the constant? That’s the other thing I would tell young Kristen. Know that the constant is going to be change. And so the core is making sure that students are at the center of whatever decisions you’re making. No matter what changes, the student is the center.

The student is the primary and students, we have to take a student first perspective. And yes, while we are the adults in the room, nobody knows what they need better than the student. And so we have to understand that just because we think it’s a great opportunity or that’s what they should be doing, they have voice and they need to be a part of that conversation.

And we need to facilitate them to be in the best position possible to have the strongest options so that they can make informed choices. No matter what the landscape is, no matter what’s happening, that is always true. That is always the core. In making sure as professionals, we are as informed as possible. We are tuned into what is happening in the churn and the change within the landscape. And we’re staying as

informed as possible. That’s the most important because then we will be able to make the necessary pivots we need to make and evolve in the ways that we need to evolve. But students have to be at the center of that.

 

Matthew Sterenberg (28:15.891)

Chris and I really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks for joining me.

 

Kristen Harris (28:19.138)

Thank you so much.

 

There’s always more to learn.