Featured Idea: Provide National Service College Coaches for Low-Income Students

As our economy continues to decline, our nation's leaders face the difficult dilemma of meeting an increased demand for services with a decreased amount of money.  Nowhere is this truer than in education.  While the initial reaction may be to cut the resources we dedicate to education, that's in fact where we need to invest the most.  As President-elect Obama said earlier this week when he announced Arne Duncan as his Education Secretary, "In the long run, the path to jobs and growth begins right here in America's schools, in America's classrooms... the decisions we make about how to educate our children will shape our future for generations to come." I couldn’t agree more.

One way to have a high-quality education system even in these troubling times is to use our existing resources as efficiently as we can.  The good news is that there are proven models around the country that we can learn from.

Take Admission Possible.

Founded in Minnesota in 2000 to help promising low-income students get into college, Admission Possible teaches four critical lessons to these students: ACT and SAT test preparation, intensive guidance in writing college applications, help in obtaining financial aid, and preparation for the transition to college.  The especially exciting part of their model though is that they recruit recent college graduates serving as Americorps volunteers to act as the college coaches, walking students through the four part program.

Admission Possible's college coach model is working.  Ninety-nine percent of the students they've assisted have successfully enrolled in college, and 80 percent of those students are either still enrolled or graduated.  Pretty amazing!  This year alone, the program will serve 1300 students at 17 high schools and charter schools in the Greater Twin Cities.

And as an added bonus, Admission Possible also encourages their participants to engage in community service in exchange for the college preparation lessons.  Students in the program lead workshops for younger low-income students teaching them the steps necessary to prepare for college.

So let's get this straight: Admission Possible is utilizing recent college grads and existing AmeriCorps dollars to provide high-quality college prep to low-income students, who then turn around and share their college prep lessons with a younger generation of students--all of whom may never receive college prep assistance otherwise.  Talk about an efficient use of existing resources to provide high-quality education services!

Considering that every year roughly 200,000 college-capable students don’t pursue a post-secondary degree because they either don’t understand the admissions process or don’t have access to adequate financial aid, the work that Admission Possible is doing is just a drop in the bucket on solving this problem.  But imagine if we had a White House Office on Social Innovation that could help scale their effective program so that students from low-income families and under-resourced areas around the country could have the great college-going assistance Admission Possible provides.  What an incredible impact we could have with a hugely efficient use of existing resources.

You can vote to support Admission Possible’s idea here.

Kelly Ward is the Director of America Forward, a coalition of social entrepreneurs building momentum around big ideas for changing government and changing the world. She will be guest blogging about America Forward member organizations throughout the Ideas for Change in America competition.