by Barbara Cervone, EdD

For nine years, WKCD has listened and talked with students nationwide about their learning, their schools, their hopes and dreams. Going to college has been a big part of these conversations. What does it take to get to college, especially if you are the first in your family to go? Where does the motivation come from? What stands in the way? What supports do students need, and where can they—do they—turn for help? How well do they feel their schools are preparing them for college?

In the spring of 2010, over two dozen high school students in Hamilton County, Tennessee and Seattle, Washington asked their peers these questions and more. They were part of a WKCD project called Hear Us Out, a collaboration with Chattanooga’s Public Education Foundation and Seattle’s Alliance for Education, funded by the Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation for Education.

The student researchers we hired and trained for the project, mostly high school juniors and seniors, first surveyed their peers at the high schools they attended, using a survey jointly developed by them, WKCD, and the Public Science Project at CUNY Graduate Center.

A whopping 5,000 students, equally distributed across the two cities, completed the survey, telling us in detail about their college plans, where they turned to for support and advice, the extent to which they felt their high schools offered a “college-going culture,” their obstacles, and the extent to which they had carried out the various steps in the college application process (e.g., investigating colleges on the web).

Our 25 student researchers then led focus groups in their schools. They typically included ten to twelve students, ran for 45 minutes to an hour, and included a diverse group of students, grades nine through twelve. WKCD videotaped each of the 15 focus groups, plus individual interviews, and from these made two videos, one for Chattanooga and one for Seattle. Both, we’ve been told, capture the honest commentary of students, at times reassuring and other times provoking.

Below, you will find links to the reports for both cities, plus the videos. We are also preparing a report that combines the data from the two cities and will post that in the next several weeks.

In both Chattanooga and Seattle, the conversations we hoped these videos and reports would spark have already begun in earnest—between and among students, teachers, counselors, administrators, community-based youth-serving organizations, higher education staff, youth advocates, and policy makers.

We invite you to take the conversation to your own “neck of the woods.”

The 21st century has brought a push for college unparalleled in our nation’s history. There is no shortage of ambition among our high school students—whatever their family background, race, or ethnicity—to take on college and succeed once there. However, owever,Howeveras the student voices you’ll find here attest, the path to college requires preparation and know-how, which are often in short supply, as well as determination, which can’t be replenished enough.

“HEAR US OUT” CHATTANOOGA

Download the report (PDF, 36 pp.)
Watch the video (14:14 min)

“HEAR US OUT” SEATTLE

Download the report (PDF, 36 pp.)
Watch the video (13:11 min)

For more information on the project, the survey, and the focus groups—or if you’d like a DVD with the two videos—please email: info@whatkidscando.org.