WA College and Career Advising Field Assessment

Introduction

During summer and fall 2023, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded Kinetic West to conduct a field assessment to investigate the enabling conditions that support strong college and career advising for Washington state students and understand how the state is performing relative to those areas. The project had two main components:

Developing a College and Career Advising Framework for equitable and effective high school advising
Conducting a College and Career Advising Field Assessment to assess the state of the field in Washington state.

The project leveraged mixed methods research, and integrated findings from review of 43 existing frameworks/reports, 20 national and local promising practice interviews, and 150+ in-depth survey responses from district, schools, and community-based organization leaders focused on college and career advising. The Executive Summary and Full Report share findings as well as recommendations for advancing college and career advising in Washington state.

Many thanks to our project Advisory Committee, interviewees, and all of the survey participants that helped to inform this research!

Client

This research project was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We thank them for their continued support of Washington State students and communities.