BY JOE ARCE AND COREY CRABLE
A new regional network will strive to give access to quality, affordable education to students from low-income communities.
The new Kansas City College and Career Attainment Network, or KCCAN, will first work with Kansas City Public Schools before adding other districts to its roster of clients throughout the metro area. KCCAN is funded by a grant from the Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation. Additional support comes from the Missouri College and Career Attainment Network, or MOCAN.
Dr. Mako Miller, director of KCCAN, says the school district simply wants to ensure its students are aware of and have access to post-secondary education and job training opportunities. According to information provided by KCCAN, “a student’s family’s socioeconomic status is highly correlated with their chances of going to college. And according to the Brookings Institution, about 89% of students from well-off families go to college compared to 51% of students from low-income families. Currently, only 45 percent of Kansas City Public School students go on to enroll in a postsecondary institution.”
Miller says, “I think the Kansas City Public School District wanted to increase those numbers of their students going on and getting a credential after high school. And so there is also the data from the state of Missouri saying that about 65% of all Missouri jobs are going to require some type of credential after high school, some kind of training.”
She continues, “Of those, about 30% will require a four-year degree and about 35 % will require either a two-year degree or a credential or certificate, and I think they want to make sure that their students are prepared to pursue those pathways.”
A major component of KCCAN’s mission is ensuring that the high schoolers have mentors to whom they can turn to if they need information or advice, Miller added.
“Because of the student population growing, especially within the Latino community and Black community, they don’t even know what a mentor is a lot of times. What we want to hopefully do is, with our advisors’ help, kind of support the counselors that are already in place at the high schools and provide additional resources to help talk with students and families about those next steps,” she says. “We’ll also reach out to our community partners who want to help support our students and help mentor our students through those next steps, and so KCCAN is actually currently (housed on) the UMKC campus, and we know there are really great programs that want to reach back out into the high schools and use a lot of their current students at the university to mentor and support students.”
KCCAN’s advisers will work closely with KCPS officials, fine-tuning the network as they gain a better understanding of the district’s needs.
“We’ll have a conversation with the district and with school leadership in these high schools to say, ‘Where do you need that support? Where can our advisor come in and help support your students?’” Miller says. “We want them to be a part of that conversation, of building the model for each of the high schools and how we can best support them.”
Victor Aguilar, KCPS’ Officer of Post-Secondary Access and Student Success, calls the new network “a great opportunity for our kids.”
“We know that students who have post-secondary attainment earn over a lifetime 39% more income than a student who does not have access to those opportunities,” Aguilar says. “So how do they benefit? It’s not benefiting them for two years. It’s not benefiting them for four years. It’s a lifelong benefit.”
Miller says she wants students to see that multiple options exist for them after graduation – but that the conversation about that next step is important right now, while they’re still in KCPS.
“Maybe they think college is out of reach, or not an option, and the vision behind this program is helping inform them that it is an option, and we’re going to show them kind of the array of different opportunities. You could (enroll in) a two-year, a four-year, a certificate program,” she says. “So how can we help students see the various options and then also talk about affordability and navigating a lot of those pieces to help the students and the families have a conversation together about that next step for their student?”
Aguilar says he’s confident that the benefits of the KCKAN network will be evident long after students have left the classroom, too.
“Our students, they’re the future of our community, and a program like KCCAN does nothing but good things for our community,” Aguilar says. “It means more access for our community, a stronger community, and it happens through great graduates who are ready to take on the world and be productive citizens of our country.”
