by Andrew Schmitz and Bill DeBaun, The Hechinger Report
February 23, 2026
U.S. high schools and districts need to treat college and career readiness as a core, systemic responsibility — not an add-on.
Sure, they are working hard to better prepare students for life after graduation: FAFSA completion events, career exploration fairs, internships with local businesses and dual-credit classes at community colleges now define the student experience in many schools.
While these programs and events reflect a genuine effort to support students navigating an increasingly complex postsecondary landscape, they fail to coalesce into a clear strategy.
That has to change. Until college and career readiness is fully embedded into how schools are organized, funded and led, even the best-intentioned supports will continue to fall short of their potential and fail students who are trying to figure out what’s next.
Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.
College and career readiness often takes shape as a series of ad hoc activities, with curricula, technology platforms or classes layered onto existing structures. The result is a patchwork, not a system.
School improvement research offers a useful metaphor: “Christmas tree schools.” That refers to how, in pursuit of college and career readiness, schools accumulate well-intentioned programs, but fail to get students on their next, best step after the high school graduation stage.
Unlike core academic subjects, college and career readiness sits uneasily in the high school ecosystem. Consider:
- The goal largely lacks sustained, protected funding comparable to that for academic instruction and tested outcomes, and leaders are often forced to creatively blend and braid funding from various sources in order to support college and career readiness priorities.
- State accountability systems prioritize graduation rates and test scores, offering weak or inconsistent incentives for rigorous postsecondary preparation.
School leaders tend to focus improvement efforts on areas where funding, ratings and oversight speak most clearly. That leads them to deprioritize the work of supporting students’ transitions after graduation.
School counselors, the adults most directly responsible for this work, are often overwhelmed and face significant structural constraints. Nationally, the average high school counselor serves 376 students, 150 percent of the ratio recommended by professional associations.
In addition, counselors devote much of their time to scheduling, compliance, testing coordination and crisis response. That leaves little room or time for sustained advising or leadership over a schoolwide college and career readiness strategy.
Compounding the problem, districts rarely plan for college and career readiness in a serious way. Less than 15 percent of district strategic plans explicitly address it, and it’s absent as a priority in most individual school improvement plans.
Principal preparation programs emphasize instructional leadership and finance but rarely train school leaders to build clear routes from high school to what comes next by connecting courses, advising and work experiences. As a result, they are rarely equipped to build and manage advising systems, pathways and partnerships.
Lacking funding, ownership and preparation means that college and career readiness drifts to the margins or disappears entirely.
As a result, schools fill the gap haphazardly. Community-based and external college access organizations advise select cohorts of students; dual-enrollment participation has surged; and states are rushing to expand student access to work-based learning through new legislation and programs.
Related: How one state revamped high school to reflect reality: Not everyone goes to college
But student participation in these programs is episodic rather than strategic, and students often find it difficult to build the knowledge and momentum required not just to enroll in postsecondary pathways, but to complete them and secure economically viable careers.
Successful strategies rely on integration rather than accumulation. They align staffing, planning, curricula, data and partnerships around shared goals for postsecondary preparation. They emphasize discipline over slogans and coherence over novelty. Several principles matter most:
- First, districts must expand and diversify their school-based advising capacity. While 89 percent of high school leaders report providing some form of college and career advising support services, the challenge lies in increasing its quality and frequency. Schools can create complementary roles, such as advisers who focus more specifically on careers and work-based learning coordinators, to extend counselors’ reach.
- Second, districts should include clear, measurable college and career readiness goals into strategic plans, then publicly track progress using leading indicators. Districts like Akron, Ohio, Jackson, Mississippi and Kentwood, Michigan demonstrate how making readiness visible in planning changes what leaders prioritize and manage.
- Third, states and districts should streamline curricula, advising frameworks and data systems to create coherence from grades 6 through 12. Too many platforms fragment information and complicate progress monitoring. Leaders need fewer systems, and those they do have need to align tightly to state frameworks, regional career landscapes and local strategies. Leaders don’t need more dashboards that compete for attention.
- Education Strategy Group’s CCR platform overview provides comprehensive information to help leaders make informed choices about data systems.
High schools don’t suffer from a lack of effort or goodwill. They suffer from misaligned incentives and fragmented systems.
Andrew Schmitz is the senior managing director of system impact at OneGoal. He launched and leads the OneGoal Leadership Network, which partners with more than 60 districts in seven states. Bill DeBaun is the senior director of data and strategic initiatives at the National College Attainment Network (NCAN).
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about college and career counseling was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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