Actions You Should Be Taking
This is a continuation from our February 2025 newsletter regarding the role of mid-year assessments.
In How to Plan Your Career or College Pathway, I profile the type of career/college planning strategies that resulted in our older son receiving a full need-based scholarship to attend Amherst College, the top ranked liberal arts college in the U.S. at the time, and our younger son being selected as a 2012 Gates Millennium Scholar and accepted into the Honors College at Morehouse College, the top ranked liberal arts college in the world for Black men. I also provide step-by-step K-12 strategies in the following books:
Ten Steps to Helping Your Child Succeed in School
A Middle School Plan for Students with College-Bound Dreams
A High School Plan for Students with College-Bound Dreams
The mid-year assessment is part of a student’s “backwards mapping” strategy—a strategy that begins with a student’s long-term educational or career aspirations and works backwards to develop goals and engage in mid-year and year-end assessments throughout a student’s K-12 schooling. Tragically, neither schools nor parents follow this process.
Here is what I outline in the book that you should do:
Begin with the question, “What do you want to do the day after high school?” The answer to this question establishes a long-term vision for a student’s future. Whether the answer is to become a professional basketball player, engineer, entrepreneur, or simply attend college, it reflects a student’s aspirations at a given moment in time—one that may change many times over the course of a student’s K-12 journey as a result of experiences and exposure.
- Begin each school year with specific goals across the areas of academics, behavior, gifts and talents, leadership, service, and awards. Do so will help students to become gifted, talented, and well rounded people who understand the value of leadership and service.
- Pause at the end of the first semester (or mid-year) to review and celebrate process toward, or the achievement of, each goal. Set second semester goals and plan summer program involvement to strengthen weaknesses, develop gifts, or explore interests.
- Pause at the end of the second semester (or year-end) to review and celebrate process toward, or the achievement of, each goal. Plan the following year course schedule based on the successes or challenges experienced. This may lead to pursuing more rigorous classes in some subjects and less rigorous classes in other subjects. Research the teachers and discuss class placement with counselors or administrators. Consider summer enrichment or recovery to prepare for the next school year.
Engaging in this process during every school year from kindergarten through the 11th grade will result in 36 conversations between students and parents, each within the context of a student’s educational or career aspirations. Through these conversations, students should engage in a continuous process of developing, reviewing, and fine-tuning their K-12 course schedules in a manner consistent with the affirm career or college aspirations.
Some of the notable failures of not engaging in this process are:
- Widespread low student achievement as a result of not monitoring achievement and engaging in timely interventions
- Disproportionately high student loan debt as a result of not engaging in planning full scholarship pathways after a student affirms attending college as a long-term goal
- Developing inappropriate behaviors, failing to appreciate the value of serving others, and failure to develop leadership skills as a result of engaging in ongoing conversations about such important areas of character development
Now that you know, there is no excuse not to do!