Planning for Success Beyond High School##M:[more]##
Euna Kwon Brossman’s August 24 interview with West Windsor-Plainsboro school counseling program director Nancy Icenhower was well done and an excellent opportunity to reflect on the importance of professional school counselors and school counseling programs in preparing all students for K-12 life and beyond. Sadly, the United States has never been successful in preparing all students for post-high school career and college opportunities.
Too many students are not graduating from high school and are not obtaining significant post-high school educational success. The Education Trust’s National Center for Transforming School Counseling and the College Board’s Office of School Counselor Advocacy have both taken leadership positions focused on closing achievement and opportunity gaps through promoting equitable school counseling program initiatives that focus on equity, access, and career and college-readiness for every K-12 student.
Many top school counseling programs around the U.S. have adopted the American School Counselor Association’s National Standards and ASCA National Program Model, focused on data-driven delivery of academic, career/college, and personal/social skills for every student to help close achievement and opportunity gaps using evidence-based lessons and activities.
West Windsor-Plainsboro can strengthen its school counseling programs and help close achievement and opportunity gaps by sharing data with the community about the effectiveness of standards-based school counseling curriculum and other program interventions delivered to all K-12 students.
WW-P needs to develop a School Counseling Program Advisory Council including parents, guardians, teachers, students, and community members that can help monitor data collection regarding gaps, utilize evidence-based practice including closing the gap curriculum action plans and results reports, and disseminate results of school counseling program interventions publicly.
In addition, WW-P can move toward a greater leadership role for school counselors in educational , career, and college planning in the elementary and middle grades and working as advocates to challenge inappropriate gate-keeping policies. For example, if all students were allowed to take algebra in middle school, a larger number of WW-P students would be able to take the most challenging math courses throughout high school with more doors open after high school for the most competitive college admissions.
Parents and guardians, including a large number of international families, need to be apprised early on of the costs of college, the need for high level curriculum for all students (versus only teacher recommendation or parent overrides), and the use of AP courses. WW-P should encourage all students to take the greatest depth in their academic programs for the widest array of post-secondary options.
Parents and guardians can join many school and college counselors in challenging the unscientific hype of the Newsweek and Princeton Review rankings. We need to recognize that the best post-secondary education experiences are not necessarily exclusive to the Ivy League or studying in the United States.
School counselors can also advocate for alternate paths to colleges that have dropped use of admissions tests, recognizing their scores too often reflect the USA’s over-resourcing of some students (wealthy, dominant racial identities, native speakers of English, students with no disabilities, for example) and under-resourcing of students who are poor and working class, persons of color, bilingual and multilingual students, and students with disabilities.
There are outstanding post-secondary institutions, public and private, that can provide excellent experiences and that will likely be more realistic for almost all students in the coming decade as the eligible seats in the most elite universities pale in comparison to the applicant pool numbers.
In addition, more time spent on college admissions by school counselors takes away from equally important tasks of student academic, career, and personal/social development. More attention to the college and post-secondary education process in elementary and middle schools can better focus school counselor roles and free up valuable time in the high schools to focus on academic, career, and personal-social issues in addition to college admissions counseling. I look forward to increased coverage of the entire spectrum of school counseling program issues in future issues of the WW-P News.
Stuart Chen-Hayes
Plainsboro
Associate Professor, Counselor Education/ School Counseling, Lehman College
of the City University of New York
School Bus Limbo: Good Experience Turns Painful
At the start of the school year there are kinks to work out in almost every school system. We understand it, we expect it, we worry about it, we are patient, we put things into perspective, and then we try to fix it. Let me share my perspective on a frustrating transportation issue that left my young child on the bus for over 70 minutes each day. Since September 5 he has missed over 40 minutes per day of his academic school day.
The worst part is we live 3.5 miles from the school he attends. I can drive to the school in less than 10 minutes. So you wonder then why I don’t just drive and forgo this frustration? I could, my schedule allows for that, however my child loves the bus.
It is a great learning experience that he clearly does not want to and should not miss. More importantly, the school district asks you to send your child on the bus so it is easier for the district to get every child to school on time. I try to follow the rules. I have been patient. However, to date my child has missed over 10.5 hours of his school in less than two weeks.
I have spoken to everyone from the subcontracted bus company all the way up to the office of Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes. I pay enough in school taxes, as we all do, to expect that my child will get to school on time and receive the appropriate education.
As tax payers we should expect that the first day of school is not an experiment with our child’s education, tolerance for lengthy bus trips, or their bladder control. We all have our war stories. I have heard stories of buses never showing up leaving children for over an hour, chronic lateness of buses throughout the year for some special needs children, and bullying on the bus. When are we all going to say we have had enough?
Why can’t we have the buses do “dry runs” prior to the school year. And please let’s not say it is the money when we all vote to have multi-million dollars turf fields at our high schools. There are many communities in Pennsylvania that practice their routes to make sure they know the bus route, that the amount of time allotted for each stop is reasonable, and that the children ultimately make it to school on time.
I am not asking much. I want my child to get to school in a reasonable amount of time safely so he can thrive in a fabulous academic environment. I have been fortunate to have wonderful teachers and bus drivers for my child. I am extremely grateful that the incompetence does not reach to the people who are actually working with my child. Joan Fennell
4 Oakwood Way, West Windsor
After the letter above was submitted, Fennell reported that the bus route for her son had been rearranged, so that the trip was shortened to a reasonable length. However, she added, his attitude toward the bus ride is no longer positive:
“He would not get on the bus this morning. He cried and ran to the car for me to take him to school. Here is a child who loved the bus. It was the highlight of his day and now instead cries about it. I am disgusted that the countless phone calls did not spur someone to action. So my son has suffered because transportation thinks it is appropriate for a four-year-old to spend this ridiculous amount of time on a school bus.”
WW’s Big Picture: Clean Up 571
What am I missing? The Route 571 corridor in Princeton Junction between Alexander and Cranbury Roads is a disgrace, an embarrassment, and an eyesore and is in drastic need of a clean up. Yet the West Windsor Township is spending thousands of dollars and threatening to build a mindless and artificial transit village with its inherent congestion, traffic pollution, parking nightmares, and school overcrowding.
A certain member of the House of Windsor might well say, as he once said of another blot on the landscape, “The Corridor is a Carbunkle on the Behind of Humanity.” As the focal point of the Junction, the corridor needs a makeover and a massive change of character before development action is considered elsewhere. West Windsor has a number of delightful parks. Why can’t the planners do the same for the corridor as they have with our open spaces?
Where are the winding pathways, the bubbling fountains, the riotous flower beds, the quaint bistros and the seductive boutiques along the so called Main Street of the Junction? Instead, we have a mediocre supermarket, a take out bagelry, a so-so pizza parlor, a garish nail salon, an “always empty in the evening” Indian restaurant — and three gas stations, three realtors and four — soon to be five — banks, all within the space of one half mile.
One gas station, at Alexander, should be demolished immediately and all the ugly store frontages torn down, re-designed and re-built. The fifth bank will soon destroy the tranquility of bucolic Sherbrook Estates. Sherbrook, where birds sing, walkers walk, dogs sniff, and children play — but soon traffic will snarl, cars will speed and pollute, and child safety will diminish.
Ah — I hear you say. But the blight that is the old Getty station and the Chicken Holiday strip is soon to be razed. To be replaced — you guessed it — by a chain drug store and the ubiquitous Starbucks with its cookie cutter style and lack of ambiance.
Why, oh why, I ask, wasn’t the “Sun Bank” building turned into the attractive restaurant we so urgently need when that lot became available? It has ample parking, cathedral ceilings, spacious windows but it was not to be and it’s too late now. Main Street, once alongside waving corn fields, is now a bank farm polluted by gas stations, leased by realtors.
Please, West Windsor. Come to your senses and clean up the corridor first. Although there is little to show for 200 years of history, all is not lost although time is short. Drop any thoughts of a transit village and put some charm into Bank City’s Main Street before bumper to bumper back ups in the corridor become even more intolerable, pedestrians go in fear of their lives, and the tagline, “Tree City”, is a thing of the past.
Did I also hear someone shout “And what about those overhead wires?” But that, surely, would be asking too much.
Richard Moody
Norchester Drive, West Windsor
Damn the Costs: II
The mayor has wasted hundreds of thousands of the taxpayers’ money on the redevelopment project and has proposals to waste more for an ill-defined project.
According to the business administrator, the project is a moving target, and he cannot predict how much the project is going to cost. The township attorney agrees. How can we spend money on an ill-defined project?
It is a well known management principle that you do not proceed and fund a project without its objectives being defined precisely. Most managers would be fired if they proceeded on a project without an adequate definition, and continued to spend on it.
How can this ill-defined project be funded by our council and mayor? Stop now before more money is wasted. Joel Zelnick
12 Rabbit Hill Road,
West Windsor
Join the Cause At WW Bike Ride
Come join the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance for a fun, family bike ride on Saturday, September 29. We will bike on the new path along the PSE&G right of way from Community Park to Emack and Bolio’s Ice Cream shop in the Southfield Shopping Center on Southfield Road.
This ride will highlight the new connectivity of this trail and residential streets between Community Park and the shopping center. The route is approximately three miles each way on flat terrain. Participants may purchase refreshments (i.e. ice cream!) at the mid-point of the ride at Emack and Bolio’s, which will contribute a percentage of proceeds to the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance (WWBPA).
Participants should meet at the Waterworks complex in Community Park, located off of Bernt Midland Drive at Princeton-Hightstown Road (Route 571) on September 29 at 2 p.m. A rain date is scheduled for Sunday, September 30, at 2 p.m. Helmets are required for all participants. Affordable helmets will be available at the start of the ride. For more information about the ride or the alliance go to www.princetononline.org/wwbpa, or E-mail wwbikeped@gmail.com, or call me at 609-275-6355.
Ken Carlson
WWBPA President
Help for AD/HD
The beginning of a school year is stressful for all parents. This is particularly true for parents of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD). In celebration of AD/HD awareness day, September 19, we wish to thank the resources that support our chapter
As coordinator of our county’s CHADD chapter, I wish to thank the many publications in the Mercer County area for getting our message out so brilliantly. We appreciate the service you provide to our citizens with your excellent and thorough reporting and information distribution.
You can join our local monthly CHADD meetings; they are open to everyone. For information go to www.chadd.org, or E-mail janemilrod@aol.com. Jane Milrod
CHADD Mercer County
Backpack Thanks
The Princeton Area Junior Woman’s Club would like to thank everyone who generously contributed to fill backpacks for the children on the Homefront. Your donations were appreciated!
Marie Levine
Backpack Coordinator
Mardana Naidu
Publicity Chair
Elizabeth Carnevale,
President
