College, Career, and Life Readiness Success in Kern County, California with Naviance by PowerSchool

Challenge 

• Lacking district-wide college and career readiness program 
• Low adoption after initial introduction of the program 

Solution 

• Naviance by PowerSchool 

Result 

• 4,000+ course plans created within the first few months 
• Doubled the number of students completing course plans year over year 

The Kern High School District (KHSD) is located in Kern County, California, at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. KHSD’s mission is to provide programs and services that allow all students to graduate prepared to succeed in the workplace and at the postsecondary level.  

In California, under the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), all school districts are required to prepare a Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP)—a tool for local educational agencies to set goals, plan actions, and leverage resources to meet those goals to improve student outcomes.  

KHSD’s LCAP for 2019-2020 included:  

• Hire highly qualified, trained, and diverse teachers  
• Provide relevant, innovative, and ample instructional resources  
• Prepare graduates for a successful postsecondary experience  
• Enhance positive, safe, and supportive environments  

Challenge 

With a large and diverse student population comes many challenges to meeting those goals. Christy Fraley, the resource counselor for the district, shares that until recently, KHSD did not have a college and career readiness program implemented district-wide. The district launched various college and career programs to support the goal of preparing graduates for their postsecondary experience. However, they were not well adopted across the district. 

Solution 

In 2018, Kern High School District implemented Naviance by PowerSchool across the district as one of the solutions to equitably support all students in being prepared for life after high school. Naviance helps educators comprehensively track student progress and support their college application process, all in one platform. Most California students attend a local higher education institution, and Naviance helps strengthen the education pipeline to a California university or community college. The platform does this by improving A-G completion, college application rates, course planning to meet graduation requirements, and personalized student support.  

In the 2019-2020 school year, the counseling team began implementing Naviance Course Planner. With the ability to build both graduation and A-G educational plans, they were able to provide students with a personal graduation plan that meets their college and career interests and goals.  

Given KHSD’s strong focus on improving student preparation for college and careers, the counseling team wanted to ensure proven and reliable tools are available to all schools in their district to effectively track and measure progress and outcomes. Naviance Course Planner gives staff and families the ability to use reports to track CTE pathway completion and help ensure students are on track to meet A-G requirements and complete goals such as achieving the State Seal of Biliteracy.  

With Naviance Course Planner, students can easily build course plans aligned to their interests while ensuring they meet graduation requirements. With ownership over their course plans, students are empowered to be in control of their learning and informed on what they need to do to accomplish their goals. 

Results 

Naviance enables KHSD counselors to provide the tools and resources students need to learn about themselves and the opportunities that exist for them in their postsecondary experience. Naviance’s robust offerings of assessment tools help students discover who they are and what they’re interested in.  

With the implementation of Naviance Course Planner, staff can align career clusters and pathways with the courses that lead to that pathway completion. Students have access to career-aligned course recommendations based on their saved career clusters. It allows students to build their 4-year course plans based on their career interests to ensure they are on their best path to success after they graduate.  

KHSD has already seen positive impacts of its implementation of Naviance Course Planner. They doubled the number of students who completed course plans over the previous year and almost tripled the number over two years. After only a few months of using the program, KHSD quickly saw students create over 4,000 course plans.  

The data found in the course plan reports helps KHSD:  

• Track student course activity  
• Track career pathway choice and progress  
• Forecast course demand  

With the confidence that all freshmen can now complete their personal course plans by the end of the school year, KHSD has made a critical step to ensure all students are prepared for graduation and life after high school.