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Texas District Signs with Hobsons for College and Career Readiness Management

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/16/13

A Texas district with eight campuses is turning to technology to help it prepare students for post-high school readiness. McKinney Independent School District has licensed Naviance from Hobsons to manage the steps along the way in facilitating college searches, career exploration, and course planning. Naviance provides a set of tools that students and school counselors can use to manage the process of applying to college or pursuing a certifiable career track.

Eventually, the district will use the company's Naviance Course Planner to introduce electronic versions of four-year course plans for students and their families that will help them monitor the courses they'll need in order to pursue the college they want and track how well they're doing against entrance requirements. Course Planner will also help individual schools more efficiently manage the tracking and reporting of attendance at career and technology education courses, where that's required.

"Naviance will offer better college- and career-preparation resources for our students, allow them to chart a path to reach a career, and help our school and district staff communicate more effectively with students and their families about college and career planning decisions." said Tamy Smalskas , the district's director of Career and Technical Education and Special Projects. "We will also be using Naviance Course Planner to create four-year course plans that will help our students tie what they're doing in the classroom to their future goals."

The district will also implement Naviance eDocs, a workflow application that automates the delivery of college application-related materials, including transcripts and letters of recommendation. The goal there is to improve operational efficiencies and reduce costs associated with dealing with paper documents.

A number of other districts have signed on for Hobsons software, including Leander Independent School District, also in Texas, Spokane Public Schools in Washington and Irvine Unified School District in California.