Counseling | News
Texas District to Deploy Career, College Readiness Platform
The Denton Independent School District has selected a platform to help its high school students prepare for college or career and boost both student and family engagement. It will be deployed at four high schools in the fall.
The district will implement Hobson's Naviance, which provides a lineup of tools designed to help students set goals, develop academic plans, and weigh colleges or universities and future careers.
"Naviance aligns perfectly with our district mission of having Denton Independent School District students graduate from high school college-and career-ready," said Amy Lawrence, director of counseling services for the district. "Whether our students are exploring career choices, investigating college options, or completing a personal learning plan, the end goal is to connect their academic choices with their post-secondary goals, and Naviance is truly a one-stop shop for college and career planning."
Features of Naviance include:
- A single portal for school districts to create goals for students, monitor progress, and analyze student outcomes;
- Multi-lingual functionality;
- Naviance eDocs, which lets schools electronically submit applications to more than 1,700 colleges and universities;
- A digital record of each student's career and college planning, which allows schools to collect data and make decisions based on it;
- Communication tools for actions like sending e-mails to groups of students and keeping track of students' messages;
- The ability to create custom reports; and
- Standard reports, which present student goals, learning styles, stats of student and family usage, course reports by demographic, and more.
In addition, Naviance Course Planner is designed to assist students in identifying which classes they need to take in order to be in alignment with their college and career goals. The Naviance Family Connection portal also provides an online location for parents, teachers, and school counselors to engage.
Denton Independent School District has more than 22,000 students and 35 buildings, including 20 elementary, six middle, and three high schools.
For more information about Naviance, visit hobsons.com. To learn more about Denton Independent School District, go to dentonisd.org.
About the Author
Tim Sohn is a 10-year veteran of the news business, having served in capacities from reporter to editor-in-chief of a variety of publications including Web sites, daily and weekly newspapers, consumer and trade magazines, and wire services. He can be reached at timothyjsohn@gmail.com and followed on Twitter @editortim.