Counseling | News

Texas District Implements Software To Help Students with College Planning and Applications

• By Leila Meyer
• 06/19/13

Plano Independent School District (PISD) in Texas has implemented a software suite to help school counselors and students select courses to match graduation and postsecondary goals, submit supporting documents with college applications, and track alumni.

The district adopted the Naviance college and career readiness platform from Hobsons, including the Naviance Course Planner, Naviance eDocs, and Naviance Alumni Tracker.

Naviance Course Planner lets students design their own multi-year course plans to ensure they will meet graduation requirements. Working with school counselors, students aspiring to specific college or university programs can also use the application to ensure their high school coursework will provide them with the necessary prerequisites for their postsecondary program of choice.

Naviance eDocs assists with the college application process by securely sending student application forms, recommendations, transcripts, and secondary school profiles electronically to any of its participating colleges and universities, of which there are more than 1,800. The district will use the tool to reduce the time and cost associated with the college application process.

Naviance Alumni Tracker works with the National Student Clearinghouse to follow high school graduates and track their progress from college enrollment through degree completion. According to Hobsons, Plano will use Alumni Tracker to identify areas for improvement to help future generations of Plano students prepare for college.

“The success of our school district is inextricably linked to the success of our graduates,” said Patty Meyer, associate superintendent for campus services at Plano ISD, in a prepared statement. “Our administrative team and school board are thrilled to acquire a resource that will help students along the path to college and career readiness, while helping us track their progress. We look forward to further assessing and validating Plano ISD’s benchmarks for our students and graduates.”

Plano Independent School District is located 20 miles north of Dallas. The district serves more than 55,000 students from prekindergarten through grade 12 and employs nearly 6,500 teachers, administrators, and support staff.

Further information about the Naviance college and career readiness platform can be found on Hobson's site.