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Month: February 2019

How Iowa College Aid Provides Student-Specific FAFSA Completion Data to Schools

Posted on February 27, 2019February 27, 2019 by Bill DeBaun
How Iowa College Aid Provides Student-Specific FAFSA Completion Data to Schools

By Christina Sibaouih, MAISD, and Jamie Covell, MSW, of Iowa College Aid

The mission to provide student-level Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion data to Iowa high schools began with a pilot in one region of the state – a partnership between our agency, Iowa College Aid, and AEA PREP (Area Education Agencies’ Postsecondary Readiness and Equity Partnership). We soon realized statewide expansion was possible, though we knew we were in for a bit of a long ride.

In the end, our persistence paid off, despite the various obstacles along the road. Thirteen months later, we have officially expanded to 100 percent participation – all public high schools in Iowa are now receiving student-level FAFSA data.

The overall process is relatively simple:

  1. Through use of our Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, Iowa College Aid receives Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) for those submitting a FAFSA in Iowa.
  2. Our agency also has an agreement with the Iowa Department of Education to receive a senior enrollment file, telling us all of the high school seniors enrolled in the state.
  3. Our research team compares these two lists to determine which students haven’t completed or haven’t filed a FAFSA.
  4. We upload this list to our Google system, run a script to produce each school’s report, and send an automated email to each AEA PREP lead when the reports are ready to distribute.
  5. Then, each AEA PREP lead distributes automated emails that contain the report to the schools within their region.

The logistical steps involved in setting up this process, however, were much more complex than we expected.

Systems were the first barrier. Our agency had been using a system that involved schools logging in to a portal, uploading their own student list, and creating a report. Our No. 1 priority was to streamline, simplify, and automate this process to make it easier for school counselors to get the information they needed without having to do extra work.

As part of the old system, each individual school was required to sign a data-sharing agreement with Iowa College Aid to be able to receive the student-level data provided by the report. As we knew this was a logistical deterrent for some schools to sign up, we began to look into what existing data-sharing infrastructure could be leveraged to avoid schools signing multiple agreements.

After a few months of working with our legal team and the U.S. Department of Education, we were able to determine that student-level data-sharing agreements with our agency only needed to be signed by our regional AEA’s, who, in turn, have data-sharing agreements with each of the schools in their region. This narrowed the number of agreements from 343 to 9 AEA-level agreements.

Nevertheless, we continue to have the responsibility to inform schools about what type of data they are receiving, what their responsibilities are with these data, and how to utilize the data. From our data-sharing agreement, we pulled the most important and relevant information for those accessing these data to know and developed a video to include in an online authorization form that school users would be required to electronically sign in order to receive their report. We placed the responsibility on each AEA to identify a school-level “local access manager,” the person assigned at each school to receive the report, usually a school counselor.

As of Jan. 25, all public high schools in Iowa have completed their authorization form and are now automatically receiving their weekly FAFSA report. The reports are sent once a week and stored in a Google folder, where the local access manager is able to access all past reports. The report lets each local access manager know which students are considered “Not Complete” – meaning they are missing something to complete their FAFSA, such as a signature – and “Not Filed” – meaning they have not submitted a FAFSA. School counselors are then able to notify students of what’s missing from their FAFSA or check-in with them about starting a FAFSA. We also provide a spreadsheet that shows more detail for each student, including whether they were selected for verification or not.

As exciting as it is to get these data to all of our 343 public high schools, there is more work to be done! We are now working to train all of our local access managers on how to best utilize these data. This student-level report has started a statewide conversation around FAFSA completion, and we hope to see an increase in Iowa’s FAFSA completion rate in the years to come, now that school counselors are better equipped to assist their students!

Posted in Data, What WorksTagged data, FAFSA, financial aid, IowaLeave a Comment on How Iowa College Aid Provides Student-Specific FAFSA Completion Data to Schools

Manny: Growing Up in a Family with Mixed Immigration Status

Posted on February 7, 2019February 14, 2019 by Barry Whitaker
Manny: Growing Up in a Family with Mixed Immigration Status

“My parents are mixed-status, which means their immigration status makes it hard for them to get work,” explains Manny.

“My uncle opened a restaurant in Kentucky, so we moved from California so my parents could work there. My mom talks about how her life would have been a lot different had she finished college. She was in a university in Mexico, but didn’t finish. My dad didn’t have the option of school.”

Manny says, “My parents always bring up how they want me and my brothers and sister to be in a better position than they’re in now.”

One of Manny’s teachers sophomore year made him realize college was possible. “I was falling asleep in his class because it was easy to me. He said, ‘Why don’t you switch into my AP course?’”

“At first I didn’t want to. I don’t know, I guess I didn’t think I would fit in. I didn’t feel like I was that smart and I would get judged. He helped me through it. I just had this barrier about myself and what I could really do.”

Manny realized he wanted to go to college and started taking as many AP classes as he could.

Getting financial aid with mixed-status parents

“Our college resource teacher, Dr. Carmichael, started talking about FAFSA to get financial aid. She was tweeting about it, putting flyers up and telling kids to fill it out,” Manny recalls.

“Different people started saying they didn’t want to worry me, but that filling out the FAFSA could put my parents on the map because of their immigration status.”

Manny decided to talk to his parents. “I sat down with my mom and dad and told them, if I do this, it could potentially let it be known to whoever that this is who they are and where they live.”

“I thought about what would happen to my family,” says Manny. “I have two younger siblings that live here in the house. If something happened to one of my parents, how would it impact them?”

But his parents gave him the courage to move forward with his goal. “My parents said, ‘If something is going to happen, it is going to happen.’ And if something did happen to one of them, they wanted it to be for this. They gave me the green light so I could continue applying for college. They are 100 percent behind me.”

Worries after being selected for verification

“I got the income documents I needed from my dad,” Manny remembers. “I had a study hall period, so I filled out the FAFSA http://californiahomehealthcare.org/generic-viagra/ myself there.”

“Different people started saying that filling out the FAFSA could put my parents on the map because of their immigration status.”

“I made two logins — one for me and one for my parents. I filled in my dad’s stuff, and then I filled out mine because I file taxes too. Soon after, I got the email confirming I’d completed the FAFSA.”

But then, Manny got word from the college he’d applied to that he was selected for verification. He’d have to provide extra paperwork.

Manny immediately went to Dr. Carmichael and explained the situation. “It got very stressful. I had to provide tax transcripts for my parents’ income. That was the main problem because I really wanted to protect my parents’ identity.”

“Dr. Carmichael and other administrators advised me and my parents not to go in person to the IRS office,” says Manny. They were concerned someone would ask questions. “Instead, we found a form to request the transcripts that we could fax in so we could get the transcripts mailed back. It was a long process.”

“Everybody else was getting letters saying how much financial aid they’d get. It was getting close to the deadline when I had to tell the university if I was enrolling and send a deposit. I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t know how much financial aid I would get.”

When all the verification paperwork was in, Manny set up a meeting with an admissions counselor at his college. “He gave me an estimate of the financial aid I’d get, like in the letters other people were getting. I was so relieved and pumped. I told my parents and they were so happy. It was like a weight off my shoulders.”

Manny’s advice: Find someone to guide you

Manny says a counselor can help other students figure out what to do if they’re feeling lost.

“It’s important to find somebody that can really help you through this whole process, like I had with Dr. Carmichael. If I didn’t have her, this whole process would have been 10 times harder for me.”

“Whenever I was stressed, I’d talk to Dr. Carmichael. She’d say okay, and then we’d call an admissions counselor. Or she would give me a number of somebody to call and say what was going on. She was my biggest connection.”

Manny will be studying biology at Bellarmine University. He plans to go on to medical school and says his parents are happy about what he has accomplished.

Posted in Student StoriesLeave a Comment on Manny: Growing Up in a Family with Mixed Immigration Status

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