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5 Cities Receive Awards for 2018-19 FAFSA Completion Challenge Efforts

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Kelly Mae Ross

By Sara Melnick, Deputy Director, National College Access Network

The National College Access Network announced the winners of the 2018-19 FAFSA Completion Challenge last week at the 2019 NCAN National Conference Indianapolis. Out of the more than two dozen U.S. cities that participated in the Challenge, five received awards for their outstanding efforts.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) effectively serves as the gateway to higher education for millions of students each academic year. But the complex and extensive nature of the FAFSA deters some students from applying for the financial aid for which they would otherwise qualify.

In an effort to boost FAFSA completion rates across the country, NCAN selected 25 U.S. cities to receive a grant of up to $40,000 each for the 2018-19 FAFSA Completion Challenge. This work was led by a mix of school districts, postsecondary institutions, community-based organizations, and foundations.

NCAN challenged each of the grant recipients to increase their FAFSA completion rates by at least 5 percentage points for the graduating high school class of 2019. In an effort to address equity gaps, this Challenge specifically focused on cities with baseline FAFSA completion rates below the national average.

This project was generously funded by The Kresge Foundation and Ascendium Education Group.

Grand Prize – Mesa Public Schools (Mesa, AZ)

The grand prize winner of the 2018-19 FAFSA Completion Challenge is Arizona’s Mesa Public Schools.

Mesa implemented several creative strategies to help more of its students file the FAFSA. The district used student-level completion data to strategically target non-completers and invite them to smaller, more intimate FAFSA completion events and one-on-one sessions. Mesa also implemented a campaign to clarify and disseminate information about FAFSA completion, spreading the word though social and traditional media, a website, flyers, and the school’s messaging system.

But a major key to the district’s success was its use of peer coaches. These coaches were recruited by school staff to spread the word among their peers about FASFA completion, its importance, and where to get help with the financial aid application process. The coaches received extensive training and used data to target their peers who had not completed the FAFSA. They supported FAFSA completion events at their high schools, led information sessions at lunch, and used social media to get the word out.

As the grand prize winner, Mesa Public Schools received $100,000 to continue its FAFSA completion efforts.

First Runner-up – Denton Independent School District (Denton, TX)

Denton ISD also took a multi-pronged approach to its FAFSA completion work. Strong support from the district superintendent helped generate more buy-in for the work. And the district’s director of counseling was the point person for all FAFSA-related activities, making it easier to coordinate efforts throughout the schools. Denton provided each school a small sub-grant to spend on activities to boost FAFSA completion. These funds were often used for student incentives and prizes.

Another key to Denton’s success was to use grant dollars to hire a FAFSA expert to complement the work of the school counselors. This FAFSA expert had the knowledge and, more importantly, the time to address complex FAFSA situations and work one-on-one with students and families in a non-threatening environment. The school district deemed the work of the FAFSA expert so important that it will to continue to pay their salary for another school year.

As the first runner-up, Denton ISD received $25,000 to continue its FAFSA completion work.

Award for Excellence in Overcoming Barriers and Perseverance – Rochester Education Foundation (Rochester, NY)

Rochester was one of the only sites that did not have access to student-level FASFA completion data, despite the district’s best efforts to obtain these data from the state. On top of that, two partners that would have expanded the Rochester Education Foundation’s ability to help hard-to-reach students with FAFSA completion were unable to participate in the project.

But with these lemons, the Rochester Education Foundation (REF) made lemonade. Here are just a few ways the site demonstrated perseverance in the face of significant obstacles:

Rochester built a cadre of counselors who became personally invested in this work.
REF implemented many more school-based FAFSA completion events than originally planned (15), in addition to six community-based events.
REF capitalized on the strong existing relationships with institutions of higher education and added new partners during the year. These higher ed partners provided in-school advising and trained volunteers; one institution even provided on-the-spot admissions decisions.

In the end, REF estimates that 47% of all FAFSA completions in Rochester happened at one of its events.

As the recipient of the Overcome Barriers and Perseverance award, Rochester Education Foundation received $10,000 to support future FAFSA completion work.

Award for Excellence in Community-Based Leadership – Citizens for Educational Excellence (Corpus Christi, TX)

Citizens for Educational Excellence (CEE) is a local intermediary organization that is also the hub of several collaborative efforts in the area that focus on equity in postsecondary access, and workforce development.

One of CEE’s major accomplishments during the Challenge was facilitating deeper relationships between local postsecondary institutions and the school district, as well as formalizing CEE’s partnership with the school district. CEE had provided support to the schools around FAFSA completion in the past, but this grant facilitated deeper involvement with counselors, who came to appreciate that CCE was there to support them (and not to create extra work).

Other activities implemented as part of this project included monthly competitions and awards for schools with the highest completion rates in the district; using traditional and social media to disseminate information about the FAFSA to the entire community; awarding graduation cords to students who completed the FAFSA; and engaging high school students to disseminate information about the FAFSA to their peers.

As the winner of the Community-Based Leadership award, CEE received $10,000 to continue its FAFSA completion efforts.

Award for Excellence in Training and Professional Development – Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority (West Valley City, UT)

The Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority (UHEAA) is a state agency that has access to student-level FAFSA completion information and already does a great deal of outreach on FAFSA completion statewide. The challenge UHEAA faces throughout the state is that a fair number of high school seniors do not historically go right on to a postsecondary institution after graduation.

UHEAA used a variety of strategies to increase FAFSA completion rates, including outreach to students through social media and texting, engaging near-peers through the statewide advising corps, and providing student-level data to counselors and advising corps members so they could target non-completers through small group and one-on-one assistance. The organization enjoyed a strong partnership with local postsecondary institutions and the school district, and UHEAA provided all partners with regular communication that included project updates and progress, as well as information on relevant partner resources.

UHEAA also used its robust toolbox of training resources (videos, webinars, etc.) to train counselors and college access professionals on why and how to complete the FAFSA. The organization provided training to administrators, counselors, and teachers throughout the grant period. Counselors and college access personnel were trained to assist students through most straightforward FAFSA completion scenarios, but they also had access to help when they encountered more challenging situations.

As the recipient of the Training and Professional Development award, UHEAA received $10,000 to support future FAFSA completion work.

All five award-winning FAFSA Completion Challenge sites were actively engaged in the project and with NCAN throughout the grant year. They presented on their experiences during webinars, were active participants in the webinars when they weren’t presenting, agreed to be interviewed by evaluators and to share their stories for blog posts, and were always willing to offer insights and their challenges when asked.

The sites’ willingness to share best practices helped grow the power of the Challenge grants by spreading solutions to other cities around the country.

Read more about the Challenge on the Kresge Foundation website.

Illinois Becomes Third State to Require FAFSA Completion for High School Graduation

Posted on August 16, 2019 by Kelly Mae Ross

By Bill DeBaun, Director of Data and Evaluation, National College Access Network

When Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed H.B. 2719 into effect on Aug. 2, he made Illinois the third state to require FAFSA completion for high school graduation. The Land of Lincoln joins Louisiana, which implemented the policy during the 2017-18 academic year, and Texas, which will implement its policy with the 2021-22 academic year. The Illinois policy goes into effect during the 2020-21 academic year.

Based on Louisiana’s implementation of the policy and the positive effects the Bayou State saw both in terms of FAFSA completion and expanding the number of college enrollers, several other states have considered or are considering similar policies, including California, Indiana, and Washington, D.C.

As with the Louisiana and Texas policies, Illinois’ also allows for students to receive waivers to the graduation requirement. Specifically, the policy allows the student to “file a waiver with the student’s school district indicating that the parent or guardian or, if applicable, the student understands what the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and application for State financial aid are and has chosen not to file an application.”

Additionally, a school district must award a high school diploma to students who cannot meet the new requirement because of “extenuating circumstances, as determined by the school district” so long as “the student has met all other graduation requirements” and “the principal attests that the school district has made a good faith effort to assist the student or, if applicable, his or her parent or guardian in filing an application or a waiver.”

Illinois’ potential challenge here relates to the state’s Monetary Award Program (MAP), a need-based aid program that awards grants to students who attend a set of in-state postsecondary institutions. Funding for the program is doled out on a first-come, first-served basis, which means that students who apply later in the cycle (who tend to skew more low-income) are often left without grants for which they would otherwise qualify. The state most recently made the news because 82,000 qualifying students did not receive a MAP grant due to a lack of funding.

If the state’s mandatory FAFSA completion policy generates a number of new FAFSA completers, as anticipated, it could put more pressure on a critical in-state financial aid program that is already insufficient to meet all students’ needs. Policymakers in Illinois may have their work cut out for them to either expand funding, change eligibility, encourage low-income students to complete a FAFSA earlier in the cycle before funding runs out, develop some other policy fix, or some combination thereof.

Through June 28 of this year, Illinois ranked 10th nationally in terms of percent of seniors completing a FAFSA (63.3%) and 34th in terms of year-over-year percent change in number of FAFSAs completed (-1.9%)

(Photo via @GovPritzker on Twitter)

Texas to Require FAFSA for High School Completion

Posted on July 17, 2019August 2, 2019 by Kelly Mae Ross

By Bill DeBaun, Director of Data and Evaluation, National College Access Network

Last month Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 3 into law. The legislation authorizes $11.6 billion in school finance expenditures, including $6.5 billion new spending and $5.1 billion in property tax relief. It also codifies FAFSA completion as a requirement for high school graduation, which is a big development for high school seniors in one of the country’s most populous states. The section on FAFSA completion goes into effect starting with the 2021-22 school year.

Policy wonks can find the bill’s full text here, but the part on FAFSA completion is Section 2.015, which begins, “Before graduating from high school, each student must complete and submit a free application for federal student aid (FAFSA) or a Texas application for state financial aid (TASFA).”

There are three waiver options to the requirement: 1) a student’s parent or guardian submits a signed form opting the student out, 2) the student opts themselves out if they are 18 or otherwise not a minor, or 3) a school counselor authorizes the student “to decline to complete and submit the financial aid application for good cause, as determined by the school counselor.”

As expected, the legislation also lays out reporting and timeline requirements. It also calls for the creation of an advisory committee to “assist the agency in adopting rules … to implement this section and to develop recommendations for that purpose.” The committee will be comprised of school counselors and administrators as well as “stakeholders to represent the needs of interested students.”

Austin Buchan, CEO of NCAN member College Forward in Austin, Texas, notes he is optimistic about the prospects for increased FAFSA completion as a result of House Bill 3. He also hopes the policy change will spur more investment in resources for public education.

“Boosting FAFSA completion rates must remain a state and national priority in spite of the perpetual lack of funding many of our institutions experience,” he said via email. “It is my ultimate hope that this requirement will add renewed pressure to our state policymakers to increase investments in driving counselor-student ratios to the NACAC-recommended 250:1 [Ed. Note. 2014-15 NACAC data estimated Texas had a 449:1 student-to-counselor ratio]. Tackling college access and success inequities alongside institutional investment challenges are issues we must address in tandem. We cannot wait for states to boost funding to make continued headway on policies we know work for students and families.”

Texas becomes the second state, after Louisiana, to make FAFSA completion a requirement for high school graduation. NCAN has covered the Louisiana policy extensively (see here, here, and here). Louisiana also allows students to opt out of the mandatory FAFSA through a few different pathways; applying for a TOPS scholarship is another way to satisfy the financial aid planning requirement along with opting out via a nonparticipation form or letter or receiving a school system waiver.

The policy change in Louisiana has led to some significant early success. In the 2018-19 FAFSA cycle, the first year in which Louisiana’s mandatory FAFSA policy was in effect, Louisiana led the way in terms of percentage of high school seniors completing and percent increase in completions. A whopping 25.9% more high school seniors (7,778) completed a FAFSA in the 2018-19 cycle than in 2017-18, representing an estimated 77.1% of seniors completing a FAFSA in the state. Louisiana’s percent increase represented over 19% of the entire nation’s increased number of FAFSA completions in that cycle. Those increases have persisted into the 2019-20 FAFSA cycle; an estimated 78.3% of Louisiana seniors from the class of 2019 have completed a FAFSA.

The gains in Louisiana expand beyond FAFSA completion. In May, the Louisiana Department of Education announced that the number of high school graduates immediately enrolling in postsecondary education the following fall climbed to an all-time high. That announcement, in turn, came on the heels of an announcement the week before that the high school class of 2018 posted the highest graduation rate in state history. The high school class of 2018’s graduation rate climbed by 3.2 percentage points to 81.4%. The graduation rate for Black students is above the national average for the first time; these students saw a jump of 5.1 percentage points over 2017 to 78%. Economically disadvantaged students saw their graduation rate rise by nearly 3 percentage points.

Through June 21, an estimated 54.5% of Texas seniors have completed a FAFSA, but year-over-year the number of completions in the state has grown 3.7% (the third-highest improvement rate among states this cycle). Given how large Texas’ population is, a policy that spurs FAFSA completion has the potential to have a significant impact and could potentially ripple into increasing postsecondary enrollment and attainment. It might be ambitious to hope that Texas reaps the same gains as Louisiana did from its mandatory FAFSA policy, but the Lone Star State certainly has room to grow by percentage of seniors completing.

Indiana and California are also considering mandatory FAFSA filing for seniors.

(Photo via Tony Webster, CC BY-SA 2.0 license)

July 18, 2019: This post has been updated to reflect that the FAFSA provision of HB 3 will go into effect for the 2021-22 school year.

How Schools Engage Students to Help Increase FAFSA Completion

Posted on April 24, 2019April 24, 2019 by Kelly Mae Ross

By ASA Research

Last year, the National College Access Network selected 25 U.S. cities to participate in the 2018-19 FAFSA Completion Challenge. Through this project, generously funded by The Kresge Foundation and Ascendium Education Group, NCAN challenges each of the grant recipient cities to increase their FAFSA completion rates by at least 5 percentage points for the graduating high school class of 2019. In an effort to address equity gaps, this challenge specifically focuses on cities with current FAFSA completion rates below the national average.

ASA Research, the 2018-19 FAFSA Completion Challenge project evaluator, is monitoring the 25 sites’ activities and results throughout the grant and highlighting strategies of interest.

Through focus groups and interviews, we have heard much interest and excitement around peer strategies, whereby students provide encouragement or assistance to help other students complete the FAFSA. In some cases, peers are competing within or between schools and are offered financial incentives or rewards.

This blog post profiles various peer strategies employed by sites to provide information about how to implement peer strategies locally.

The Power of Peers

Several grantee sites credit peers as having a positive influence on FAFSA completion rates. For example:

Michael Garcia, director of opportunity and achievement at Mesa Public Schools (the site lead for Mesa, AZ) shared that he believes this strategy has been effective because students appreciate hearing about the FAFSA from their peers, who can “communicate with them on the same level.” He believes Mesa’s peer coaches are not only motivated by monetary rewards but also by “doing good and providing an important service” to help members of the community access college.
Sarah Piwinski, director of data management and analysis, Tri-County Cradle to Career Collaborative, the Charleston, SC lead, shared that it is encouraging for students to hear from their peers who completed the FAFSA, some of whom already have financial aid offers – this demonstrates to students not only the process but also the results.

Some examples of peer engagement models follow.

Ambassadors

Recruiting student ambassadors to motivate other students to complete the FAFSA seems to be the most common peer model among grantee sites. Some examples include:

Fort Wayne: Counselors nominated five FAFSA ambassadors from each school. These students are typically seniors who are actively involved in student groups and hold leadership positions. Ambassadors motivate their peers to complete the FAFSA and are incentivized through both between and within-school competitions and rewards such as gift cards.
San Diego: Schools are working with their associated student boards to lead a completion competition between schools of the same size. Each of their 18 schools has five student ambassadors who talk to students at lunch and encourage them to complete the FAFSA.
Baltimore: Counselors selected one student in each school to serve as a FAFSA ambassador. These students make classroom presentations to help spread the word about FAFSA completion.

Paid Peer Coaches

Mesa has 24 peer coaches (four at each school) who receive a stipend and scholarship incentive for encouraging and helping peers to take specific steps to complete the FAFSA. Mesa modeled its strategy in part after Phoenix’s peer model. (Phoenix was a 2016-17 FAFSA Completion Challenge grantee.) Additional details follow:

Selection and training: Counseling teams identified students – typically, seniors planning to attend college who are “influencers” in their peer groups and/or strong communicators, savvy with social media and, preferably, multilingual. Nominees submitted brief YouTube video applications, and those selected attend events and monthly trainings throughout the year.
Role: Peer coaches help students create FSA IDs, but do not handle any financially sensitive information. In cases where a peer coach cannot answer a question or encounters a difficult situation, the student/family is referred to the site partners, including the local college access network.
Rewards: In addition to a stipend, the site awards $25 gift card incentives to peer coaches who reach specific milestones (see below):

Mesa’s 5 Milestones for Peer Coach Incentives

1. Make contact/collect data on whether students are going to college.
2. Help students prepare to complete college applications.
3. Get students an FSA ID, confirm that they or their parents created the ID. (This is the first payment milestone for which coaches are rewarded $25 for every 15 students. One student has already received $400 for this milestone.)
4. Confirm submission of FAFSA.
5. Confirm completion. (This is the second payment milestone.)

Success: Mesa’s peer coaches are excited to be involved and take the initiative to brainstorm creative strategies such as classroom presentations. One student convinced an entire social studies department to incorporate FAFSA presentations in their classes. Garcia reports that six or seven coaches are “extremely active,” and he has observed a correlation between their level of activity and school results.

Near-Peer Strategies

In addition to peer strategies, some sites are employing near-peers (college students), for example:

San Diego hired eight college students as paid interns who give presentations and assist students with FAFSA completion in English and social studies classes.
At West Valley City, the Utah College Advising Corps provides two part-time college student employees who offer assistance at large events and in small group settings. They are provided with in-depth training about the FAFSA, college access, and various resources.

Emerging Strategies

In addition to ambassador strategies listed above, Vancouver has had success with two student ambassadors in one school, and is currently considering incentives to draw more participation. Other sites’ peer strategies include in-class assistance in Charleston, student club competitions in Corpus Christi, a Street Team in Baltimore, and poster contests in Baltimore and West Valley City. Some of these strategies are still in development but offer innovative approaches that we will be following as we track sites’ results throughout the grant.

For more information about the 2018-19 FAFSA Completion Challenge, please contact melnicks@collegeaccess.org.

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

Posted on February 27, 2019February 27, 2019 by Kelly Mae Ross

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:

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.
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.
Our research team compares these two lists to determine which students haven’t completed or haven’t filed a FAFSA.
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.
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!

Tips for Engaging Parents in FAFSA Completion

Posted on January 23, 2019February 14, 2019 by Kelly Mae Ross

By Lindsay Broderick, NCAN Staff Writer

A common question in the college access field is how to effectively engage parents and family members. Many parents of students served by NCAN members do not have a postsecondary degree or credential and are therefore unfamiliar with the steps of the college and financial aid application processes.

NCAN hosted a webinar in which presenters Rene Diaz and Alma Vargas of GEAR UP Chicago highlighted experience-based tips and strategies on how best to involve parents in their children’s postsecondary pursuit, specifically in the FAFSA completion process. NCAN members can view the archived webinar recording.

The presenters began by discussing general parent outreach strategies that can be used during different stages of the college access process. Díaz said the key is to “be where parents are,” which can take a variety of forms.

Be present and visible at open houses, parent-teacher conferences, school day drop-off/pick-up, sporting events, and plays. Set up a table and put information about the college application process and FAFSA completion directly in parents’ hands.
Get to know school-based parent councils or committees. These parents are leaders in the school community, have relationships with other parents you are trying to reach, and can help disseminate your message and materials.
Work with community-based organizations. Families may already have a relationship with organizations such as places of worship, social service organizations, and public libraries. These organizations are often closer to the community and have deep cultural understanding and insight. Holding events at these locations may be less intimidating and more convenient.
Make phone calls. Diaz cautions against the use of robocalls. She favors personalized calls made by an actual person who can tailor a conversation with specific information.

The next segment of the webinar described ways college access practitioners can build relationships with families. The overarching theme of this segment was to be inviting, relatable, and friendly.

Smile, and appreciate parents. Thank them for taking the time to attend an event. Help parents who are nervous feel comfortable and welcomed.
Acknowledge parents’ expertise and experience. Although not all parents understand the college application and financial aid processes, they do have experiences and knowledge to share. Find a way to identify, recognize, and value their input.
Communicate constantly. Keep parents informed via text, emails, and/or phone calls, depending on the preferred method of communication. This shows parents they have support and will help them keep their child on track.
Understand your community. Translate printed information into the language(s) spoken by local parents. Schedule events during the evening and on the weekends. Provide transportation or vouchers. Offer child care and food.
Schedule one-on-one meetings. This allows parents to voice concerns and ask questions in a safe environment. Also schedule meetings where both the parent(s) and student will be present to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Maintain confidentiality. This will help engender trust and strengthen relationships.

The presenters also discussed the elements they include in every college access workshop they host for parents and families.

Fun. Start each event with icebreakers to create a friendly, welcoming, and open environment.
Participation. Create an environment where parents feel comfortable participating. Try breaking parents into smaller groups based on the profiles of their child – this will encourage conversation and allow the facilitator to target the presentation to the needs of the audience.
Clear takeaways. Strive to make sure that every parent takes away something of value.
Relationship building. If parents like you, then they’re more likely to come back!

During the last segment of the webinar, Diaz and Vargas spoke more specifically about engaging parents and families in financial aid and FAFSA completion activities. Here are 11 keys to cultivating parental involvement.

Build capacity. Make sure anyone who presents information on FAFSA completion has adequate training and is knowledgeable about the topic.
Start early. Begin holding financial aid events in middle school if possible. The sooner parents are introduced to the significance of financial aid to their child’s postsecondary success, the more they can learn.
Coordinate with school personnel. Make sure they understand the importance of FAFSA completion and support/echo these efforts.
Make the FAFSA completion campaign visible. This can be done through bulletin boards, college banners, etc.
Conduct information sessions first. Then move to events where you’re actually facilitating FAFSA completion.
Introduce financial aid terminology. This should include terms such as cost of attendance, scholarships, loans, work study, tuition and fees, etc.
Conduct multiple sessions. Host events at a variety of times so all parents are informed about what documents are needed to complete the FAFSA, have created an FSA ID, understand FAFSA eligibility, and are familiar with award letters.
Conduct one-on-one meetings. Once parents understand the financial aid process, schedule one-on-one meetings so they can ask questions confidentially, get assistance completing the FAFSA, and receive advice on reviewing and assessing financial aid award letters, and determining whether financial aid package is sufficient.
Use online tools. One example is the FAFSA4caster from FSA.
Address key topics. Make sure parents understand:
- A postsecondary education is a long-term investment with many positive impacts on the individual student, his/her family, and the community.
- How to prepare to financially support their student throughout his/her postsecondary career.
- The importance of completing the FAFSA and the relationship between FAFSA completion and postsecondary enrollment.
Have parents and students work together. This will help equip students to complete the FAFSA on their own during the following year(s).

Parents are an integral part of a child’s life, and having them on board and educated about the financial aid application processes will make it significantly easier. We encourage you to try some of these strategies to increase engagement with the parents in your community.