Good morning, CharterFolk.
Today we are honored to share a Contributor Column from Dr. Aidé Acosta, the Chief College Officer at Noble Schools and Board Member at Latino Educators Advancing Leadership (LEAL).
We provide a bio for Aidé below.
Dr. Aidé Acosta leads Noble’s college access and success strategies as Chief College Officer, and overlooks the following programs: Summer of a Lifetime, College Counseling, Alumni Supports, Alumni Career Office, Pritzker Access Scholarship (PAS), and Noble Forward. Dr. Acosta has been at Noble since 2013 (Golder in SY14; UICCP in SY15): joined the Noble Support Team in 2015 as the DREAMer Supports Manager, and was Director of Alumni Supports from 2017-2019 before becoming Chief College Officer (COO). Prior to joining Noble, Dr. Acosta taught at Northwestern University (2013-2014); Indiana University (2011-2013); and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2010-2011). She was born in Mexico and grew up in Southern California, and is a first-generation college student who, in spite of dropping out of High School in 10th grade, has earned a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate. Dr. Acosta leverages her experience, empathy, and unwavering belief in our students’ ability, towards improving the educational outcomes for underserved students.
CharterFolk readers will remember that Aidé was among a group of board members from LEAL who co-authored a Contributor Column last year.
It’s great to have Aidé back. Let’s get straight to her new piece.
College and Choice-Filled Lives: Accelerating our Student’s Highest Aspirations
Last month, Noble Schools celebrated its 25th year of service in Chicago. Our kick-off message was clear as we welcomed 1,600 staff to serve over 11,000 students across every Chicago zip code: we continue to be committed to College, Choice-filled lives, and Chicago. This was true in 1999 when two school teachers executed their vision for the most marginal Chicago students to achieve educational excellence: what would it look like when graduates apply their degrees in transforming the city? Noble prepares Black and Brown children for college success and choice-filled lives. And we have the results to prove it. In 25 years, we have graduated over 28,000 alumni from our 17 high schools.
- Nearly 5,000 of them have earned their bachelor’s degrees. We have thousands more alumni actively pursuing their college degrees.
- Our students graduate from college at a rate three times the national average for Americans from the lowest income quartile (see graph below).
- Not only do Noble students attend college at rates matching Chicago selective enrollment schools, but we also counsel them to colleges with higher graduation rates, that are affordable and the right fit for each student.
- In just the last five years alone, our students have earned over $2.6 billion (with a “B”!) in scholarships.
At Noble, college is central to our mission and vision because of the lasting impact a college degree has on the lives of our alumni, their communities, the City of Chicago, and our nation. Our impact in Chicago is about positive multigenerational change.
Who earns degrees is intimately connected to socioeconomic status. In fact, it impacts every milestone in the educational pipeline. While the top income quartile in this country earns degrees at a rate of about 60%, the lowest income quartile in the U.S. earns bachelor’s degrees at a rate of 13%. Source: Indicators of Higher Education Equity in the United States Pell Institute and University of Pennsylvania
At Noble, college is our intervention to systemic inequity. This is more than just landing a better job; it is about the wider impact of thousands of our alumni becoming college degree holders.
Noble’s College Vision as our Theory of Change
Our collective work is meant to end the cycle of systemic racism within educational spaces and equip our students and alumni with the tools to dismantle injustices. A college degree is a pathway to enter systems of power to enact positive, multigenerational change for our students and families. In entering these spaces, our students and alumni can create racial and economic realities that dismantle the status quo and activate a more robust democracy for the communities we serve. Our students and families come to us with high aspirations, and our responsibility is to operationalize those aspirations into strong college options that ultimately lead to sustainable and fulfilling careers.
In recent decades, charters like Noble have been deeply rooted in college preparatory education as an equalizer for social mobility. Most recently, and heightened during the pandemic, the pendulum has swung the opposite way, with shifting mindsets about the value of a college degree erupting nationwide. Recently, there has been a lot of chatter about college not being necessary for success, from NPR coverage (see August 29, 2024) to former President Barack Obama stating in his DNC speech, “We need to put a college degree within reach of more Americans. But college shouldn’t be the only ticket to the middle class.” His assertion is about access, but today’s mindsets about college are hyper-focused on the latter part. His experience clearly illustrates educational access’s power to lead and create change. This statement (and a similar mindset) misses an interrogation on how we can drive justice and equity in this nation and interrogate who will be the next leaders (e.g., teachers, CEOs, politicians, the president).
While there are other pathways to find success, albeit limited ones, the recent anti-college narrative also dangerously revives gendered and racialized tropes about Black and Brown bodies continuing to provide the labor in this country that maintains our capitalistic needs: an economically advantaged (primarily white) group at the expense of a disadvantaged (mostly Black and Brown) group. The anti-college discourse is not new and took a stronghold in the conservative right in 2014, directly intended to keep students of color out of college. Grounded in problematic beliefs like “we need more welders and fewer philosophers,” today, progressive leaders and educators (all with college degrees) also argue against the value of a college degree. As charters, we can be guardians of educational excellence and equitable educational access that can lead to choice-filled lives. We can walk alongside our students to envision a world for themselves that does not yet exist.
During the School Year 2020-2021 at Noble, we inspected our vision and mission and asked, “Should we remain college prep?” Our parents told us loudly that they chose Noble because of their children’s college prospects. Similarly, 75% of our students indicated they aspired to attend college. Thus, our commitment and approaches match those aspirations. We have refined Noble’s College Vision to strive for social mobility and to disrupt inequities. College remains the most predictable pathway for Black and Brown children, and the outcomes of Noble alumni who have completed Bachelor’s degrees reinforce our vision. While we have evolved in our collective thinking and practice, there is one thing that remains constant: Noble is committed to equipping our students to complete college successfully. Not college for all, but college readiness for every student who can have choices after Noble.
Last fall, Paul Tough addressed the shifts in the discourse on the value of college. Grounded in data, Tough analyzes the financial gain for college degree holders. Particularly relevant to our work and how we operationalize our students’ aspirations is the wage discrepancy between degree holders and non-degree holders AND the accumulation of wealth. While there is a wage gap (what he calls the “college wage premium”), as we know, bachelor’s degree holders generally earn more money in wages. However, recent studies also show a decrease in wealth accumulation (the “college wealth premium”) due to a combination of the rising cost of colleges, rising debt, and the rise in the cost of living overall.
The rise in student debt has been the anchor of the skepticism of the value of a college degree, with a turn to alternative pathways as the solution and, in particular, the turn to the value of trades. We must ask ourselves, is there a real growth in trade-based careers that are appealing now? For example, the median salary for a plumber is $60,000; however, the Bureau Of Labor Statistics predicts that fewer than 10,000 new plumbing jobs will be created by 2031, Tough argues. The growing sectors are home health aids, food service, restaurant cooks, warehouse workers, and service jobs with a median income of $31,000. Similarly, Georgetown University released a report on The Future of Good Jobs asserting that a bachelor’s degree is the primary pathway to good jobs in the future despite a continued skepticism about the value of a college degree.
We hold our college vision, Noble’s Theory of Change, at the center of our work because we know that while the discourse on college continues to change, college access is the most predictable pathway to enact positive multigenerational change for our graduates. Our work is not just about social mobility, but the transformative power that Noble graduates hold as college degree holders.
Paul Tough argues that for less affluent communities, and especially for the Black and Brown communities that we serve, the new economics of higher education make going to college a risky bet. Our College Counseling Framework serves as an intervention to tilt the odds in our students’ favor and turn a risky bet into a reliable bet. Without counseling, of course, college can be a risky bet because students from low-income backgrounds undermatch or make poor choices based on incomplete information. Our collective work provides the specific intervention, allowing our students to parse through the hundreds of risky bets to find the ones that are more affordable and more likely to yield a degree in the end and a strong first job.
Education is the bedrock of social mobility for our families, and college access is the most predictable pathway for Black and Brown youth to be in positions for social mobility and drive societal change. As Noble heads into a 25th year, we remain grounded in our commitment and promise to Chicago families in operationalizing and accelerating their highest aspirations. Collectively, as charters, we can change this nation’s education landscape. We can not be distracted from our purpose. Our students and families depend on us. The stakes are high, and the country is waiting for our brilliant graduates to lead it.