Boosting student applications for financial aid focus of summit

Partners from the Providence Children and Youth Cabinet attended a daylong summit at the White House on Oct. 21 on how to surmount barriers for first-generation students seeking financial aid.
Partners from the Providence Children and Youth Cabinet attended a daylong summit at the White House on Oct. 21 on how to surmount barriers for first-generation students seeking financial aid.

PROVIDENCE – School district and community partners from the Providence Children and Youth Cabinet attended a daylong summit at the White House on Oct. 21 on how to surmount barriers for first-generation students seeking financial aid.
First Lady Michelle Obama invited the partners through her Reach Higher Initiative.
The White House delegation included Danielle Parrillo from the Providence public school district, Maria Carvalho from the College Crusade, Michael Joyce from Rhode Island’s division of Higher Education and Angela Romans.
Romans is the co-director of district and systems transformation at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and co-chairs the high school to college and career workgroup of the Providence Children and Youth Cabinet.
The youth cabinet is a coalition of approximately 70 organizations and 175 active individual members who use their resources to improve outcomes for Providence youth.
The Reach Higher Initiative is focused on partnerships between states, school districts and communities that improve college access for underserved students. The invitation came as a result of work that Providence has been doing to support these partnerships.
In 2014, the youth cabinet set a goal to increase completion rates for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid from 67 percent to 73 percent among graduating seniors by June 2015. A FAFSA completion challenge pitted Providence high schools against one another to see which high school could have the highest completion rate.
The citywide goal reached 74 percent, and Mount Pleasant High School achieved 83 percent completion.
If a high school senior completes the FAFSA, he or she is 50 percent times more likely to attend college, research shows. Filling out the form helps students get the money to pay for college, and empowers them to consider college a real possibility. Nationally, the Obama administration is working to make the FAFSA more accessible and easier to fill out.
To further this goal, the Obama administration has given states and school districts permission to share information with local nonprofits about which specific students need help completing the FAFSA.

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