This Woman Goes Door to Door to Steer Students to College

Sonya Pritchett arrived in this city brimming with confidence and optimism.

Every morning, she would lace up her tennis shoes and walk the eight blocks of the Hope VI public-housing development, knocking on the doors of semi-detached brick homes with tidy, compact front yards.

It was 2017 and she was starting a new job in a federally funded experiment that would bring college counseling to some of the people least likely to enroll: low-income black students. She would take them on college tours, prepare them for standardized tests, help them hone their personal statements, and steer them to scholarships. Most importantly, she would help them fill out federal student-aid forms.

Pritchett figured she understood the parents and guardians in Hope VI. Her grandmother had lived in the projects 10 minutes away in Mobile, and Pritchett had grown up poor herself. College had been a long shot. Now, she was close to finishing a doctoral program.

She told the residents her story. Even though many earned less than the federal poverty level, she assured them, their kids could go to college. “I kept saying, ‘I am you. If I got out, you can get out too,’” she remembers.

That’s not what many of the parents wanted to hear. They resented the implication that they were stuck and accused Pritchett of looking down her nose.

“They said, ‘How dare you come in here telling my kids there is a better way?’”

Others wanted their children to stay home and care for younger siblings or work to help pay the bills. Even parents who wished their kids could go to college were deeply skeptical that it could happen.

Pritchett realized her job was going to be a lot harder than she’d expected.

Prichard, Ala., was established in 1925, and rose to prominence in the late 1950s, when Mobile shipbuilding companies built homes for their workers there. By 1960, it was the state’s largest suburb, with a population of 47,000.

But Prichard, which finally desegregated around that time, has been losing residents ever since, first to white flight, and then to brain drain, as young, educated black people sought jobs elsewhere. From 1999 to 2006, the city was in bankruptcy, and in 2009, it became the first city in the country to default on its pension payments to retirees. Today, it’s down to 21,000 residents, nearly 90 percent of whom are black.

The well-kept, single-story homes of the housing project where Pritchett works today belie the fact that Prichard remains a deeply distressed city, with violent-crime rates well above state and national averages. Statistically speaking, students in Hope VI are among the least likely to enroll in and graduate from college. All come from families who earn $48,500 or less for a family of four; many are being raised by a single mother or grandparent.

The project Pritchett was hired for, Project SOAR (it stands for Students + Opportunities + Achievements = Results), is part of a multifaceted, nationwide effort to raise college-going rates among low-income students and students of color. It’s an effort that involves not only providing information, but also raising expectations. While racial and income gaps in college attendance have narrowed in recent years, black and Hispanic students still trail their white peers. And students from families in the highest-income quartile are five times more likely to graduate with a bachelor’s degree by age 24 than students in the lowest-income quartile.

Project SOAR, a pilot that provided $2.5 million over two years to housing authorities in Chicago, Seattle, Phoenix, and six other cities, was not the federal government’s first attempt to improve college-going rates among students living in public housing. A few years ago, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development tried sending targeted messages to students, reminding them to apply to college and fill out the Free Application for Federal Financial Aid, or Fafsa — a practice known as “nudging.”

But students who received the messages were no more likely to apply for aid than those who didn’t. Officials decided to try something more hands-on.

“We realized we needed to have boots on the ground,” says Calvin Johnson, deputy assistant secretary for HUD’s office of research, evaluation, and monitoring.

For Pritchett, a typical day might include tracking down students she hasn’t seen in a while, meeting with high-school counselors to plan Fafsa workshops, and prodding seniors to fill out applications for colleges and scholarships.

Helping families navigate the intrusive, and often intimidating, Fafsa, is essential. “That’s the key barrier” to college attendance for low-income students, says Maria-Lana Queen, the program manager for SOAR.

Fafsa completion rates have risen in recent years, thanks to efforts to build awareness and streamline the form. (In 2017-18, Louisiana was the first state to require students to complete the form in order to graduate from high school; at the end of that year the state announcedit had a 76.5-percent Fafsa completion rate.) But rates remain loweramong students in high-poverty school districts than wealthier ones, and among individuals who live in public housing. Barely a quarter of public-housing residents between the ages of 17 and 20 applied for aid in 2016, according to HUD.

Families fail to apply for many reasons. Sometimes they think they don’t qualify for aid. They may find the process too complicated or be reluctant to take on debt. The biggest factor in Prichard’s Hope VI development, however, seems to be fear.

Parents were not eager to hand over their Social Security numbers and tax returns, Pritchett quickly discovered. Some worried they’d be kicked out of their home if local housing officials learned their income had increased; others mistrusted the federal government, generally.

But she needed them to let down their guard.

Growing up in rural Alabama, the daughter of a cafeteria worker and a welder, “we didn’t talk about life after high school,” says Pritchett, now 49. “All I knew was I wanted to be more than what I was.”

A high-school track star, she was heavily scouted by colleges. But she couldn’t score above a 13 on the ACT, so she wound up at Barton County Community College, in Kansas, the recipient of a student-athlete scholarship. She went on to earn a bachelor’s from the University of Toledo, and a master’s from the University of Phoenix.

After working as a teacher in China and a college adviser and adjunct professor in Florida, she believes God has returned her to Alabama to share her knowledge with families who want to improve their lives.

Her doctoral studies may help: Her degree, from Capella University, will be in the advanced study of human behavior, with an emphasis on psychology and counseling.

The first few months in Prichard, though, were tough. Residents were wary of the over-educated outsider who talked “proper” and dressed fancy.

“I didn’t sound like them, I didn’t dress like them, and I had way too much education,” says Pritchett, who on this day wears a pale pink dress suit and black espadrilles, and has her nails painted a sparkly gold.

At a certain point, Pritchett realized that sharing her own success story was not going to get her very far. To win parents over, she’d have to “stop applying me and start looking at them.” She’d have to understand what motivated them and what closed them down. Slowly, she began to make progress.

In some cases, that meant reassuring residents discussing the Fafsa with her that she wouldn’t report their income change to the property manager. In others, it meant showing them how the long-term financial benefits of a college degree would more than make up for the short-term loss of a babysitter or second income.

In still others, it meant finding a parent’s enthusiasms and connecting over those.

Lee Woods, a mother of two girls, loves to braid hair. So in 2018 when Woods hesitated to let her daughters walk to Pritchett’s office after school, fearing for their safety, Pritchett asked her to braid her hair. Eventually, Pritchett gained Woods’s trust.

“I’m very guarded when it comes to my girls, but after a while, I got comfortable,” says Woods in an interview in her home.

Still, she wasn’t taking any chances. Whenever her daughters walked to Pritchett’s office, she’d call to confirm that they’d arrived.

“People like myself, sometimes we feel like nobody cares, but she does,” says Woods. Both her daughters are currently in college.

Today, two years after Pritchett started, some of the residents still will ignore her, pretending not to be home when she stops by, and some will greet her with suspicion. But, increasingly, they’ll welcome her with warmth — and an update on how their child is doing in school.

“You have to do the groundwork,” Pritchett says. “You can’t sit in your office and expect them to come to you.”

That means not only visiting homes but also hanging out where students do, at the Hope VI project’s recreation center. So Pritchett’s office is there, and not in the administrative building down the road.

When students come to the center to play basketball or lift weights after school, Pritchett will ask them how it’s going in school and hand out treats for good grades.

She also meets with students and guardians there, as she did on a recent fall Tuesday, when twin sisters Charli and Alex Duncan, with their mother, Nikki, visited for a check-in.

The twins brought “homework” assigned by Pritchett — an essay on bullying that they might use for college and scholarship applications — and they spent the first few minutes discussing their work with Pritchett. Charli’s piece was more opinion than personal essay, and Pritchett urged her to mine more of her own experience for the second draft.

“What’s missing is how does bullying affect you,” she told her, gently. “Remember, you can tweak your essay to whatever topic you’re writing about.”

Then, Pritchett got tough. “How many schools have you applied to?” she asked the girls, who are seniors. “How many scholarships?”

“I’m assembling materials,” said Charli.

“It’s hard,” protested Alex.

“How many?” she demanded.

“Zero,” the girls mumbled in unison.

“This is the time to get business-like!” she said. “If you don’t become your No. 1 advocate, what am I doing here?”

She asked the girls where they wanted to apply.

“South,” said Charli, meaning the University of South Alabama, in nearby Mobile. “Everything else is too expensive.”

“But you haven’t even applied for money!” said Pritchett. “I need you all to get hungry, because no one has money for college.”

Pritchett also meets students during free “advisory” periods in local high schools and speaks at college fairs and Fafsa-completion nights, where she urges them to install the Fafsa app on their phones and apply for aid early.

But getting students to even show up for the events can be a challenge. At a Fafsa-completion night at Mattie T. Blount High School in late September, only a dozen students turned out.

So there in the basketball court strung with championship banners, Pritchett pivoted. While students trickled in, she worked the half-dozen booths set up by local colleges, asking the recruiters to come speak to her students about applying for admission and aid.

Most of the admissions reps were from state institutions, but one was from a pricey Catholic college, and Pritchett pressed her about need-based aid for her students. When the recruiter mentioned Pell Grants, she cut her off.

“That’s a given,” she said. “But is there additional aid?”

The recruiter told her the school offers merit scholarships of up to nearly $30,000.

“But what’s the overall cost?” Pritchett asked.

Over $50,000, the recruiter said.

“So it still doesn’t cover the cost,” Pritchett said.

The exchange was Southern polite, but Pritchett’s message was clear: if you want our kids to come, you’re going to have to do more.

The next morning, Pritchett visited Blount’s crosstown rival, C.F. Vigor, walking past a sign outside that read “Making Each Moment Count.”

She’d hoped to chat with the principal about residents she was working with, but he was busy with a phone call. Waiting in the administrative office, she asked the receptionist about a student she hadn’t seen in a while — was he showing up for school? — and scanned the list of students registered for the next college fair to see which of hers had signed up. When a boy came in late and reeking of pot, she followed him outside the office so he wouldn’t feel publicly shamed and confronted him.

The boy wasn’t on her caseload, but Pritchett, who believes in divine intervention, never misses an opportunity to talk a kid straight. “God moves me” to act, she explains.

When a mother from the projects came in to sign her daughter out, Pritchett approached her to introduce herself and ask how the girl was doing.

“What she been up to?” the mom asked, wearily.

“Nothing,” Pritchett replied. “I just want to help her with her education.”

The principal never emerged from his office — he had been dealing with an emergency, it turned out.

But Pritchett had still made each moment count. She had to. The funding for her job was about to run out.

A thousand miles away, in Washington, D.C., HUD researchers are crunching the data to see if the 4,600 15- to 20-year-olds who participated in SOAR over the past two years were more likely to apply for and receive federal aid than students who did not. Officially, the experiment ended on September 30, and the results will determine whether the agency revives and expands it.

Most programs, including Prichard’s, have cobbled together the money to continue their work for a few months. Pritchett’s boss has applied for another grant from HUD but won’t hear until February if they got it. If they don’t, the two years she has spent building trust could be wiped away.

HUD’s Calvin Johnson, who visited several of the programs during the pilot, says he’s seen strong anecdotal evidence that the program works. Still, he says, “we do need to wait for the quantitative data” before requesting additional funds for the program.

“We need to have a story to tell,” he says.

Pritchett has many. She keeps a 200-page spreadsheet detailing the hundreds of times she’s met with students and parents. More than half the seniors Pritchett has worked with so far have gone on to college.

Not every student Pritchett has worked with is a success story. One boy is in juvenile detention because he brought a knife to school; another is serving time for armed robbery. Four of the twelve that left for college last year have already come home. “That’s part of the reality,” Pritchett says.

But most of the students who dropped out are attending local colleges now, and Pritchett is proud of helping them get back on track.

“We don’t give up on students,” she says.