History

Kacy Edwards and Julie Scott educated and nurtured students who, many times, had financially unstable lives. They watched promising students leave school with dreams that never came to fruition. For some, money was the issue, and for others it was just lack of information about available opportunities.

Although they were paid to teach, they very often found themselves in the position of "college coach." They began, not only talking to the kids on a daily basis about the importance of furthering their education, but also spending their lunches and off hours downloading applications to colleges, searching for scholarship opportunities and even helping the kids fill out their ACT packets. Something as small as not having the money to pay an application fee kept kids from applying to a school or registering for the ACT. They offered to pay college application fees for the students and even let the students give them the cash and helped them register online for the ACT using their personal credit cards or writing the checks for them, since many of their parents didn't have credit cards or checking accounts. Ultimately, they found that many of these kids just needed someone to hold their hand and help them through the process. They saw that given the opportunity, these kids could make informed decisions about their future and change their destiny.

Kacy and Julie created and incorporated Career Compass of LA and were officially recognized by the IRS as a 501 (c) (3) educational public charity on March 17, 2006. They finished the 2005-06 school year and resigned as teachers from the school system, making it their mission to help the students of Louisiana on a larger scale in the 2006-07 school year.

The overall college-going rate for public high school graduates in Louisiana for the Fall 2008 semester was 46%.

Currently only about 13% of Louisiana high school students obtain post-secondary degrees within six years of graduation.

98% of the students Career Compass worked with last year either applied to and/or were accepted to a post-secondary school