Earlier this month at the 2026 Heartland Summit, the Arkansas Department of Education and Heartland Forward announced a goal to expand a college and career advising program into 100 schools across the state. Angie Cooper is the president of Heartland Forward. She says that the national nonprofit rootEd Alliance started as a way to support rural high school students, first in Missouri.
Cooper: Their founder is from a small town in Missouri, and it has the kind of vision and lens in the states in which they work now. And we’re so honored to be a partner at Heartland Forward with rootEd Alliance. But the program essentially puts advisors in rural high schools to work alongside high school counselors to help rural high school students determine what their pathway is post-high school. And I am telling you, it is a game changer.
rootEd Alliance has developed a proven model that works there in close to 170 schools in Missouri. They’re in multiple states. And again, we’re just so proud of Heartland Forward as we focus to accelerate economic growth in the middle of the country, to bring this program with the goal to expand in Arkansas going forward.
Moore: So what does that look like for Heartland Forward? Are you essentially providing some underwriting funding to make sure that they can do the work they need to do here in Arkansas?
Cooper: Yeah. So at Heartland Forward, really our sweet spot is public-private partnerships. We wake up every single day thinking about how we can be a resource for states and communities. So we’re in Arkansas with rootEd. We are in the third year of our pilot. The pilot was started, again, public-private partnership opportunity. So the Arkansas Department of Education has provided funding to support the program along with private dollars. And so with the growth and goal to expand to 100 schools in Arkansas over the next three years, we will use that same model of public-private dollars.
So we can’t thank Gov. Sanders and Secretary Oliva, who leads the Department of Education in Arkansas, for their leadership and support, but also the support of the school districts, the superintendents, the principals to really bring this program to life. But most importantly, again, it’s a proven model. These students are getting the resources they need to have a successful path post-high school.
Moore: When you say resources, I’m curious what that looks like. I’m someone who, I’ll speak a little selfishly here. I grew up in a very rural part of the country. I grew up in rural southeastern Illinois, went to a school that probably could have benefited and perhaps is benefiting from these services now, but there wasn’t a lot of foresight as to what I could do after high school. What are some of the conversations that are happening with students to say, “Hey, did you know you could be a public radio journalist?” Because nobody told me in my high school that was an option.
Cooper: Yeah, no, you’re exactly right. And I was the same way when I was growing up. But where the advisor’s role is so important is they start meeting one-on-one with students to talk about sort of where your interests, what would you like to do? Where do you think that there’s some gaps or barriers or where you need support? And then through those conversations, they really start to build on, OK, you want to be a nurse, you maybe want to be an electrician. You want to be a lawyer, you want to be a doctor, you want to learn about additional training and opportunities because maybe you’re not quite ready to go to a four-year university or you want to go into the military. So those conversations start one-on-one with our advisors and the students.
And then where the magic really happens is we connect and show them, we’re going to take you to the hospital to show you what it looks like to be a nurse. We had a fantastic demo day this year in Arkansas where companies came in and showed and let the students learn firsthand what it was like to be a welder and electrician, a plumber, to manage HVAC units and beyond. And so it’s really that hands-on experience for a student to see.
But it’s the relationship then with the employers in these communities. Because we want to give students the opportunity, they can go and do anything and be successful. But many of them want to stay in their hometown. So we’re sharing with them and connecting with employers, here’s what the jobs that are available today and in the future. And so it’s been really fun and such a pleasure to work with the students. And at the end of the school year, they have a signing day. They get to announce to the school, to their parents, to their friends, what they decided, what their pathway will be.
Moore: What I hear there, and I think is really critical, is you’re providing resources not just for the experience, whether that’s through an educational or an apprenticeship opportunity, but also the connection to say, once you have this experience, once you have this knowledge, how do you actually make use of it in a way that can help support you and your future family?
Cooper: That’s right. And what’s really fun about it is it’s different now from when I was in school to even figure out sort of, OK, what do I need financially for additional training and education? It’s very complicated. So we have helped students complete their FAFSA opportunities, and we helped over 71% of students complete this during rootEd, which is a number that it was at 54% before rootEd advisors were in helping students.
But what’s great about that is we host town halls and conversations, and the students come with their parents. And they’re also bringing their brothers and sisters and cousins that maybe aren’t in high school yet, but they’re learning at the early age. So they can kind of understand the process of what that looks like.
We also are so encouraged by, again, not everyone might be ready to go to a four-year university or need all of those details. But we really want these students to know what opportunities are available and to get them on a sustainable path. And so we have seen on average rootEd students that have worked with an advisor, the students that didn’t go to a four-year university right away, they were able to increase their wages right out of high school by on average close to $10,000. That is meaningful. And we weren’t seeing that from students before. So it’s about the career opportunities and the pathways that we’re trying to expose them to.
Moore: One other thing that you mentioned was the idea that people want to go back to the communities where they grew up. This idea of brain drain is certainly something we hear a lot about, is people leave their small communities, go to a college, or they go to a university, or they just never return home. And all of this institutional knowledge and this growth in a community is just evaporated. And these sorts of opportunities, it sounds like, gives a community a way to value and support people who can add benefit to the community again once they become a grown adult and can benefit the community in that way.
Cooper: Yeah. I mean, the biggest unlock is that connection between connecting public education to the workforce. So the workforce knows what kind of talent is coming out of these schools, in these communities, in the regions, in the state of Arkansas. And you’re right, the headlines, national headlines might drive that people are leaving their communities. But most students that we have worked with have said that they’re planning to build their careers in the state of Arkansas. Actually, 88% of Arkansas students plan to stay in the state after graduation. That is amazing. We have great opportunities here.
So it’s tying education to the workforce, but also the partnership at the state level is so important because we know that at the state level, we know we need more nurses, we need more professionals focused on improving maternal health. We know we need more teachers. And so we’re really aligning it with the goals and resources that the state are providing from an economic development standpoint, because that’s what it should be all about.
One last thing I’ll say, which I think is also very unique and why we’re so proud to work with rootEd Alliance and the model, our advisors, they’re not licensed professionals. The licensed professional with a high school counselor is so important, and they work very closely with the counselors. But these rootEd advisors, some of them are former educators, some of them are former economic development directors. Some of them worked for the chambers and some of them owned businesses. But they are from the community and they care about the community.
And I think that’s also what’s really important because we’re talking to students about the workforce, but it’s also a civic engagement opportunity for these kids to really see what’s available to them so they can stay where they’re from.
Moore: Looking to grow to 100 schools, is that going to be dispersed equally across the state? Are there certain areas where you see this being more beneficial or more of a concentrated area?
Cooper: Yeah, we’re still working out those details, and we’re so excited with the partnership with Alliance and the state to get to the goal to 100 schools over three years. We’re going to work in smaller communities. We know that’s where the model is. And we’re just going to go talk to superintendents and principals and see where are there gaps and can rootEd fill the gaps so our students succeed in the future.
Angie Cooper is the president of Heartland Forward. We spoke over Zoom last week.
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