Clear Path Academic Solutions provides counseling and consulting services for students and schools.
-
For Students
Learn MoreOur team utilizes a personalized, holistic approach to facilitate fulfilling school-choice outcomes for families and their children.
-
For Schools
Learn MoreWe offer a variety of one-day, three-day and five-day workshops designed to assist K-12 schools with various administrative needs.
President & Founder, Chris Durst
President and Founder Chris Durst has 35 years of school experience including teaching, coaching, counseling and administrative school leadership. Over the course of his career, Chris has served as middle and high school history teacher and has performed a variety of administrative roles including:
Admissions Director, Director of Athletics, Director of College Counseling, Dean of Students, Assistant Principal, Middle and Upper School Principal
Most recently, Chris was the Head of School at the Altamont School in Birmingham, Alabama.
In athletics, Chris followed a collegiate baseball career at Ohio State University with successful tenures as Head HS Varsity baseball, Varsity basketball and state championship Varsity soccer coaches. He also served as a staff coach at Tophat Soccer Club in Atlanta from 1999-201 and was Director of the Holy Innocents’ Youth Basketball program from 2001-2017.
Chris’s wealth and breadth of experience coupled with the guidance of thousands of students to successful lives uniquely qualifies him to work with families to achieve student school/college/athletic placement goals and with schools to maximize effectiveness in educating young people.
Lighting The Pathway To Success
Are you interested in exploring academic and/or athletic counseling for your student?
Our Values
-
School-Choice Counseling
We believe that school choice for students is a multi-faceted, complicated, and intensely personal and family-driven process. Our work will always keep your family and student’s needs in the center of every conversation.
We believe in every child’s capacity for growth over time—academic, athletic, emotional and spiritual—and we will be relentless in supporting your dreams to see your child emerge as the person they were meant to become.
We believe that “school fit” is a reality-alignment exercise that marries your hopes and dreams for your child with the hard truths of school admission processes. At Clear Path, we will be fierce advocates for your child’s most appropriate school outcome.
We believe that “the more you give of yourself, the more you’ll love what is left.” Our holistic approach to school-choice counseling will help your child build a personal portfolio profile (PPP) that does more than look good on paper. Our counseling process will encourage your child to create impact in their community, and to use our process to begin building a fulfilling life.
We believe that while a well-rounded education is a foundation for success in college and beyond, we recognize that schools are looking for “pointy” applicants. What makes you special? What have you done that is unique, different, and raises the profile of our college/university? How have you led? How will your ‘pointiness’ help you make a difference in college? These are questions we’ll help you answer. -
Athletic Counseling
We believe that participation in athletic and artistic activities are essential building blocks for healthy living, and we will encourage and help develop your child’s talents in order to leverage those gifts in the school choice process.
We believe that competitive greatness is generative over a long period of time, and requires athletes/musicians/actors take risks in order to achieve sustained success. Athletes should try a sport that not their specialty, musicians should embrace different musical genres, actors should step out of their preferred performances—all of this creates a superior work ethic and humility. -
School-Improvement Consulting
We believe every school has a portrait of excellence. Too often school improvement discussions center on what children are not doing, or how curriculum is flawed or how parents are making a mess of things. At Clear Path we will help school leaders should the discussion by framing the picture in the community of what the school looks like when school is outstanding.
We believe that culture building in schools is the responsibility of every facet of school life. Too often departments—Athletics, Math, Theater, even entire divisions—are pulling at the fabric of mission-based schools because there’s a lack of cultural unity. At Clear Path, we will help you perform department inventories and improvement plans as well as create school-wide strategies to sustain a positive, student-centered culture at your school.
We believe in student growth over time, and every meeting and memo should focus on that end. Remember: the kids that are admitted with the best test scores leave with the best test scores.There is an unhealthy fascination with the SAT and ACT numbers. Sure, it’s nice when your school has a high SAT/ACT mean: it has become attractive to high achievers. However, great schools are gauged not only by the standardized test scores but how it supports and promotes measurable student growth over time in a variety of different ways—the arts, athletics, global appreciation and servant leadership are just a few of the ways that schools work to produce engaged and compassionate young people.
We believe in the power of team. One of our goals at Clear Path is to help administrative teams become cohesive, empathetic, strategy-driven groups that are seen as entities for inclusive, data-driven change.