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2011 National Survey of School Counselors Strategies

With a focused mission, accountability for results, and a clear contribution to school improvement efforts, counselors can become strong student advocates. To accelerate this progress, we must focus on change at the local, state and national levels.

Align the mission of counselors with the needs of students

Given America’s high school and college completion crises and accompanying labor market skills gap, counselors should be leaders focused on keeping students on track to graduate high school, ready for college and career. The mission of counselors should be tightly tied to this goal and roles designed to meet it.

Focus counselor’s work on activities that accelerate student success

Administrators, and other supervisors, should focus the work of counselors on activities that support and improve student outcomes, redeploying less expensive, and less highly skilled employees to perform administrative tasks.

Target professional development dollars

The No Child Left Behind Act provides districts with the flexibility and resources to apply professional development and other funds as states and districts see fit. Our survey shows that counselors are eager to receive professional development, and that these training sessions should be targeted at critical levers like college and career readiness, financial aid, and the use of technology to promote these goals.

Schools should pilot test measures of accountability

With the importance of accountability and the support among counselors for measures of effectiveness that relate to their mission and their unique role in boosting student success, districts and schools should accelerate the testing of such performance-based measures and report the results. Counselors should be given incentives to focus on and achieve success on accountability measures.

Coordinate initiatives with community-based organizations

Counselors report tremendous workloads. There are, however, resources to support their efforts. Nonprofit and community-based college access programs are tremendous assets to students, families and schools, but are often staffed with volunteers or professionals who are not as well trained as counselors. Counselors should utilize these services to lessen their individual workloads and also, when appropriate, be considered the point person in schools for coordinating these initiatives.

Align counselor education and training requirements with the needs on the ground

Counselors indicate that their preservice training, while somewhat satisfactory, does not adequately prepare them for the realities they are facing in schools. Course requirements should be updated to reflect this reality, including mandatory course work on advising for college readiness, access and affordability.

Redefine certification requirements to advance college and career readiness from a systems perspective

Counselors are caught between crosscurrents asking them to play very different roles, thus limiting their effectiveness. Counselors report a preference for work in which one-on-one counseling is part — but not all — of their role.

Enact and enforce caseload requirements

As of 2009, only five states met the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommended ratio of 250 students per counselor (Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Vermont and Wyoming). States that do not have caseload maximums should create them, and all states should enforce manageable student-to-counselor - ratios. These efforts could align with reforms that break up large schools into smaller, more personal learning environments.

Enlist counselors’ expertise in the Grad Nation campaign

Counselors have been largely left out of the education reform agenda — until now. As one example, counselors will now be enrolled as key members of the Civic Marshall Plan to Build a Grad Nation, contributing their expertise to help America achieve a national graduation rate of 90 percent by 2020 and the highest college attainment rates in the world.

Create and implement accountability measures

Until counselors are accountable for success in our schools, they will not be viewed as critical leaders in the system. We need to continue testing measures of accountability for counselors from the ground up to see what the emerging consensus will produce in terms of effectiveness, how progress will be measured, and how counselors will be held to the standards that are created.

Continue strategic philanthropic investments in the counseling profession

Some national foundations have prioritized counselors as a strategic investment. Other local and national foundations should follow their lead.

Align federal legislation, especially ESEA, with high-impact counseling initiatives

We expect that a focal point of the upcoming Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Reauthorization will be to ensure that students are college and career ready. This should include a focus on how counselors can be better leveraged to promote college readiness and academic achievement for the lowest-performing students and reduce the structural barriers to quality college guidance.

Expand research initiatives focused on the efficacy of the counseling profession

The body of information on school counseling consistently shows a field that struggles with role definition and measuring efficacy and is inconsistently integrated into or absent from the larger education reform agenda. Research is particularly limited in the areas of technology, accountability, and the role of counselors in closing the achievement gap and as leaders in the education system.