Counseling And College Counseling In America's High Schools

Counseling and College
Counseling In America’s High
Schools
Patricia M. McDonough
Professor
Department of Education
University of California, Los Angeles
(310) 206-2120
mcdonough@gseis.ucla.edu

State of K-12 Education
• Conditions across K-12 schools are vastly
unequal, especially vis a vis a challenging
curriculum and effective teachers
• The general public has become inured to
reports of gross disparities and inadequate
conditions.
• Most parents are concerned about their
child’s school experience not schools in
general.

Disparities Across Schools
• The gap in K-12 academic preparation and
college participation rates between White
students and African-American and Latino high
school graduates has widened.
• Underrepresented minorities and low-SES
students make their college access
preparations constrained by a lack of college
knowledge and a dearth of trained
professionals to advise them.

Defacto Segregation
• K-12 schools are highly segregated and
need significant transformation.
• Black and Latino students are
concentrated in schools with high dropout
rates and these schools lack any
significant college preparation capacity

Closed gates to equality and
opportunity
• Across urban America, low-income children,
and children of color are being denied
essential opportunities to learn in schools
that shock the conscience because they
deprive students of fundamental learning
essentials: books, qualified teachers, and
safe places to learn.
• Disparities in academic achievement
progressively worsen as students advance
from elementary to secondary schools.

Research on Teachers
• Are influenced by their beliefs about students’ race,
ethnicity, and SES, teachers make assessments of
students’ ability and motivation to learn. These
assessment affect;
• their expectations of their students,
• how they interact with and support students,
• whether and how many opportunities they provide to students
to learn and excel,
• the advice they give students, and
• their interactions with students’ families.
• Improving teacher effectiveness and offering a more
rigorous curriculum helps college access goal as well as

Quality of Teacher Preparation-
>Effectiveness
• Teachers in schools serving low-SES and
students of color are less effective because they:
• Lack content knowledge for their areas of teaching;
• Have less experience;
• Teach on emergency credentials;
• Score lower on standardized tests, teacher licensing
tests, assessment of basic skills, and college
admissions tests; and
• Attended non-competitive undergraduate institutions
at much higher rates that teachers at higher-SES
schools

Key Determinants to
College Attendance
• Having college plans by the 7th grade
• Attending a college-focused middle and high school
• Having families who expect you -- and can help you
plan -- to go to college.
• Having competent advisors

ON
COLLEGE ACCESS
GAP
• Lower financial barriers to college affordability
• Ensure better academic preparation for college
• Encourage counselors to advise students for
college and focus schools on their college
preparatory mission
• Increase the quality and quantity of college
entrance and financial aid information
• Engage families as college preparation partners
• Create more equitable admissions policies

College Affordability
• Low-income students and their parents will
prepare for college if it seems affordable--if
prices are low and aid is available.
• Research tells us that if advisors are
knowledgeable about college affordability it can
make a difference in college preparation and
enrollment.
• However, school counselors are unavailable
and are not trained in financial aid & college
costs.

Student Achievement
• Academic achievement is most important
predictor of whether and where students attend
college.
• No better predictor of college enrollment (and
completion) than the rigor of high school
courses, specifically advanced mathematics.
• Holding achievement constant, students from
the lowest SES groups are less likely to apply to
or attend college than are the highest SES
students, while students of color and poor
students are less likely to start or finish college.

Counselors, advising & schools’
college preparatory missions
• Counselors impact students' aspirations, plans,
enrollments, and financial aid knowledge
• Counselors assist parents in fostering and supporting
students’ college aspirations.
• Counselors focus their school on its college mission.
• Improving counseling would have a significant impact
on college access for low-income, rural, and urban
students as well as students of color

college entrance and financial aid
information
• One task of college preparation is adequate information,
received early enough to complete the necessary
prerequisites for college.
• Low-SES students and students of color are the least
likely to receive this information, particularly by eighth
grade, which is necessary for them to enroll in college
preparatory high school classes
• A second task is clear, accessible information about
affordability, received repeatedly, with increasing
complexity, throughout the middle and high school years,
by both students and their families.
• Yet, only 18% of all high school students and 30% of
parents had information on college costs

families as college
preparation partners
• Family encouragement stimulates students forming college
plans by 8th grade in time to take a college preparatory high
school curriculum.
• Family support and early educational plans predict students
1) developing and maintaining college aspirations, 2)
sustaining motivation and academic achievements, and 3)
actual college enrollment.
• Consistent communication among students, parents, and
school personnel predicts increased enrollment in college.
• The major need of parents is to have an accurate
understanding of college costs and the financial aid system

Primary Counseling Tasks
• Scheduling
• Testing
• Discipline
• Dropout Prevention
• Suicide Prevention
• Drug Abuse Prevention
• Pregnancy Prevention
• Crisis Counseling
• Personal Counseling
• Yard Duty
Then, maybe if there is time, college counseling!

Counseling Job
Descriptions
Occupational Outlook
Handbook
Advise students regarding:
• college majors,
• admission requirements,
• entrance exams,
• financial aid,
• trade or technical schools,
and
• apprenticeship programs
Counseling Textbooks
• coordination of
administrative tasks
(scheduling, etc.),
• counseling across
academic, career and
personal domains, and
• consultation with all
school personnel on
guidance tasks

NCES Guidance Program
Goals
• helping students prepare for work after
high school (48%),
• helping students prepare for college
(26%),
• helping students with personal growth and
development (17%), and
• helping students with academic
achievement in high school (8%).

Counseling Needs in
Middle School
• Students need to begin to develop college aspirations in
middle school years in order to take algebra, and other
gatekeeping courses, which then positions students for
high school course work that aligns well with college
enrollment requirements.
• Students and their families need counseling to develop
this awareness and planning, and middle schools need
to raise standards and expectations.
• It is in this stage that students need to be informed of
college entrance requirements, be enrolled in a college
preparatory curriculum, be engaged in extracurricular
activities, and begin to learn in broad-brush ways about
financing a college education

Counseling Needs in High
School
In junior and senior years, counselors can help
students and parents by:
• reducing anxiety;
• providing application profile enhancement in the
form of test coaching, essay assistance, proofing
and effective means of self-presentation;
• helping students realize the wide range of college
options and find the best personal match;
• presenting students in the most effective ways in
letters of recommendation; and
• maintaining professional networks with college
admissions officers

History of School
COunseling
College counseling shaped by:
• Other school counseling needs
• Conflict over college advising as esoteric,
unseemly, and merely information
dispensing.
• Conflict with counselor identity as mental
health agent.
• Seen as elitist, even though 9 out of 10
students now say they are going to college
• History of gatekeeping and tracking.

Counseling Ratios
ASCA recommends 100:1
• NCES (2003) 315:1
• NCES (2005) 477:1
• NACAC 490:1
• >20% minority >300:1
• Largest urban areas >750:1
Many NCES reports don’t even bother to distinguish
between full- and part-time counselors.

State Variations
in Ratios
• CA 994:1
• MN 800:1
• AZ 736:1
• IN 544:1
Other CA studies
• 1056:1
• 5000:1
• No counselors certain times of year

What Do COunselors Do?
• ASCA Ideal: 70% in direct service to
students
• NCES hasn’t collected info on direct
service since early 1990s.
• NACAC which oversampled college
counselors say 50% of time in direct
service.
• With current caseloads, that’s less than
an hour per year per student.

Counselors Impact College
Preparation & Advising
• structuring information and organizing activities that
foster and support students’ college aspirations and an
understanding of college and its importance,
• assisting parents in understanding their role in fostering
and supporting college aspirations, setting of college
expectations, and motivating students;
• assisting students in academic preparation for college;
• supporting and influencing students in decision-making
about college, and
• organizationally focusing the school on its college
mission

Counselor Impact
Evidence that improving counseling would
increase rates of college attendance of
low-income, rural and urban students, as
well as students of color.
Actively advising not just disseminating
information will result in increases in fouryear
college enrollments.

Counselor Impact (-)
• HS counseling programs at fault for students’ and
parents’ lack of necessary college access information
including an understanding of the influence of high
school track, college admissions requirements, and the
system of college costs and financial aid.
• African American and Latino students were significantly
more likely to have their college plans influenced by
their high school counselors and yet these were the
students who were least likely to have counselors, the
most likely to have underprepared counselors, and the
most likely to have counselors pulled away from college
counseling to work on other counseling tasks

Counselor Avoidance?
Students of color express grave reluctance to use
counselors because they are perceived to
• be uninformed and hostile,
• have well documented reputations for placing students
in non-college-recommending classes, and
• historically have thwarted students’ and their parents’
educational aspirations.
NB: those populations who are especially hard hit in terms
of unmet, inadequate or unsatisfactory counseling are
primarily low-income urban and rural communities,
schools, and students of color

Evidence Lacking on
Counselor Effectiveness
• Some researchers claim that counseling is among
the weakest services in most high schools,
• Inadequate evidence of counselor impact on student
learning thus counselors have never been able to
capture the attention of school administrators or
policymakers and thus are
• targets for budget cuts,
• perennially ignored in accountability systems and
• neglected in data collection.
• Counselors know they lack the hard evidence that
could persuade state and local policymakers and
school administrators of the need and potential
benefits of hiring more school counselors.

What Can we learn from Other forms
of Advising?
• Private college prep schools outsource the
psychological component and focus exclusively
on college advising.
• Upper middle class families have invested
heavily in private college counselors for their:
• access to specialized knowledge,
• coaching on tests and essays,
• “hand-holding” students through the admissions process,
• keeping the admissions process organized and the student
on schedule, and
• helping with peer pressure and learning disabilities or
other special circumstances

Outreach: Another
form of counseling
Proven Benefits:
• Doubling of college-going rates for at-risk youth
• Expanding student aspirations
• Increase in educational and cultural capital
assets
• Increase college graduation rates
Benefits greatest for low-income students with
lowest expectations and achievement rates.

CollEge COunseling in
America
On average, the precollege counseling
infrastructure is lacking in secondary schools
across the country, … Public schools and rural
schools suffer from the worst counseling
shortages.
Schools with supportive environments for
postsecondary education, including a wellstaffed
counseling department, reported
significantly higher rates of college attendance.
Hawkins, NACAC, 2003

Counseling Associations
• American Counseling Association
• American School Counselor Association
• National Association for College
Admission Counseling
• National Association of Student Financial Aid
Administrators

Never the Twain Shall Meet
• ASCA doesn’t focus on college
counseling at all.
• NACAC doesn’t focus on other counseling
needs in schools at all.
• NASFAA doesn’t work with K-12 schools
or have them as members
Thus counseling is fragmented, doesn’t
work with the college access advocacy
groups, lacks a powerful or effective
voice.

Counseling is Not a
Policy Priority
• However, college access is an important
economic policy issue and key to P-16
educational reforms.
• We are facing a shortage of 14 million
college-educated workers by 2020.
• Six out of every ten jobs in our economy
depend on workers with at least a twoyear
college degree.

College access is
a Policy Priority
• Improving academic preparation for college and
ensuring affordability, especially for low-income
students and students of color, does have
widespread, active support across a wide
spectrum of educational researchers,
policymakers, and advocates.
• Despite decades of concerted policy efforts and
extensive financial aid resources, today’s gap
between low-income and high-income students
today is roughly the same as that participation
gap in the 1960s (Gladieux and Swail, 1999).

Make Counseling A
Priority Now!
• Within schools, no professional is more important to improving
college enrollments than counselors.
• Research clearly shows that counselors, when consistently and
frequently available and allowed to provide direct services to
students and parents, can be a highly effective group of
professionals who positively impact students' aspirations,
achievements, and financial aid knowledge.
• However, counselors are structurally constrained from doing the
job they know and do best, which is providing:
• information to help nurture and sustain aspirations,
• guidance on course selection for maximal academic preparation,
• motivation to achieve, and
• advice on how to investigate and choose a college.