Minnesota students are not getting adequate school counseling. The state ranks near the bottom in student-to-counselor ratios, typically coming in 49th out of 50 since the beginning of the decade.
While the recommended ratio is 250 students per counselor and the national average is 450 students per counselor, Minnesota counselors average 800 students. California is the only state doing worse.
School counselors are an important piece of a child's education. Lee Oling, a counselor at Cloquet High School, described a counselor's job as providing some of the key services that help ensure students graduate high school and go to college. Counselors help remove some of the roadblocks that get in the way of success, such as social, physical or mental health problems. They also address academic issues and provide career guidance.
To examine this situation, the Minnesota School Counselors Association partnered with Minnesota 2020, a nonprofit think tank in St. Paul, to survey counselors on their thoughts about the profession.
Minnesota 2020 used the survey to write Minnesota's School Counseling Crunch, a report that shows how the state's depleted corps of school counselors is being squeezed on two fronts:
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Demand for their services is rising. More than 76 percent of counselors say student mental health care needs, including interpersonal and family problems, depression, aggressive or disruptive behavior, anxiety and ADHD, have increased in the past 24 months. Most attribute this increase to a better ability to diagnose mental health problems and a growing anxiety in children over current economic problems at home.
These problems are not limited to high school or junior high students. Elementary school counselors say that students with suicidal thoughts and actions, self mutilation and eating disorders are not uncommon among elementary students.
Meanwhile, school budget cuts have forced counselors to assume responsibilities that take away from the time they work with students. Since 2003, state aid to schools has dropped an inflation-adjusted 13 percent. While the number of counselors across the state has remained constant at about 1,000, the number of aides and paraprofessionals has dropped, forcing many of their duties on counselors. Instead of focusing on helping students get into college or with personal problems, counselors divert valuable time to monitor halls and supervise parking lots. About half the counselors surveyed say they spend less than 10 percent of their time with students on mental health issues. More than half of counselors say they spend less than 10 percent of their time helping students with career guidance.
Most counselors are also in charge of federal and state testing at their schools, which involves counting pencils and booklets, getting students into test rooms and proctoring tests, arranging for makeup tests and so on. Most counselors say they spend at least 10 school days - 80 hours - on testing alone. Many counselors in outstate Minnesota say they spend as many as 30 days - 240 hours - away from students.
Oling told of a student who came to him in tears one day, begging to talk to him. "I was in the middle of proctoring a test. I had to tell her 'No, I'm sorry but I can't talk to you now.'"
Minnesota's lack of counselors results in a greater risk of students dropping out, engaging in dangerous behaviors, receiving less knowledge about how to handle common problems at different developmental levels, and less knowledge about higher education and financial aid. While Minnesota's dropout rank is among the middle of the states, it's well below neighbors Wisconsin and Iowa, which enjoy considerably better student-to-counselor ratios.
By working with students at risk of dropping out, counselors decrease the drop-out rate. Counselors work with disruptive students to limit their distraction on the rest of the class. They work with students to ameliorate test anxiety. They provide financial information for students looking to attend higher educational institutions. And perhaps most importantly, they work with students to help plan a career or a path to higher education, which will allow Minnesota to maintain its status as an educational leader in the United States.
To be second to last in the nation in student-to-counselor ratio is inexcusable. Minnesota must increase the number of licensed K-12 school counselors to increase student access to academic, career, personal, and mental health resources. Also, counselors should be allowed to implement the full measure of their education and skills through direct service provision to students. Non-counseling duties that interfere with the daily functions of the school counselor must be eliminated from their roster in order to ensure increased interaction with students and parents.
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The 21st century workforce requires students to attain degrees from institutions of higher education. School counselors are the linchpin in the process of getting students from high school to college. If Minnesota's leaders are serious about making the state viable for the 21st century, why do we have so few of the most critical agents of advice and counsel? If more counselors aren't hired and allowed to do their jobs properly, our children will wind up paying for this neglected investment.
MN 2020 is a nonpartisan, progressive think tank that focuses on the issues that really matter: education, health care, transportation and economic development. New content and analysis can be found daily at www.MN2020.org .
