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What I wanted my readers to takeaway from my research essay is that not everyone will have the perfect guidance counselor at their school, but should try and talk to their counselor at least once and talk about their future academically and just for the real world. I personally had a negative experience with my guidance counselor in high school which didn't help because they left me lost about my future with college. Senior year, it was my advisory teacher who taught me about financial aid, scholarships, and what classes to take. So for me, guidance counselors are only effective when they want to be, rather when they should be.

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Guiding is literally what they should be doing, hence the name "guidance counselor." It should be their job to make students want to be educated more and help them find ways for this. Yes, many people have great experiences with their guidance counselor, but that also comes with many flaws because many people also have bad/negative experiences with guidance counselors.

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Some of the positive things about guidance counselors are, of course that they help students succeed in school and hopefully school for the future. Not only with school, but with personal problems that students are facing and have no one else to talk to about it.

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Savitz-Romer stated in her article that, “School counselors work at the nexus of academic, social and emotional, and post-secondary development. They are uniquely positioned to support students’ skills, address barriers to learning, and support schools’ strategic priorities." 

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Savitz-Romer stated in her article that, “School counselors work at the nexus of academic, social and emotional, and post-secondary development. They are uniquely positioned to support students’ skills, address barriers to learning, and support schools’ strategic priorities." 

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If your district or school has developed a strategic plan for professional learning, implements strong coaching and PLCs, and aims to meet the Standards for Professional Learning, you may believe you are covering all the bases to build capacity in your staff. But look more closely. Are you including all the professionals who influence learning and academic success?

Too often, leaders overlook valuable human capital in their schools and miss the opportunity to develop them so that the school and its students can reach their full potential. This is particularly true for a highly qualified but underused group of professionals: school counselors. Too often, leaders overlook valuable human capital in their schools and miss the opportunity to develop them so that the school and its students can reach their full potential. #LearnFwdTLP Click To Tweet

School counselors work at the nexus of academic, social and emotional, and post-secondary development. They are uniquely positioned to support students' skills, address barriers to learning, and support schools' strategic priorities.

However, with growing responsibilities, counselors report needing more knowledge and skills to support students, staff, and families. Initially introduced into schools to provide vocational guidance and post-secondary direction to students, today's school counselors are asked to do much more: to deliver a comprehensive program to support students' academic, social and emotional, and post-secondary development.

Yet professional learning for school counselors is often an afterthought, in stark contrast to a common districtwide commitment to professional learning for teachers. And with limited access to professional conferences, school counselors are left with few opportunities to expand their skills once they enter the field or keep pace with new demands placed on schools.

Making matters more difficult, this gap is occurring at a time when many counselors work under difficult conditions that include exorbitantly high caseloads, ambiguous role descriptions, and overwhelming administrative responsibilities.

Bringing counselors into the fold of high-quality professional learning can lead to more efficiency, consistency, and support for teaching and learning. This means making a commitment to professional learning for counselors and aligning it with larger strategic goals while acknowledging counselors' unique roles, strengths, and needs. Bringing counselors into the fold of high-quality professional learning can lead to more efficiency, consistency, and support for teaching and learning. #LearnFwdTLP Click To Tweet
LOCATE THE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING GAP
The reasons for counselors' lack of access to professional learning are numerous and varied.

Many counselors are required to attend school-sponsored professional development that has little relevance to the role they are expected to fill. Ask any counselor, and most will describe attending learning experiences focused on instructional practices and classroom strategies with no effort to connect those strategies to their own work with students.

Finding relevance in these sessions can be particularly difficult when they are conducted at the district level, because counselors' needs vary by school demographics and students' challenges. For example, whereas some counselors need updated learning to support students exploring their sexual identity, others need opportunities that equip them with skills to consult with teachers on implementing positive behavioral interventions or mentoring students to encourage college or careers.

Costs, both financial and opportunity, are also barriers to professional learning for counselors. Many professional learning opportunities sponsored by national organizations are costly and require time away from work. The financial costs of professional learning are especially hard on counselors in rural and urban school communities, whose districts lack funds for counselor attendance.

In many instances, school counselors are not permitted to attend conferences due to concerns by administrators about insufficient funds or not having coverage when counselors are absent. Unlike teachers, counselor absences are not compensated for with substitutes. This can hinder schools' ability to respond to crises, and, for counselors, it often means that work piles up while they are gone. For these reasons, many counselors don't consider time away for professional learning worthwhile.

Beyond content and access, counselors often experience the outdated sit-and-get or one-and-done model of professional learning, both of which have limited impact on improved practice. This type of learning is further complicated by the fact that even when counselors learn new skills and ways of working, they are limited in their ability to apply their new knowledge because school leaders do not understand or support these practices or have a different set of expectations for how counselors should spend their time.

Together, these factors form a formidable barrier to accessing professional learning. School counselors who do not access professional learning risk languishing in their roles and missing the chance to connect their work to larger school goals. Worse, students miss out on much-needed supports.
SET A NEW VISION FOR SCHOOL COUNSELORS
Because school counselors can be a valuable resource to tackle education's most pressing issues, including college and career readiness, it is time to invest in counselors' learning. A new approach requires recognizing that the counseling responsibilities of today differ dramatically from the outdated role of yesterday. A new approach to school counselors learning requires recognizing that the counseling responsibilities of today differ dramatically from the outdated role of yesterday. #LearnFwdTLP Click To Tweet

School counselors, at all levels, teach study skills that enable students to be successful in classrooms and identify barriers to learning that can be addressed by supplemental supports. Counselors in middle and high schools help students draw connections between classroom learning and future goals. In fact, research has found that when students are clear about a future path for themselves that feels doable and reachable, their academic engagement increases.

School counselors also play a key role in helping students develop social and emotional skills like goal setting, planning, and managing emotions. Importantly, counselors also help students manage family and social stressors so that they can focus in school and achieve their best. All of these supports are vital for student success and, too often, they don't fit into the time or experience of many classroom teachers.

I believe that a new vision for school counseling should draw on the medical home model popularized in health care (Savitz-Romer, 2019). As primary care providers are the first check-in point and coordinate care with specialists, school counselors should be at the center of students' development, providing an academic home and then building on it and leveraging other valuable resources inside and outside of schools.

This approach calls on counselors to act as leaders in schools, creating a web of supports that draw on the contributions of teachers, community partners, families, and students themselves.
MEET COUNSELORS' PROFESSIONAL NEEDS
This new vision requires an update to professional learning for school counselors, one that takes an ecological approach to professional learning that includes not just what is covered in learning opportunities, but also who is included and how it is accomplished. School and district leaders can draw on the following models - some of which already exist in their schools - to engage school counselors.

Counselors in middle and high schools help students draw connections between classroom learning and future goals.

Data-driven professional learning. Because counselors' needs vary, it is important for professional learning directors to use surveys to identify what needs are a priority in any given year and align this data with larger school priorities and plans.

Whereas one school might be struggling with social media usage, another might need support identifying signs of suicide. Another school might discover that, although the school has a goal of preparing all students for college, counselors aren't sure how to help students who are struggling in their coursework.

From this data, district leaders can tailor professional learning to both districtwide goals and counselors' unique role and responsibilities. For example, a district concerned with absenteeism might engage counselors in identifying how they can be leveraged to improve students' attendance and engagement. In one school district, counselors proposed a home visit program in which they alternated days of the week to visit homes, while their colleagues covered at school. This initiative not only improved attendance, but also sent a strong signal to the counselors about their value in the district.

Cross-role teams. For school counselors to adopt a new approach to their work, their role partners need to better understand the counselor's role and the collaborative relationships needed to realize it.

Counselors often report poor relationships with leaders, teachers, and other school staff because of general misperceptions of their role. A common refrain counselors hear from their colleagues is, "What do counselors actually do?" Shared professional learning is a great way to clarify these varied roles and forge important relationships.

To accomplish this, schools, districts, and professional organizations should look to cross-role learning opportunities. For example, schools might create cross-role professional learning that brings together counselors and teachers for shared learning on topics of shared interest, such as behavioral interventions and support.

Districts might also host learning experiences that bring together counselors and school leaders to work in partnership to implement changes in their schools. For example, some districts have introduced counselor-principal agreements that set up counselors and school leaders to set school counselors' yearly goals and identify support needed for counselors to meet these goals.

Not only can these professionals collaborate more effectively when they experience learning together, but it helps each role partner understand one another's strengths.

PLCs. Just as professional learning communities (PLCs) have been used to engage teachers, they can be used for counselors to facilitate collective inquiry and action research to better support the students they serve (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Karhanek, 2004). Counselors can be a valuable addition to PLCs with other educators, so that they are supporting larger school goals. ''Just as #PLCs have been used to engage teachers, they can be used for school counselors to facilitate collective inquiry and action research to better support the students they serve.'' #LearnFwdTLP Click To Tweet

Young, Millard, and Kneale (2013) call for the implementation of school counseling collaborative teams formed by counselors in a given school, counselors from feeder elementary or middle schools working together, counselors from a geographic area, or counselors with a shared interest in gaining specific skills. This can be an especially useful way to improve the transition between elementary, middle, and high school because the relationships formed among counselors serve as a bridge for students' transitions.

Engaging professional associations. Professional organizations also have a vital role to play in closing the learning gap for counselors. Professional organizations targeting different roles (e.g. school principals and school counselors) might host shared learning opportunities that bring together the standards that guide each profession to create collaborative approaches to pressing issues in schools.

Professional organizations that support these role partners can invite school counseling leaders and associations to present at their conferences and participate in ongoing networks to educate their members about the contribution of school counselors.

Professional organizations that provide the majority of learning opportunities for counselors, such as the American School Counselor Association and the National Association for College Admission Counseling, can play a key role in creating this continuity. They could adopt Learning Forward's Standards for Professional Learning as sustained, job-embedded, and collaborative. These standards could guide coaching models supported by these professional associations as well as other professional learning opportunities and networks they sponsor.

Structures and systems. Creating academic homes where counselors can lead collaborative approaches to promoting students' development will depend on new structures and systems to guide that home. Counselors will need help creating the systems and processes to guide an academic home, such as developing memoranda of understanding to manage partnerships or data tools to identify gaps in programming.

Professional organizations also have a vital role to play in closing the learning gap for counselors.

For counselors whose days can be filled with one immediate crisis after another, professional learning must include time and technical support to create these tools and systems. Much like literacy coaches have been used to help literacy instructors improve their practice, school counselors would benefit from coaching and intermediary support to help them build the systems (e.g. data systems, teams, protocols) that will help an academic home run smoothly. Professional learning directors might also use boot camps and other learning experiences that are focused on deliverables and support counselors' work time.

External learning opportunities. Because counselors' work is connected to external partners, including colleges and employers as well as mental health services, it can be valuable for them to engage in professional learning opportunities in those settings, where they can learn firsthand about these settings and collaborate with the professionals who work in them.

For example, high school counselors, who spend a lot of their time educating students about post-high school career and college pathways, can participate in externship programs to learn about the job pathways in their community.

Through visits to colleges and universities, counselors can learn about what colleges are looking for and how the school can prepare students; support programs the universities offer, for example to first-generation college-goers; and their former students' experiences to inform how they prepare current and future students.

For example, one school district gave counselors time off to visit graduates in college. This allowed the counselors to learn more about the institution through the eyes of one of their graduates so they could help school staff understand what high schoolers really need to know and do to be prepared while also giving the graduate an additional dose of support during a critical transition time.
INVEST IN COUNSELORS' READINESS
All students should have access to well-trained school counselors who have the skills and knowledge necessary to support the full range of academic, social and emotional, and post-secondary needs. For that to happen, we need to make a firm commitment to supporting counselors' professional learning needs.

If counselors are to provide students an academic home and coordinate the supports of many partners, professional learning will need to be a shared responsibility across schools, districts, and the broader professional learning community.
Want to hear from the author and other educators about this topic? Check out the recap of a Twiter chat that was based on this article.

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No Counselor Left Behind | Learning Forward

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If your district or school has developed a strategic plan for professional learning, implements strong coaching and PLCs, and aims to meet the Standards for Professional Learning, you may believe you are covering all the bases to build capacity in your staff. But look more closely.

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Of course, the students academic comes first because after all, counselors are too help and aid students with their college readiness and high school success.

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The biggest source that students can get are their guidance counselors. Counselors are held at high standards with student success and readiness. They should know most things that will help their students ready for college and adulthood.

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Julia is an author and conducts research on school-family-community partnerships and the role of school counselors and other school personnel in building partnerships.

In her article she conducts research on students who get help from their counselors and how effective their meeting is and how effective their school's guidance counselor is.
(Feel free to click on the picture/link if you want to read her article)

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From Julia's article it is stated that, “Students who see the counselor multiple times prior to 12th grade may be more likely to see counselors for college administration and financial aid and financial aid counseling in 12th grade, submit more college applications and enroll in college.”
Although this is an reliable statement, not all visits with the guidance counselors are a good experience for some students.

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Guidance counselors should be highly skilled with communication and problem solving for their students in order to give them the right feedback.
With these skills they can be a really good counselors and even better a person that students can look up to for essentially everything that they need. A connection also needs to be made by the counselor so that the student/students feel comfortable to talk about their academic needs to get the help the want and need.

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The negatives about some guidance counselors are that they are not skilled enough to help their students. Some are not ready for the things that students needs/wants. Students need to be provided help that only the counselor would know of. Some students don't even attempt to see their counselor because they simply do not help at all.

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Click the source to read about people's experiences with their guidance counselors

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Click the source to read about people's experiences with their guidance counselors

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In this post about how guidance counselors are not helpful, shows many responses from people around the world talking about their negative experiences meeting or attempting to meet with the counselor.

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I want to thank everybody who commented yesterday on my post:

And a shout out to those who shared their thoughts about the post on the Facebook page for The College Solution. (If you haven't checked it out and "liked" my new Facebook page, please do!)
The thoughtful comments that I received prompted me to respond to some of the issues that people raised.

Is The Counselor Knowledge Gap Really a Problem?

Jonathan, who is a senior at the University of Chicago, wondered if the woeful lack of training that counselors receive in their graduate counseling programs "necessarily leads to a knowledge gap." He mentioned that at his high school, admission reps from colleges visited, which led him to believe that these reps can provide high school counselors with lots of information.
Here's my reaction to that practice: High school counselors aren't necessarily sitting in on college reps' presentations. The counselors may not be interested or they may not have the time. But even if counselors did visit with the college reps, this can be of limited help.

The College Pitch

College reps are only going to present the best spin for their institutions. Colleges, after all, are businesses and their goal is to make the sale just as a car salesmen would. Admission reps, for instance, aren't going to tell teenagers or counselors that the financial aid at their schools is lousy. They aren't going to say that the typical financial aid package is primarily stuffed with loans. They won't share if their students are graduating with onerous levels of student loans.
The typical admission rep's spiel to prospective students will go something like this: We have lots of scholarships and even some full-rides. If you like our school, just apply and don't worry about the price.
That kind of pitch is just that - a pitch. What teens need to know is how generous a school is. What percentage of financial need does the college typically meet? How accurate is the school's net price calculator? There are lots of questions that educated consumers should be asking.
It's hard to become an informed consumer, however, if the counselor can't tell teens and their parents what questions to ask. And they usually don't because they don't know themselves.

What Counselors at Affluent High Schools Know

Denise suggested that the knowledge gap is probably less of a problem for upper-middle-class and wealthy families. I would agree that these families enjoy an advantage because they know that their children will attend college. These families, however, have plenty of opportunities to mess up too.
And it would be a huge mistake to assume that counselors at affluent public high schools or even private high schools know more. I've heard from many parents whose children attend these schools who bitterly complain about the caliber of the advising.

Are You Kidding Me???

I was frankly stunned when I went to a recent conference of the Western Association for College Admission Counseling in Los Angeles and heard a veteran counselor, who for many years had headed the college counseling program at a prestigious private high school in Southern California, answer a question about merit scholarships.
Someone in the audience asked how counselors could find out about merit scholarship opportunities from individual schools and she said something to this effect: She asked parent volunteers to look for merit scholarship info in the marketing material that colleges mailed to the high school.
When I heard that I almost fell off my chair! This highly respected counselor apparently didn't know how to obtain this easily accessible information. There are lots of ways to identify merit awards that individual schools offer from such resources as the federal College Navigator, Common Data Sets, the College Board, COLLEGEdata, MeritAid.com and others. And yet this counselor's trusty method was to have volunteer moms look through the snail mail they got!!
As I said, the high school counseling system is broken.
What Do You Think?
If you have any thoughts about the dreadful state of college counseling at high schools or how the system can be fixed, I'd love to hear from you. Just comment in the box below.
Lynn O'Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes college blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News & World Report. Follow her on .

Read More on The College Solution:

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What's Wrong With High School Counselors Part II

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I want to thank everybody who commented yesterday on my post: And a shout out to those who shared their thoughts about the post on the Facebook page for The College Solution . (If you haven't checked it out and "liked" my new Facebook page, please do!)

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This is also a post about the same topic but this one has a lot more responses. After reading the statements, scroll down and you can read some personal experiences from people.

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I wrote this post a year ago, but I wanted to share it again because I think it's important that families understand the limitations of many high school counselors when it comes to sharing advice about critical college issues. Parents and teenagers need to know this because if they rely exclusively on their counselor's advice, they could make poor college choices.
I know I will receive angry emails from high school counselors over this post just like I did in the past, but that's okay because it's critical that families understand what their counselors can and can't provide!

What's Wrong With High School Counselors

Is your teenager's high school counselor an expert on college?
Probably not.
In fact, the odds are high that your counselor's knowledge about college admission strategies, standardized testing and scholarships is limited. Ironically during this period of skyrocketing college costs,financial aid is often the subject that high school counselors know the least about.
Many high school counselors are unfortunately overwhelmed with work, but it's not just the crazy schedules that explain why the college IQ of many counselors is stunted.

Why Counselors Don't Know Enough

As I discovered in talking to experts about this issue, here's the chief reason:
Before counselors can begin working in a public high school, they must earn a master's degree in counseling. Graduate school programs, however, rarely offer even one class in college planning. Consequently, the majority of counselors arrive at high schools ignorant about critical college issues even though for many families a bachelor's degree represents the second biggest expense they will ever face. In my opinion, this is truly scandalous.
This lack of training on the graduate level is "pretty scary," suggests Bob Bardwell, a public high school counselor in Massachusetts and a vice president at theAmerican School Counselor Association. A few years ago, Bardwell was a member of a task force, which experienced limited success in encouraging graduate schools to add even a single college planning class to their curriculum. While there are hundreds of these graduate programs across the country, Bardwell estimates that only two dozen or so offer a college counseling class.

Mental Health Preparation

College admission issues are simply not on the radar of graduate schools, which are more focused on mental health issues. A lot of people in the program are mental health professionals, who are territorial about what they will include in their curriculum, Bardwell says.
Without formal training, new counselors rely on colleagues at their schools to show them the ropes. Carl "Sandy" Behrend, a former NACAC president and an educational consultant in Buffalo, NY, told me that it usually takes four or five years of these informal apprenticeships before counselors feel comfortable.
While this lack of training is common knowledge in the higher-ed world, I know that parents would be shocked to learn that most high school counselors are not college authorities. Many parents believe that high school counselors would be able to answer all their questions if they could only get some precious face time with them.

Why the Knowledge Gap is Unacceptable

This college knowledge gap in high schools is unacceptable, says Steven Antonoff, an independent college counselor in Colorado and the author of College Match: A Blueprint for Choosing the Best School for You.
"The stakes are higher and there hasn't been an increase by and large in public schools and even in private school funding for college counseling," Antonoff told me. "It's a very difficult situation that has created a gap between the needs of a student looking at schools today and the level of expertise available to them."
As a general rule, experts suggest that counselors are better prepared at private high schools because they are often able to spend a majority of their time focused on getting their students into college. Public school counselors, who can devote their time exclusively to college admissions, are a rare luxury. Many private schools use their college counseling services as a lure for attracting students, but there is definitely no guarantee that these counselors are experts either. I have run into plenty who aren't.

What Do You Think?

I'd love to hear your take on this controversial issue. Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Read More on the College Solution:

Why High School Counselors Are Failing
Are School Counselors the Weakest Link?

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What's Wrong With High School Counselors?

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I wrote this post a year ago, but I wanted to share it again because I think it's important that families understand the limitations of many high school counselors when it comes to sharing advice about critical college issues. Parents and teenagers need to know this because if they rely exclusively on their counselor's advice, they could make poor college choices.

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Not only can students benefit from their counselors, but also their parents can. Some parents do not know the next step in education for their child. So, that is what the counselor is for, they can help the parents learn about scholarships, financial aid, and any many more things that need to be known.

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School's guidance counselors are a hit or miss for the most part. Yes, there are great guidance counselors but there are also some really bad ones. From my research it truly is a 50/50 in the effectiveness of them. It about how much they would want to help their students and how much experience they have in the field. So, the effectiveness of the counselors are on the school and their moral ways of life.