When journalists report on K-12 education, they seldom focus on school counselors. Yet these educators can have a big influence on students’ mental health and academic achievement, both of which have generally declined since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like school nurses, school counselors typically work behind the scenes serving students. Their duties often vary widely from day to day and school to school — from helping kids build study skills and work through personal problems to coordinating testing and guiding older students through course selection, career planning and college admissions.
School counselors are also first responders, providing immediate support during a crisis such as the death of a faculty member, a natural disaster or a school shooting.
Unlike school psychologists, who tend to focus on students with the most serious behavioral and mental health issues, school counselors typically serve the entire student body. A 2023 study led by researchers at the University of Virginia offers a close look at the roles school counselors and psychologists play in meeting students’ mental health needs.
We created this list of story ideas to encourage journalists to think more deeply about school counselors and expand their coverage of them. For each story idea below, we included links to relevant academic papers and other resources to help you get started.
1. Look at the various ways school counselors can help boost student achievement.
When it comes to student achievement, researcher Christine Mulhern asserts that high school counselors can have as big an impact as high school teachers.
She has found that the information and advice counselors provide can influence high school graduation rates, students’ scores on the SAT college-entrance exam, the type of colleges students attend and the odds they eventually will earn bachelor’s degrees.
“Counselors are an often overlooked engine of educational improvement,” Mulhern, an economist at the nonprofit research organization RAND, writes in a 2020 essay in Education Next.
Her 2023 study on high school counselors in Massachusetts is the first to find causal, quantitative evidence of individual counselors’ impact on student achievement, she notes in the paper.
At the schools Mulhern studied, students assigned to counselors who Mulhern rated as more effective than average were 2.4 percentage points more likely to graduate high school and 2.5 percentage points more likely to go to college. School counselors had a larger impact, however, on certain groups of students, such as low-income students and those with lower grades and test scores.
Mulhern compares her findings on school counselors with prior research on classroom teachers.
“My estimates of counselor effects are similar to the best estimates of teacher effects on educational attainment,” she writes in her paper, published in the American Economic Review. Her results, she adds, “suggest that improving access to the type of guidance provided by the best counselors may be an effective means for increasing educational attainment, improving student behavior, and closing socioeconomic gaps in education.”
Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, says school counselors also play a key role in ensuring all students have the same educational opportunities.
Kids who are the first in their families to go to college, for example, might not realize they must start preparing for college years before they graduate high school by completing certain courses, participating in certain activities, seeking out grants and scholarships, and researching professions and credentials, Holcomb-McCoy tells The Journalist’s Resource.
School counselors can identify, encourage and educate these youth.
“Therein lies the divide between the haves and have nots — just in information alone,” says Holcomb-McCoy, a former school counselor and dean of American University’s College of Education. “There are gaps in knowledge and there are other implications related to how knowledge is distributed to students.”
She stresses in her 2022 book School Counseling to Close Opportunity Gaps: A Social Justice and Antiracist Framework for Success that counselors can help bolster student achievement in many other ways. For instance, they can connect families to social service agencies and health care providers to address problems that can hinder learning, including illness, depression, learning disabilities, poor nutrition, sleep difficulties and homelessness.
Before you start working on this story, read:
- Mulhern’s paper investigating counselors’ impact on student achievement in Massachusetts, “Beyond Teachers: Estimating Individual School Counselors’ Effects on Educational Attainment.”
- “A Landscape Analysis of State-Level School Counseling Policy: Perspectives from State Officials,” published in March 2023 in the journal Educational Policy. In it, researchers examine school counseling policies across the U.S. as well as barriers preventing local schools from implementing them.
For additional context: Princeton University sociologist Shamus Rahman Khan describes how school counselors at prestigious boarding schools leverage their connections to give their students an edge in applying to top colleges in “Getting In: How Elite Schools Play the College Game,” a chapter of the 2010 book Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage.
2. Report on student-to-counselor ratios.
A school’s student-to-counselor ratio is a strong indicator of the quality of academic advising available there. A high ratio means there are relatively few counselors to serve the whole study body. High ratios likely mean that students seldom meet with a counselor and that meetings are generally brief.
The American School Counselor Association recommends a 250-to-1 ratio of students to school counselors. But a ratio that low is uncommon among public schools in the U.S., especially in states where most students are racial and ethnic minorities. Last year, 17% of high schools did not have even one counselor, according to an annual report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
The national average student-to-counselor ratio was 376 to 1 during the 2023-24 academic year, the most recent year for which the U.S. Department of Education has data. That number has fallen steadily since the 2013-14 school year.
Still, ratios are much too high to meet students’ — especially high school students’ — wide-ranging needs, says Erwin Hesse, director of the Center for Innovation in College Admission, an initiative the National Association for College Admission Counseling launched earlier this year.
Hesse says counselors struggle to manage the volume of students on their roster. At many high schools, he adds, counselors have little time for one-on-one meetings with students aside from occasional check-ins to make sure they are registered for the courses they need to graduate.
At public high schools, students receive an average of 38 minutes of college counseling a year, according to an often-cited estimate the U.S. Department of Education released more than a decade ago.
Arizona and Michigan have the highest student-to-counselor ratios. The statewide average in Arizona, where about half of public school students are Hispanic, was 645 to 1 in 2023-24. Michigan, where about 40% of students are racial or ethnic minorities, had a 573-to-1 ratio.
Vermont and New Hampshire have the lowest ratios — less than 200 to 1, on average, in 2023-24. In both of those states, more than 80% of students are white and not Hispanic.
Carleton H. Brown, a mental health therapist in Texas who has written several academic articles on school counselors, urges journalists to report on student-to-counselor ratios to draw more attention to the issue. He recommends asking these questions:
- Which schools have the highest ratios, and how does that correlate with student race, family income and geography?
- How much time do counselors spend providing services to students, as opposed to focusing on administrative duties and coordinating student testing?
- Which states or school districts fund counselor positions adequately, and which hire unlicensed personnel to help with student counseling?
- What happens to the physical and emotional safety of students when they cannot access certified counseling?
“Ultimately, lower counselor ratios aren’t simply an operational issue, they’re an equity and ethical issue,” Brown, a former associate professor of counseling and special education at the University of Texas at El Paso, wrote to The Journalist’s Resource. “Every student deserves not only a great teacher but also a counselor who has the time and capacity to know them, guide them, and advocate for them.”
A key academic study: Brown is the lead author of “Student-to-School Counselor Ratios: Understanding the History and Ethics Behind Professional Staffing Recommendations and Realities in the United States,” published last year in the journal Ethics & Behavior.
Also worth your attention: A whole section of the American School Counselor Association’s website is dedicated to student-to-counselor ratios. You’ll find charts showcasing state-by-state averages for each academic year from 1986-87 to 2023-24, based on data from the U.S. Department of Education.
Holcomb-McCoy also recommends journalists read the 2019 book “Fulfilling the Promise: Reimagining School Counseling to Advance Student Success,” by Harvard University education scholar Mandy Savitz-Romer.
3. Ask school officials how they are using digital technology to expand school counselors’ reach.
Schools across the U.S. are investigating ways to use technology to help school counselors broaden their reach. They are trying out a variety of digital tools and platforms to provide information on mental health and career planning, remind students about key dates and help them manage anxiety and other mental health issues.
Some examples:
- The Bullitt County school district in Kentucky is working with a private company there to develop an app to help students deal with stress, anxiety and bullying. Officials expect it to be finished by the end of the 2025-26 academic year, the Louisville Courier Journal reported earlier this month.
- Uprooted Academy, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization that serves students who are the first in their families to go to college, has created an app to help them navigate the college admissions process. It features mini courses and live events on topics such as picking the right college and filling out financial aid forms.
- A University of Oregon professor has developed a career coach powered by artificial intelligence that middle school students can use to explore careers before high school. State officials in Oregon have adopted it for use statewide, the university announced in January.
- Some Missouri schools use digital tools to monitor students activity on school computers and alert educators when kids search online for information about topics such as suicide and self-harm, The Beacon in Kansas City reported last month.
- Schools across the country have introduced online platforms such as SchooLinks and Brightpath and AI-powered chatbots like AVA, Coach and Sage to help with career and college counseling.
Hesse, director of the Center for Innovation in College Admission, says expanding direct admission policies nationwide would reduce school counselors’ workloads significantly. It would eliminate the need for students to apply to colleges and universities and for counselors to write hundreds of letters of recommendation each year.
Direct admission policies require higher education institutions to collect and compare student data and proactively admit students who meet their requirements.
Hesse says some states now have the technology to match students to institutions based on factors such as high school grades, courses completed and standardized test scores. Idaho, in 2015, became the first to introduce direct admissions statewide.
Earlier this month, California Gov. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law allowing all California high school students who qualify to be automatically admitted to one of California State University’s 23 campuses, beginning with the 2026-2027 school year.
Hesse, who was the first in his family to go to college, says expanding direct admission would encourage more students to continue their education. As a high school senior, he had assumed he could not go to college because his grades were not high enough. It wasn’t until he stopped by his local community college to ask about its admission process that he discovered that community colleges take almost all students.
“My moonshot goal is that every rising senior, along with the parent, will receive a push notification or email sent directly to their phone or student/parent portal notifying them of all their acceptances to colleges paired with a financial aid package for each one,” Hesse wrote to The Journalist’s Resource by email after a phone interview. “I want journalists to ask, ‘Why do students still apply to college when the colleges can simply let students know they have been admitted?’ We cannot expect that high school counselors will solve this on their own and hiring more [counselors] is not realistic within school budgets across the U.S.”
Two academic papers that provide helpful insights:
- “Efficacy of Gamified Digital Mental Health Interventions for Pediatric Mental Health Conditions: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” published in JAMA Pediatrics in September 2024. In this paper, researchers find that mental health interventions presented as games that kids can play on video game consoles, computers or smartphones are “modestly efficacious” at treating depression and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
- A working paper that Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform released in 2023, “Experimental Evidence on ‘Direct Admissions’ from Four States: Impacts on College Application and Enrollment.” Researchers conclude that direct admission in the four unidentified states they studied “can move the needle on important college-going behaviors but is insufficient alone to increase enrollment given other barriers to access, including the ability to pay for college.”
Also worth your attention: Researchers at the nonprofit Clayton Christensen Institute have raised concerns about AI-enabled college and career counseling. AI tools could undermine student relationships if students start to bond with and rely on bots instead of other people, the researchers write in a report released earlier this year. “Although many argue that ‘human skills’ will command a greater premium, there’s been limited research on the short- and long-term impact of bot-driven advising on students’ social capital — connections that can provide students with valuable resources like support, advice, and, ultimately, job referrals,” they write.
4. Investigate the growing field of college consulting.
When families cannot get the help they want from school counselors, many pay professionals to guide their children through college and career planning. Demand for private consulting has grown rapidly in recent years and is now an approximately $3 billion industry, Christopher Rim, a contributing writer at Forbes, explains in a May 2025 article.
“Amidst declining [college] admissions rates, swelling applicant pools, and an ever-changing target of what admissions officers are looking for, many families are discovering that the process is nearly impossible to navigate alone — and they are turning to private college consultants in record numbers in the hopes of gaining a competitive edge,” writes Rim, who is also CEO of a college admissions consulting firm based in New York City.
Although some nonprofit groups also help with college and career planning — Bottom Line, College Possible and College Advising Corps are among them — for-profit organizations dominate the market.
According to the Independent Educational Consultants Association, which represents education consultants across the U.S., there were about 1,500 full-time and 4,000 part-time education consultants in 2010. Those numbers rose to about 3,500 full-time and 5,000 part-time consultants in 2015. By late 2024, there were 8,500 to 10,000 full-time and 10,000 to 15,000 part-time consultants, the organization estimates.
Some questions you may want to answer in your news coverage:
- How often do lower-income families seek help from private education consultants and how do they afford these services?
- How do you gauge an education consultant’s effectiveness?
- Are nonprofit and for-profit programs equally effective at helping students reach their college and career goals?
- How are AI tools, which can help students write more polished essays and find information quickly, affecting demand for consultants?
- Can private school students and homeschooled students use money from state-funded education savings accounts like those offered in Arizona, Florida and Tennessee to hire education consultants?
- How many school counselors leave their jobs to become private consultants? Are those who made the change happy they did it?
An academic paper you’ll find useful: A researcher examines the advice that private education consultants give their clients in “Translating Authentic Selves into Authentic Applications: Private College Consulting and Selective College Admissions,” published in 2023 in the journal Sociology of Education.
You’ll also want to read: The Independent Educational Consultants Association’s “State of the Profession” report, released in December 2022. The organization plans to release its new “State of the Profession” report within the next few weeks.
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