School Counselors' Impact on Schools' Academic Outcomes: Staffing, Use of Time, and Perceptions

• In Event: Expanding Educational Opportunity for All Students

Abstract

Purposes
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between school counselors’ staffing, use of time and perceptions with schools’ academic outcomes. Specifically, this study aims to answer the following research questions: 1. What are school counselors’ perceptions of students and students’ learning? 2. After controlling school demographic variables, how do staffing, use of time, and perceptions of school counselors relate to schools’ academic outcomes?

Theoretical Framework
This study uses the American School Counseling Association’s (ASCA) National Model as a framework to guide the inquiry. School counseling programs are an integral part of students' daily educational environment, and school counselors are partners in student achievement (ASCA, 2017). There are four elements identified under the National Model: foundation, delivery, management, and accountability. This study tries to examine how the use of time, staffing, and perceptions of school counselors (foundation, delivery and management) are related to the school academic outcomes (accountability).

Method

Data Source and Participants
This study used the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) restricted-use school data. Participants in this study included all 944 schools from the HSLS:09 data.

Data Analysis Procedure
All data were analyzed using SPSS v24. First, we conducted descriptive statistics and frequency analysis to get the basic information about the school demographic information and to answer the first research questions. Then, to answer the second research question, we analyzed three hierarchical multiple regression models to examine the relationship between the staffing, use of time and perceptions of school counselors and school academic outcomes.

Results
Descriptive statistics results showed that more than 90% of the school counselors disagreed with the statement “counselors in this school believe all students can do well”, “Counselors in this school care only about smart students”, “counselor expect very little from students”, “counselors in this school set high standards for students’ learning” and 96.3% of the school counselors agreed to the statement “counselors work hard to make sure all students learn”.
The regression analysis is currently undergoing. We will include the detailed results in the final version of this manuscript.

Scholarly Significance
In the literature, there has been no study that investigates on a national scale how school counselors’ staffing, use of time and perceptions relate to schools’ academic outcomes. This study fills the literature gap in this arena and provides relevant information to inform school counselors on their practice (how to spend their time, modify their attitudes and perceptions) as well as to policy-makers and stakeholders about funding allocation to support school counselors’ work.

References
American School Counseling Association (2017). ASCA National Model. Retrieved from
https://www.schoolcounselor.org/school-counselors-members/asca-national-model

Authors

• Qi Shi, Loyola University Maryland

• Margaux H. Brown, Georgia Regents University