Beech Grove, Indiana (July 21, 2018) — About a year ago, the
counselors in the Beech Grove school district made a discovery: They were
spending less than half of their time on counseling.
Instead of meeting with students one-on-one or in small
groups, they were spending most of their days on routine tasks, such as
overseeing lunch, proctoring exams, and filling in for secretaries.
When they realized how much time those other tasks were
taking away from counseling work, it was “an eye-opener for everyone,” said
Paige Anderson, the district college and career coordinator.
The counselors began tracking their time as part of a
planning grant from the Lilly Endowment, a prominent Indianapolis-based
philanthropy. In 2016, the foundation launched Comprehensive Counseling
Initiative for Indiana K-12 Students, a $49 million effort to improve
counseling in Indiana. Experts say meaningful counseling can help schools
support students as they navigate problems both at home and in the classroom.
(The Lilly Endowment also supports Chalkbeat. Learn more about our funding
here.)
What Beech Grove staff members learned during their planning
process is already changing their approach to counseling, said Trudi Wolfe, a
counselor at Central Elementary School, who was instrumental in applying for
the Lilly grants. Now, administrators are taking on more tasks like proctoring
tests. And one intermediate school hired a new counselor.
“The schools will take counselors and meet the needs of the
school,” Wolfe said. “Part of the process is helping administrators understand,
school counselors need to be doing school counseling.”
Last month, the endowment announced its second round of
implementation grants, which awarded about $12.2 million to
39 schools and districts. Beech Grove will receive $259,727 to redesign its counseling program
to focus on the social and emotional needs of students, with the largest chunk
of that money going to staff training.
The aim is to develop a strategy for handling the trauma
that students face at home, said Wolfe. Over the past 10 years, the number of
students in the district who are poor enough to get subsidized meals has risen
by about 25 percentage points to 72 percent of students.
Beech Grove has also been affected by the opioid crisis,
said Wolfe. “We have kids living with parents who are dependent on drugs, and
they are not meeting the needs of their children.”
Those growing challenges mean that it is essential for
counselors to have a plan for helping students instead of just meeting the
needs of each day, Wolfe said.
Counseling is an investment that can have long-term
benefits. After Colorado began an initiative to hire more school counselors,
participating schools had higher graduation rates, increased enrollment in
career-and-technical programs, and more students taking college-level courses.
A 2016 report found that by keeping students from dropping out, the Colorado
program saved taxpayers more than $319 million.
But in Indiana schools, counselors often have large
caseloads. In 2014-2015, Indiana had an average of
543 students per counselor,
above the national average and significantly higher than the American School
Counselor Association recommendation of no more than 250 students per
counselor.
Hiring more counselors alone is not enough to create
stronger school counseling programs, said Tim Poynton, an associate professor
at the University of Massachusetts Boston who studies counseling. They also
have to spend their time on meaningful counseling work.
“You need more school counselors. That’s necessary, but it’s
also not sufficient,” said Poynton. “If you hire more school counselors, and
you have them doing lunch duty and things that basically you don’t need a
master’s degree in school counseling to do, then you’re not going to see those
important metrics move.”
When schools were applying for the Lilly Endowment grants,
many reported that counselors were focused on urgent social and emotional
challenges and struggled to help students plan for the future, according to the
endowment.
Those challenges can have ripple effects, making it harder
for school staff to tackle long-term goals such as ensuring that students sign
up and meet the requirements for the state’s scholarship program, 21st Century
Scholars.
If counseling is done well, most students will be prepared
to go to college, even if they do not seem interested when they are in high
school, Poynton said. But when counselors are dealing with urgent problems,
they have significantly less time to devote to college preparation, he said.
“In urban schools, school counselors are often focused on
getting students to school and meeting their immediate needs,” Poynton said.
“In the higher-performing suburban schools, where the students and families
don’t have those same kind of issues or concerns, the emphasis is almost
entirely on the college-going process.”
In a statement from the endowment, Vice President for
Education Sara B. Cobb said the response to the Lilly grants shows increased
awareness of the crucial need for counseling programs.
“We are impressed with how school leaders have engaged a
wide variety of community partners to assess the academic, college, career and
social and emotional needs of their students, and respond to them,” Cobb said.
The Lilly grants are going to a broad array of schools, and
they are using the money in different ways. At Damar Charter Academy, which
educates students with special needs, few students earn traditional diplomas or
have good options for higher education. That’s why school staff plan to use the
$100,000 counseling grant they received to build relationships with employers
and create training programs for skills such as small engine repair, automotive
maintenance, landscaping, and culinary arts, said Julie Gurulé, director of
student services.
“If we can commit to getting them the skills they need while
they are with us,” she said, “they will be able to go out and gain meaningful
employment, and … lead the kind of lives that we all want to.”
These are the districts and schools in Marion County that
received counseling grants. (Find the
full list here.)
Beech Grove City Schools $259,727
Damar Charter School $100,000
Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township $671,300
Purdue Polytechnic Indianapolis High School $100,000
By Dylan Peers McCoy