Giving Compass' Take:

• A recent study reveals that school counselor diversity can help low-income students thrive, and can boost student enrollment in higher education. 

• How can education donors specifically support schools that need access to counselors? 

• Learn more about the benefits of school counselors for kids. 


In a recent study, a high school counselor offered this honest description of the uncertainty of her job: “Maybe later, I’ll start to see kids come back and they’ll be like, oh this helped or that helped,” she said. Still, “Sometimes I leave and I’m like, I’ve done nothing.”

Now, new research captures exactly how much of a difference a counselor like her can make — and it’s substantial, particularly for low-income students.

That study appears to be the first to quantify how individual counselors affect students. Better counselors boost students’ chances of graduating high school and enrolling in and remaining in college, it finds. And students of color do much better when assigned to a counselor of color, seeing their chance of graduating high school jump nearly 4 percentage points.

It comes as a number of other efforts to improve low-income students’ chances of enrolling and persisting in college have produced uneven results — suggesting the basic approach of adding counselors or helping existing ones improve deserves more attention.

It comes as a number of other efforts to improve low-income students’ chances of enrolling and persisting in college have produced uneven results — suggesting the basic approach of adding counselors or helping existing ones improve deserves more attention.

Students who had a counselor of far-above-average quality were 2 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school, 1.5 points more likely to attend college, and 1.4 points more likely to stay in college through their first year.

These effects were even larger for low-income students, students of color, and lower-achieving students. For instance, a very good counselor improved low-income students’ high school graduation rate by 3.4 percentage points and college enrollment by 2.9 points.

Read the full article about school counselor diversity by Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat.