Schools Strengthen Counseling on Postsecondary Options
Pointing students to a fuller range of viable post-high-school options is a challenge for already-overworked counselors
Tammy Dodson’s caseload of 340 students is not unusual for a school counselor in an American high school. Nationwide, a typical high school counselor is responsible for helping to chart the futures of about 270 students each year, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, in Arlington, Va.
But the jobs of Dodson and the other seven counselors at the 2,600-student Grandview High School in Aurora, Colo., are uncommon in that the administrators of her school have freed them from tasks that routinely eat up a lot of time for counselors across the nation—creating the master schedule for courses and conducting state standardized tests. The added flexibility enables the school’s counselors to work with all students to create a four-year high school plan and a postsecondary plan, Dodson says.
The counselors take it upon themselves to make sure each student has a plan in place for what he or she will do after school before walking across the stage at graduation, she adds. “It can be a four-year college, a two-year college, a career and technical education,...
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