School counselors spun in too many directions

By Patrick Welsh

At this time of the year, the tension among my seniors at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., is palpable. Since they were in grammar school, their parents and teachers have preached about the importance of college, so much so that many kids come to view academics and extracurricular activities as nothing more than opportunities to build résumés to impress admissions offices.

Now that the college applications are in, kids can do nothing but wait to see where they will be accepted. Even the most talented among them have a nagging fear that they won't get in anywhere.
One of the biggest ironies of education today is that while college is touted as the holy grail of four years in high school, guidance counselors, the key players in the application and selection process, are so overloaded with students that they are hard-pressed to do their jobs. Unless we hire more counselors, many students will be cheated.
At T.C. Williams, each counselor has 300 students to serve. And that is not as bad as in some schools. The National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC) reports that the national average is 490 students per counselor. In California, it is an unconscionable 994 students per counselor.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that counselors find themselves faced with ever-expanding responsibilities. They are often forced to play the role of surrogate parent, psychologist and social worker. The days when counselors mainly guided students to jobs or colleges or helped them select proper classes are over. Guidance departments still do those things, but on top of that, they have become a sort of crisis center for families under stress.

Trauma units
"I used to call students to my office because they weren't doing their homework," says T.C. counselor Mary McCarthy. "Now it can be because they don't have a home."
After a three-day weekend, the guidance office can look like an emergency room on Saturday night. Kids who fought with parents or guardians over the weekend are lined up for counselors.
We teachers tend to think that counselors have it easy. We see them sitting in their offices chatting one-on-one with students while we are in our classrooms dealing with 20 to 30 kids at a time. We often feel that the guidance counselors are adversaries -- overly sympathetic advocates for students who make excuses for not working in our classes.
Teachers are also well aware that some counselors aren't as helpful as they can be. One morning last year, I asked the head of our guidance department, Jimmi Barnwell, to take over a college application that had fallen through the cracks. Barnwell, who is a great arm-twister and has formed personal connections at colleges during her 25 years in the business, got on the phone. An acceptance letter from the college went out to my student that afternoon. Too few counselors do what Barnwell did.

Buried under paper
But not for a moment would I trade my job in the classroom for a counselor's. A teacher's day is relatively peaceful and ordered; a counselor's is hectic. For one, there are mountains of paperwork. Every kid applying to college needs a counselor's recommendation. Writing good ones for the seniors in my English class can take me more than an hour; some counselors have to write more than 100 recommendations, a task I would think impossible to do well.
In addition, there is the documentation that state and federal laws demand for the ever-growing numbers of kids whose parents want them classified as "learning disabled" so they can get special accommodations in the classroom. (Teachers and counselors in Northern Virginia schools often joke that if middle-class white kids can't get the "gifted and talented" label, they must be classified "learning disabled," lest their parents have to admit to having an average child.) The fact that 300 to 400 students transfer out of T.C. Williams during a school year and an equal number transfer in adds more paperwork for counselors.
"When you are constantly bombarded from every direction, you can't get to know kids," says T.C. Williams counselor Laura Newton. "It gets to be like a factory. . . . You don't have time to give the personal touch, to listen. You end up a paper pusher."

Even up the odds
The frustration of our counselors is typical of those across the country. A nationwide NACAC survey of counselors in 1998 reported that the main desire of counselors was a lower counselor-to-student ratio. Counselors concluded that the current ratios are "virtually unmanageable." Another priority was more clerical help so that they can spend time with kids.
One way to pay for more counselors would be to cut the number of central-office administrators. In Alexandria, and I am sure every other school system, there are central-office personnel with big salaries and long titles who do not have the least effect on kids in the schools. In Alexandria, two new counselors could be hired at T.C. Williams for the salary of one of these useless bureaucrats. Another way would be to cut some of the physical-education teachers. They have an enormous lobby because so many principals and other administrators rose through the PE ranks. In fact, most states require PE. In my state, it's required for two years in high school. But many kids hate the classes and say they get nothing out of them.
Given the huge numbers of kids that counselors have to work with, what usually happens is that parents who are part of the "in-the-know" network that every school has make sure that their kids get what they need -- indeed, often much more than they need -- from harried counselors. Kids whose parents don't know how to play the system -- or who simply assume that the system will do what it is supposed to do for children -- often are overlooked.
Until school systems wake up and hire more counselors, students who work for years to reach the holy grail of college will continue to be shortchanged.