| Randall Reback
Barnard College, Columbia University
The impact of elementary school counselors on student outcomes
FINAL REPORT
Despite increased attention to the mental health needs of young children and to the importance of mental health in determining success, not much is known about the provision, financing, and effectiveness of school-site mental health services. There are more than 40,000 elementary school counselors employed in the U.S. This is the first nationally representative study of the provision and financing of elementary school counselors. I investigate the following questions: (1) How many and what types of elementary school students receive school-site counseling? (2) How are state mandates and finance policies related to the likelihood that elementary school students receive counseling? (3) How does the availability of additional counselors at an elementary school influence students' academic performance and behavior?
Based on analysis of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survery-Kindergarten cohort, slightly more than 12 percent of third grade students received school-site counseling during the 2001-02 school year. Students are much more likely to receive counseling if they are male, non-Asian, live with only one parent, and/or had parents who recently became divorced or separated. Students are also more likely to receive counseling if they live in a state that directly subsidizes counselors, mandates a minimum counselor-per-student ratio, or simply recommends a minimum counselor-per-student ratio. Furthermore, greater provision of counseling due to these state policies is, at the very least, correlated with positive student outcomes such as higher test score gains and a reduced propensity to internalize or externalize problem behaviors. In other words, states which offer more aggressive elementary counseling policies seem to be doing some things better than other states in terms of promoting students' test score growth and mental health, though it is not obvious whether these things include the counseling policies themselves.
To better identify the casual effects of counseling services, I next use school report card data from the state of Alabama. Regression discontinuity models exploit Alabama's unique financing system for counselors, in which the state fully subsidizes elementary school counselors based on schools' prior year enrollments. These regression discontinuity analyses suggest that greater counselor subsidies reduce student suspensions and weapon-related incidents. The regression discontinuity analyses do not suggest that counselor subsidies have large effects on student test scores, but there is some evidence that the subsidies increase student participation rates on standardized tests, possibly complicating the identification of the true impact of counselor subsidies on student test scores.
Collectively, these results provide suggestive evidence that state policies increasing the availability of elementary school counselors may be an effective means of reducing disciplinary problems and improving students' mental health. Further research is warranted so that we can more precisely estimate the cost effectiveness of these counseling policies.
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