OPINION: At-risk youth aren’t the problem — but they can be part of the counseling solution
There’s room for more than one counseling solution.
First, some numbers:
1-to-464 — the average school counselor-to-student ratio in the United States.
20 percent — the percentage of their time at work that more than half of high-school counseling departments report spending on college-related counseling.
1-to-1,000 — the typical adviser-to-student ratio at community colleges in the United States.
These numbers, on their own, are shocking and upsetting. Disaggregating them reveals both race and class disparities in access to college guidance that make them even more troubling. They help to explain the sobering reality that while 58 percent of students from the highest income quartile earn a degree by age 24, only 11 percent of those who do so are in the lowest income quartile.
What if instead of seeing the huge number of first-generation college students at the nation’s high-poverty schools as a problem at the heart of the guidance gap, we recognize that these young people are a critical part of a potential solution?