Expanding school counseling: The impacts of California funding changes

Counselors are a common school resource for students navigating complicated and consequential education choices, but most students have limited access to them. We study one of the largest U.S. policies to increase access to school counselors. We use a variety of panel-based estimators to show that California’s Supplemental School Counseling Program increased the number of counselors on staff by about one and improved counselor to student ratios, but reduced average counselor experience. We find that increased funding for counselors led to large increases in high school graduation and measures of school climate. The policy also led to more modest gains in California high school exit exam performance and some public college enrollment rates. These impacts were largest at high poverty and rural schools, as well as for students who were male, socioeconomically disadvantaged, or Black or Hispanic. Thus, expanding access to counselors may help address equity gaps in college access and student well-being.