California is the #5 state with the least school counselors

Schools across the country were short about 300,000 teachers and staff when the 2022-2023 school year began, according to National Education Association President Becky Pringle. This massive dearth has forced an unfortunate series of developments in schools across the country.

Principals are performing janitorial duties, schools are implementing four-day school weeks to entice applicants for teaching positions with the promise of better work-life balance, and many districts are relaxing their required teaching credentials just to expand their applicant pool. This crisis of discontent has brewed for over a decade and has reached its boiling point in the unsustainable conditions that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

School counselors are no exception to this crisis. It is not uncommon for students to attend a school with police on staff but no counselors.

Across the country, counselors are facing a more challenging workload than ever before. Since 1965, the American School Counselor Association has recommended a counselor-to-student ratio of 250:1. Only two states—Vermont and New Hampshire—meet that criteria. The most severely impacted states, such as Arizona and Michigan, have nearly triple the recommended ratio. It is worth noting there has been little research on the "optimal" counselor caseload (at the time or since the recommendation). Still, the current situation is raising concern across the country.

Charlie Health compiled school counselor-to-student ratio data from the American School Counselor Association and the National Center for Education Statistics.

Read on to see how California compares to other states or read the national story here.

California statistics
- Student to school counselor ratio: 572:1
--- #5 least counselors per student among all states
--- 10,602 counselors to 6,064,504 students

National statistics
- Student to school counselor ratio: 415:1
- 118,902 counselors to 49,356,945 students

States with the most counselors
#1. Vermont: 186:1 student to counselor ratio
#2. New Hampshire: 208:1
#3. Hawaii: 268:1
#4. Colorado: 278:1
#5. Montana: 291:1

States with the least counselors
#1. Arizona: 716:1 student to counselor ratio
#2. Illinois: 665:1
#3. Michigan: 638:1
#4. Minnesota: 592:1
#5. California: 572:1

School counselors differ from school psychologists primarily in the depth of their relationship with students who need support. Counselors based in the schools are a resource for the entire student population and focus on individual or group sessions to build skills to overcome social and behavioral challenges and improve academic performance. In contrast, school psychologists conduct mental health evaluations, diagnose mental health issues, and write individual education plans.

While a counselor's purview may be less specific, they are no less critical to student success. These services are acutely important today as students work through a backlog of pandemic-related issues. According to the results of the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress mathematics assessment administered to fourth and eighth graders across the country, these students experienced the most significant drop in academic performance in more than 30 years.

Access to mental health support is essential to student success. In October 2022, the Department of Education earmarked $280 million for two grant programs to help schools improve this access through training and hiring credentialed mental health professionals.