The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has long maintained that personalized relationships that promote school connectedness (the belief students have that adults and peers in their school care about them as individuals, as well as about their learning) is the most important factor in supporting students’ in-school and out-of-school success. In 2009, the Public Agenda study found that only about one-half of their sample of young adults reported that their counselors knew them as individuals. The other half said that their counselors treated them as just another face in the crowd.

The good news in the Public Agenda study was that the one-half of the sample that said their counselors knew them as individuals had all the better college-going outcomes: they were more likely to go directly from high school to college, receive financial aid or scholarships to pay for college, be more satisfied in their college choice, choose a college based on academic and financial aid offers, and feel that going to their college would help them get a good job after graduation.

The chart on the next page is from an ASCA-funded research study (Lapan, Poynton, & Jones, 2019). It shows how lower counselor-to-student ratios help students feel that their counselors know them as an individual. As ratios approach the ASCA-recommended levels, students were more likely to feel that they were not just another face in the crowd to their counselors. Better ratios promoted greater student connectedness to school.

It is a short, easy-to-use 4-item scale. Counselors and educators can use this scale to evaluate how connected students are to the counselors in their schools. Students, who rate themselves on this scale as being more personally connected to their counselors, also report greater success with college and career planning, and that there is someone in their school available to help them with their personal social-emotional problems and concerns. The Counselor-Student Connectedness Scale can be used to measure student outcomes from interventions and establish school-wide norms to show growth over time and the strength of the personal connections between counselors and students.