An evaluation of high school counseling services to success of at-risk students.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to provide pertinent data to enable public school administrators and counselors, through counseling services assessment, to make rational and logical decisions regarding perceptions that can be used in targeting areas within the counseling department which need to be improved to address the success of high school at-risk students. The main emphasis of the study was to assess the perceptions of at-risk students, randomly selected parents of at-risk students, secondary teachers, counselors, and administrators regarding the evaluation of high school counseling services to the success of at-risk students. Perceptual trends, similarities and differences among participating groups were also examined. This study's focus was to better understand the effectiveness of delivering counseling services from a collective perspective, viewing evaluation of counseling services as a tool in which it can be used to ensure consistency in conceptualizing and measuring success of at-risk students. The test group had 506 valid cases with three missing cases, examining the perceptions of at-risk students, teachers, counselors, randomly selected parents of at-risk students and students at Project COPE in the School District of Osceola County, Florida and analyzed the data using four one-way factorial ANOVAs of mean item satisfactory rating broken down by site (Gateway, Osceola, St. Cloud High Schools and Project COPE) in turn with: (1) Group (Students-208; parents-32; teachers-237; counselors-4; and administrators-25). (2) Gender (male and female). (3) Ethnicity (Anglo, Hispanic American, African American, Native American, others). Major findings revealed that organization and administration of counseling services and programs to the success of secondary at-risk students in the School District of Osceola County, Florida are at least "adequate" in that: at-risk students were adequately informed of counseling services; were adequately informed of career information and work education programs. Subjects were generally satisfied with programs designed to meet the needs of at-risk students. Overall, the counseling staff showed positive strengths in such areas as encouraging at-risk students to stay in school; keeping at-risk students informed of academic and social programs in school; responding to at-risk students' needs and exhibiting concern and providing student-parent-teacher-counselor conferences regularly. Conclusion. The subjects differed on many of the 40 items of this study, but only a few showed any significant differences in their perceptions of counseling services and programs to the success of at-risk students. However, all groups saw their differences as being important components at the high school in which they are involved.