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Middle and high school counselors believe they have a unique and powerful role to play in preparing all students for good jobs or college, but they feel hamstrung by insufficient training, competing duties, and their own schools' priorities, according to a study released today. The online survey of 5,300 counselors was conducted this past spring for the College Board's Advocacy & Policy Center. One of the largest-ever surveys of counselors, it paints a picture of a committed but frustrated corps that sees a deep schism between the ideal mission of schools and the work that takes shape day to day.

"Most teachers and principals will tell you that non-instructional school staff can make a big difference in school performance. Although we may all know this, it's always useful to have empirical research to confirm it, and to examine the size and nature of the effects. In this paper, economists Scott Carrell and Mark Hoekstra put forth one of the first rigorous tests of how one particular group of employees - school counselors - affect both discipline and achievement outcomes. The authors use a unique administrative dataset of third, fourth, and fifth graders in Alachua County, Florida, a diverse district that serves over 30,000 students. Their approach exploits year-to-year variation in the number of counselors in each school - i.e., whether the outcomes of a given school change from the previous year when a counselor is added to the staff."

"While much is known about the effects of class size and teacher quality on achievement, there is little evidence on whether policymakers can improve education by utilizing non-instructional resources. We exploit plausibly exogenous within-school variation in counselors and find that one additional counselor increases boys' reading and math achievement by over one percentile point, and reduces misbehavior of both boys and girls. Estimates imply the marginal counselor has the same impact on overall achievement as increasing the quality of every teacher in the school by nearly one-third of a standard deviation, and is twice as effective as reducing class size by hiring an additional teacher."

"...education is at a crossroads in our country and our neighborhood, our city is right at the intersection of these crossroads. There is an attempt to make schooling privatized, charter-ized, and more inequitable than it already is. There is an attempt to get rid of experienced teachers who have built relationships with families, who truly know how to teach and replace them with less expensive, inexperienced teachers who likely will only be at the school for two years.  There is an attempt to teach through testing, to make your child so bored in school from over-standardized testing that students aren't excited for school anymore. There is an attempt to further cut librarians, counselors, nurses, PE, World Language, Art and now classroom teachers, in order to "save" money. A budget is a political document, not a financial one, it's about priorities. Some priorities obviously need to be re-evaluated.  Teachers in no way shape or form want to strike, we want to be working with and educating your children."

Put three rockstars of the education world in a room together and you get this fantastic panel from last week's Netroots Nation on the future of public education, the importance of community organizing and the path towards systemic education reform to provide every child with a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.  The panelists were education historian Diane Ravicth, John H. Jackson, President & CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, and Ken Bernstein, a long-time teacher and education advocate. All three had harsh words for policymakers pedaling ineffective or untested policies as viable reform strategies. "We don't have an innovation challenge, we have an implementation challenge," Jackson said. We know what policies work. Countless studies have shown the importance of early childhood education, access to healthcare and guidance counselors, and support for teachers. But the practical, systemic solutions that come out of that body of research are ignored in favor of a political agenda that seeks to privatize and dismantle a public institution that is vital to our nation's economy and democratic well-being.

Steve Whitten has had two careers - the first as a non-certified special-education teacher, the second as an administrator and counselor at the Rhode Island School of Design. Now, he is embarking on a third profession as an English and special-education teacher in a public school. Typically, Whitten would have to complete a two-year certificate program at an education school. Instead, he has enrolled in an intensive, six-week program run by the Rhode Island Teaching Fellows that promises to prepare him to fly solo this fall.

As millions of students prepare to go back to school, budget cuts are resulting in teacher layoffs and larger classes across the country. This comes as the drive towards more standardized testing increases despite a string of cheating scandals in New York, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and other cities. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also recently unveiled a controversial plan to use waivers to rewrite parts of the nation's signature federal education law, No Child Left Behind. We speak to New York City public school teacher Brian Jones and Diane Ravitch, the former Assistant Secretary of Education and counselor to Education Secretary Lamar Alexander under President George H. W. Bush, who has since this post dramatically changed her position on education policy. She is the author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."

New federal statistics shared Thursday about thousands of schools and districts show that students across the country don't have equal access to a rigorous education, experienced teachers, early education, and school counselors.

Charter schools across Oregon learned three weeks before school started that they would not receive up to $225,000 each in grants from the state. From Portland to Bandon, school directors scrambled to fill the void, cutting supplies, counselors, computers, library materials and turning to parents for more donations. In a few cases, the loss of start-up funds may postpone schools opening until next year. Charter school leaders want to know why they lost the expected funds and why they weren't told sooner. The state says the federal government is at fault; the federal government put the onus back on the state. Either way, it could have a long-lasting impact on the schools.