Getting more Idahoans to go on to college is the top education goal for the state. But sometimes state agencies disagree about how to realize that. Take a report issued last year by Idaho’s Office of Performance Evaluations. OPE evaluates state agencies and programs.
The report, Reducing Barriers to Post-Secondary Education had recommendations to the State Board of Education, the Department of Education and the Labor Department. Last week OPE followed up to see how those recommendations were coming. The State Board and Labor Department are working on theirs with varying degrees of progress. But leaders at the state Department of Education took a different approach. They said no.
“That recommendation did not come from thin air or anything,” says Rakesh Mohan OPE’s director. “The recommendation was based on the research that we did.”
Mohan stands by the recommendations but says state agencies are free to reject his staff’s advice. In this case that dealt with school counselors. One recommendation was to reduce the student to counselor ratio which is nearly 450 to one. Report co-author Bryon Welch says they repeatedly heard a call for more counselors in their field work.
“Students and the teachers and others really voiced those opinions that sometimes students didn’t have a navigator so to speak to help them apply for financial aid or get through the college application process,” Welch says.
But Luci Willits, chief of staff for Idaho’s Department of Education says it’s impractical to talk about hiring new counselors now.
“There is great value in school counselors. The question is where do we put our resources at this time?” Willits says. “There will come a time when we can look at expanding staff but given the economy it would be more prudent for us to look at those who are currently in the system versus adding more to a system that has had cuts.”
Willits says for now the department wants to focus on increasing teacher salaries. As for helping more students go on to college, she says the department wants teachers to play a bigger role rather than relying on counselors to do it.
Copyright 2013 Boise State Public Radio