Do Lower Student to Counselor Ratios Reduce School Disciplinary Problems?

The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends that there be no morethan 250 students to each school counselor. Although numerous studies in the education literatureshow that school counselors play a positive role in educating children, to our knowledge, this isthe first study answering the question of whether lower student to counselor ratios, all else equal,improve student outcomes. Using data provided to us by Florida’s Alachua County School Districtand the University of Florida Counselor Education Department, we show that lower student tocounselor ratios decrease both the recurrence of student disciplinary problems and the share ofstudents involved in a disciplinary incident. These effects are greater for minority and low-incomestudents. The fixed-effect models used, control for all unobserved heterogeneity across schools,isolating the effects on discipline from the within-school changes in the student-to-counselor ratio.The empirical methodologies employed produce unbiased estimates as long as the variation in thestudent to counselor ratio is not driven by unobserved factors that affect disciplinary outcomes.