2017-2022

Hawaiʻi
Counseling
and Advising
An Essential Component
to Student Readiness
Issue Brief
Table of
Contents
1.
College and Career Counseling and
Advising is Essential

2.
Hawaiʻi P-20's Counseling and
Advising Journey

3.
Best Practices

4.
Pandemic Lessons

5.
Recommended Actions

6.
Acknowledgements
01 College and Career Counseling
and Advising is Essential

There are approximately 10,000 high school graduates each year in Hawaiʻi who need to make the decision of what to do
as a young adult. For many of these high school seniors, the process of deciding what to do after high school can be
extremely daunting, especially for students from disadvantaged populations. The demand for high-quality and equitable
counseling and advising services to prepare students for life after secondary school has been a historical challenge to
address. With large numbers of students on campuses and limited time capacity of educators and staff, the need to
provide every individual student with a high-quality education and student services has been overwhelming to our public
school systems.

Hawaiʻi P-20 Partnerships for Education launched the College and Career Pathways Initiative in 2018 to address specific
elements of this large, statewide challenge. The College and Career Pathways Initiative is a statewide commitment to
preparing students for career and life success. With an established, statewide Hawaiʻi College and Career Pathways
Initiative framework, Hawaiʻi P-20 found it imperative to heavily invest in improving College and Career Counseling and
Advising practices to better support the trajectory of students successfully transitioning into postsecondary education,
training, and the workforce. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for comprehensive counseling and advising support
has only been amplified. 

"
It is crucial to keep in
mind that schools can
have the most
rigorous curriculum,
but if the student is
not coming to school
or coming to school
with their basic needs
not being met, they
will not achieve to
their highest The purpose of this issue brief is to share recent key learnings around
counseling and advising practices in Hawaiʻi, suggest ways to maximize

"
potential.
effective structures, and uplift the voices of counselors who play a critical role
in opening more doors towards equitable college and career access for
students. Our hope is that we can spark change in the narrative of students
Silvia Koch
feeling uncertain about their futures, to one where they are confident to
Counselor
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education aspire, identify, and reach a future plan that serves their individualized needs. 
 Hawaiʻi P-20's Counseling and
Advising Journey
02

The launch of Hawai‘i P-20's investment journey towards improving counseling and advising systems in our K-12 schools
began in 2017 through a statewide analysis of counseling efforts within schools. The analysis was conducted through a
statewide Hawai‘i State Department of Education (HIDOE) counselors survey in order to determine how counselors were
allocating their time to support students to be college and career ready.

Through this initial survey, we were able to identify activities where counselors were spending their time and the extent to
which those activities fell into the framework created by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA), which many
HIDOE schools currently follow. Four years after the initial survey, Hawai‘i P-20 conducted a follow-up counselor survey to
gather information on three areas of interest:

1. What counseling changes or progress has been made since 2017? 

2. What is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on counseling in Hawai‘i?
3. Where do HIDOE counselors continue to need assistance? 

Both counselor survey results have shaped Hawai‘i P-20’s counseling and advising statewide efforts for the last five years
to better improve college and career outcomes. The timeline on the next page illustrates the progress made in counseling
and advising since 2017.
 Hawaiʻi P-20's Counseling and
02 Advising Journey –
What has happened in the last five years?

Hawaiʻi P-20 Counseling and Advising Projects

“6-to-16” (Planning Stage)
Hawai‘i P-20 received a 3-year grant focused on building comprehensive Statewide Counselor survey
College & Career counseling programs that begin in middle school, continue A statewide counselor survey and focus group discussions were conducted to
through high school, and into postsecondary education. assess the state of HIDOE counseling services based on ASCA guidelines.

2017
This “6-to- 16” project included five complex teams comprised of HIDOE Middle School & High School Survey Summary Report
schools and University of Hawai‘i campuses. Teams planned out their strategies
to implement over the next 2 years.

“6-to-16” (Innovation Stage) GEAR UP “6-16” (Expansion)

Five “6-to-16” teams began to implement their planned College & Career Hawai‘i P-20 was awarded a 7 year GEAR UP grant from the U.S. DOE. The
readiness activities with the support of the innovation grant funding. awarded proposal sought to expand the implementation of aligned, “6- to-16”

2018 counseling programs across the state.

Hawai‘i Nudge Project

CCCR Expectations Guide
“6-to-16” (Refinement Stage) In collaboration with Nudge4
P-20 created the College, Career, and
6-to-16 teams continue to refine their Solutions, Hawai‘i P-20 launched the
Community Readiness Expectations
projects and implement only high- text-based advising program, “Hawai‘i
Guide (CCCR), which provides a
impact College & Career activities that Nudge Project” to increase college

2019
continuum of grade- level benchmarks
align across middle and high school enrollment, FAFSA completion rates,
to help prepare middle, high school
and into postsecondary. and counseling practices at HIDOE
and college students for life success. high schools.

Next Steps to Your Future

CCCR Webinar Series & Summit
Statewide Counselor In response to the COVID-19
To improve alignment with
Professional Development (PD) pandemic, the Next Steps to Your Hawai‘i Nudge Project
postsecondary educators, the College,
Hawai‘i P-20, in collaboration with Future (NSF) initiative was created to The "Hawai‘i Nudge Project"
Career and Community  Readiness
HIDOE and Chaminade University, Webinar Series and annual summit help graduating seniors stay on track expanded to 7 additional HIDOE high
launched a 5-course series of credit in transitioning to their post- high schools. The project established an
were created. These virtual PD events

2020
bearing courses (PDE3) for HIDOE school plans. NSF connects students online website to publicly share text-
aim to bring educators and key
counselors and teachers to receive with dedicated advising services and based resources, program materials,
stakeholders together to learn about
relevant counseling PD to support provides students with free education and training.
students. relevant efforts to help students to and training courses.
reach their college and career goals.

Statewide Counselor Next Steps to Your Future Achieve & Earn  

CCCR Webinar Series & Summit
Professional Development (PD) Based on successful outcome data Hawai‘i P-20 launched a new 2-year
Hawai‘i P-20 continues to offer the
Hawai‘i P-20, HIDOE, and Chaminade from NSF 2020, Hawaiʻi P-20 cohort pilot project for 60 high school
College, Career, & Community
University continues to offer relevant continued to offer Next Steps to Your seniors transitioning into college.
Readiness Webinar series and annual

2021
online professional development Future (NSF) to help graduating Students receive counseling and
statewide convening for K-12 &
(PDE3) courses for HIDOE counselors seniors stay on track with achieving advising services, incentive funding,
and educators. postsecondary partners. their post-high school plans. scholarships, and mentoring support.
 Best Practices – Structures 03

The needs of Hawai‘i students are extremely diverse and have dramatically changed since the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
In response to these changes, more schools are beginning to devote their time toward finding the best mix of models and
strategies that offer high-quality and effective counseling services for students. This section explores reasonable
counseling and advising strategies that schools can immediately consider putting into practice to improve student college
and career outcomes. We encourage taking familiar school structures and adjusting it to be more effective and purposeful
for all students.

The Question: Are we maximizing counselors’ unique skill sets at our schools?

National research shows that among college and career readiness efforts, counselors serve as a pivotal source
of information and holistic support for all students. Based on the HIDOE statewide counselor survey findings,
there is one area that we should leverage to maximize the efforts of Hawai‘i's counselors to better serve our
students, and this entails clarifying the job duties of a counselor.

ASCA Recommendation

80%
Direct Services:
In-person interactions between
ASCA recommends that a minimum school counselors and students.
of 80% of a school counselor's time
should be spent in direct and Indirect Services:
indirect student services. Services provided on behalf of
students as a result of the school
counselor's interactions with others.

"
"
ASCA, 2021
School counselors are highly educated, professionally certified individuals
who help students succeed in school and plan their careers.
03 Best Practices – Structures

A Solution: Provide counselors with clarified job expectations

Among various existing counseling and advising structures that currently take place in the HIDOE school system,
providing counselors with clarified job descriptions and role expectations by grade level/band should be a top
priority to ensure equitable services for all students.

HIDOE Middle School Survey Data

2017 2021

62% of Hawaiʻi DOE middle

and high schools fall under
the recommended ASCA
62% 72% 73%
250:1 ratio. (2021 data)
In 2017, HIDOE middle school counselors
reported that 72% of their day was spent on
direct and indirect student services. In 2021, there
was a 1% increase in change but it still stayed
below the ASCA 80% recommendation
"
School counselors are responsible for each
and every student in the building and, unlike
others on campus, they are in a position to
HIDOE High School Survey Data
focus on the educational journey of each
student.
The Education Trust " 2017 2021

74% 73%
In 2021, HIDOE high school counselors reported
that 73% of their day was spent on direct and
indirect student services. This was down from
74% in 2017 and remains below the ASCA 80%
recommendation.
 Best Practices – Equity 03
The Question: Are all students receiving sufficient counseling and advising?

Based on our statewide HIDOE survey findings, many students receive insufficient guidance in answering the most
important college and career transition questions: “What career path should I choose?” and “Where can I gain the
knowledge and skills I need to get a good job?” According to a recent article in Education Week (Klein, 2020), only 52
percent of students feel ready to enter the workforce after high school. The responsibility of career planning seems to
fall on the school career specialists or guidance counselors. 

The lack of time to fulfill duties dedicated to college and career counseling in daily school schedules yields concerning
gaps in counseling and advising support for all students. As a result, counselors are forced to work beyond their
contractual agreements to meet the demands of their jobs.  This “reactive” approach to their work forces them to
prioritize the only high-risk students experiencing academic and social/emotional needs, generating further inequities.

Counselor Survey Responses

Middle school High school

A Solution:
250:1 Counselor ranking of
student groups they counselor
responses
counselor
responses
interact with (n=38) (n=51)

Ensure counselors have Students with Students who

Most Interaction struggle
reasonable student caseloads behavioral concerns academically
To ensure the quality of support from
Second most Students with Students with
counselors, it’s imperative that schools social/emotional social/emotional
interaction concerns concerns
follow the appropriate student to
counselor caseload ratio at an ASCA Students who
Third most struggle Students with
recommended 250 students per one interaction academically behavioral concerns
school counselor. 
Students who are
Fourth most Students in the high academic
If counselors are given a reasonable interaction academic middle achievers
student caseload and appropriate
Students who are
counselor job responsibilities, they could Least Interaction high academic Students in the
achievers academic middle
become leaders in building a stronger
culture of college and career readiness and
have more capacity to provide personalized
counseling and advising services to every Key Finding:
single student. Hawai‘i counselors are less likely to interact with
middle and high academic achieving students.
03 Best Practices – Partnerships

The Question: Are we effectively working together to best prepare our students for
critical transition points?

Our education system along with local employers have been experiencing confusion about who is responsible for
leading the movement of providing students with up-to-date, relevant, and valuable college and career
knowledge, skills, and experiences. It is to our overall benefit to embrace the idea that all stakeholders are
responsible for this work. To achieve this concerted effort, we will need to collaboratively organize our counseling
and advising goals and expectations for students across systems and coordinate processes, terminology, and
requirements to avoid student frustration. This will lead to students understanding the actionable steps they need
to take to successfully transition through each phase of their educational journey. 

In recent years, education policy advocates have championed the concept of aligned advising (A New Framework
for Aligned Advising), which envisions academic advising as a linked process that takes place over the course of a
student’s academic career journey, cumulatively preparing students for post-secondary education and careers.
This perspective advocates the utilization of counselors’ training to provide the relevant information, tools, and
personalized social-emotional support to best prepare students for the next phase of their academic and career
journey.

"
No one system alone can guide individuals throughout their education and career
paths. Policies should foster strong partnerships among public systems to break down
siloes, reduce redundancies, and smooth transition points for students and workers.
JFF, Modernizing Career Navigation in the U.S. "
 Best Practices – Partnerships 03
A Solution: Create collaborative partnerships to develop a statewide equity-driven
counseling and advising plan to support students' transition towards postsecondary
education and careers.

To improve student preparedness for adulthood and career transitions, Hawaiʻi will need to build comprehensive
and integrated college and career guidance programs and services. We can do this with strong and committed
partnerships between K-12 schools, colleges, workforce, and community partners. These partnerships are critical to
ensure that services are prioritized, organized, and consistent in their support for all students. By building
partnerships, stakeholders can create new state-level and student direct strategies that extend across systems
such as building necessary transition programs for students, develop statewide equity-driven plans to better serve
underrepresented populations, facilitate capacity building, enable cross-sector data sharing, and establish
processes that encourages institutions to blend and braid funds to support counseling and advising initiatives.

Overall, Hawaiʻi counselors varied considerably in terms of how

frequently they met with counselors at other institutions

59%

59% of middle school counselors interacted with

high school counselors yearly

3% 32%

3% of middle school counselors never 32% of high school counselors indicated

interacted with that they never interacted with
high school counselors college/university counselors
04 Pandemic Lessons

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, counseling and advising services have become a high priority area for many
K-12 and postsecondary schools in Hawaiʻi. The 2020-2021 school year featured a great deal of distance learning and
general uncertainty, and we sought to clarify how these factors affected the student-counselor dynamic using the
statewide counselor survey.

What did student-counselor engagement look like during the pandemic (2020-2021)?

Through the responses collected from the 2021 HIDOE counselor survey, most respondents indicated a need for
multiple communication channels to reach students. Several counselors mentioned contacting parents because they
could not otherwise track down the student.  In many cases, counselors who previously had access to students
through classroom settings experienced limited access during the pandemic because of the emphasis on students'
passing grades; therefore, class time could not be forfeited for counselor classroom guidance. 

Addressing Pandemic Barriers

When surveying HIDOE counselors in 2021, we found that many of the pandemic barriers seemed to be addressed in
similar ways across the state.

What counseling changes made

What were your most effective during the pandemic are you
methods in addressing barriers? continuing to keep and implement? 
• Using multiple methods to contact students
• Conducting virtual meetings
• Contact Parents/Guardians
• Using student email
• Coordinate with teachers
• Using texting
• Posting counseling information online
Counselors emphasized:
The need to utilize multiple means of Sustaining Counseling Changes
communication with students and families
The need to be proactive Despite the many challenges counselors and
The need to utilize a scheduling system educators faced during the pandemic, there
Technology-mediated counseling has shortcomings were beneficial changes that staff anticipate
sustaining within their school structure.
associated with it. (e.g. wi-fi challenges,
video/camera abilities, and privacy limitations.)
 Recommended Actions 05

What are Hawaiʻi counselors saying about policies? 

Through the 2021 HIDOE counselor survey, counselors were given a list of national policies that were implemented in
various states and were asked to indicate whether they agreed that these policies would help students progress
toward their college and career goals.
While all policies were highly rated by Hawai’i middle and high school counselors, the top two policies that were
rated the highest were: 
1. Clarifying the counselor’s role 
2. Providing ongoing counselor training/professional development

Most counselors agree that various counseling policies could have

a beneficial impact on helping students progress toward their
college and career goals

Middle School High School

3.39
Providing summer counseling
4

3.84
250:1 student-to-counselor ratio
4.34

4.41
Provide ongoing counselor training/PD
4.56

4.4
Clarify counselor's role
4.5

4.06
Define student milestones, delineate responsibilities
4.33

Survey Scale: 1- Strongly Disagree, 5- Strongly Agree

05 Recommended Actions

Where do middle school and high school counselors

want to spend more time?
 Recommended Actions – 05
Policy Recommendations

Hawai‘i counselors play an essential role in our educational pipeline to ensure students have rigorous and
comprehensive educational experiences. Achieving equitable education that includes student services for all
students to be college and career ready will require a significant amount of micro- and macro-level systemic
changes.

By drawing on five years of learning from various state-level counseling and advising pilot projects (see list
of Hawai‘i P-20 pilot projects in Section 2 of this report), data insights from Hawai‘i DXP’s College and Career
Readiness Indicator reports, and the Hawai‘i statewide counselor surveys, Hawai‘i P-20 will continue to work
with community partners, advocates, and educational stakeholders to prioritize ways to improve counseling
and advising practices across the state at the K-12 and postsecondary levels.

The following three action items listed below are highly recommended to initiate sustainable change that
will better support all Hawai‘i students as they prepare for a future that is right for them.

Policy Recommendation 1:
1 Revise and Clarify Counselor Job Descriptions

Many counselors are overburdened by tedious and unrelated tasks that do not directly
support students’ preparation for success after graduation. By systematizing and following
ASCA recommendations, the administration can position counselors to become champions
within a school leadership team to design a path that promotes equity in student academic,
career, and life success within their communities.

Creating clear counselor job descriptions and ensuring that each counselor has no more
than a 250-student caseload ratio, administrators will gain a clearer perspective on how to
delineate and better align responsibilities that maximize the time school staff, teachers, and
counselors have to drive college and career readiness changes. 
 Recommended Actions –
05 Policy Recommendations

Policy Recommendation 2:
2 Provide Sustainable Counseling and Advising Professional
Development

The changing nature of workforce trends and best practices for student career preparedness
highlights the importance of relevant and consistent professional development for counselors
throughout Hawai‘i’s educational system. To improve student college and career readiness
outcomes, other states are beginning to invest in ongoing professional development and finding
new certification structures for counselors and educators to be equipped with appropriate and
timely knowledge to help all students successfully navigate their various postsecondary and career
options.

What are counselors saying about Professional Development?

Hawai‘i DOE counselors...

prefer to participate in professional development that is counselor-specific and provided by
non-school sources

have identified several potential professional development topic areas of interest

• mental health
• social-emotional learning
• student/family engagement

" • college and career emerging practices

School organized professional development... is always geared to teachers and

not counselors. But we are forced to go so we know what the teachers are doing
in the classroom. It's really frustrating to sit through 6 hours of common
formative assessment training we will never use when we could have done an

"
ASCA planning/workday with our department instead.

Counselor survey response

 Recommended Actions – 05
Policy Recommendations

Policy Recommendation 3:
3 Define Student Milestones and Delineate Roles and
Responsibilities

K-12 and postsecondary schools, stakeholders, and community partners can better collaborate
and define specific responsibilities and tasks related to coordinating college and career
opportunities for all students by establishing a set of clear, grade-level milestones that all
students should meet as they prepare to transition into life after high school. 

There is a compelling desire from most HIDOE schools to integrate a school-wide college and
career program within the classrooms to ensure all students are given the opportunity to gain
the relevant knowledge and experiences within their K-12 academic journey. In order to reach
all students, schools should invite all teachers and staff to participate in this student
development effort. When schools implement a whole school approach, students are better
prepared for their futures. (Whittinghill, 2021).

Based on Hawaiʻi P-20’s statewide counselor surveys conducted in 2017 and 2021, there was a
high-interest from both HIDOE middle and high school counselors to spend more time on
counseling-specific activities, and a desire to spend less time on non-counseling activities as
suggested by ASCA . If student milestones were created at all schools (e.g. Hawaii P-20 CCCR
Expectations Guide), counselors would be able to strategically work with teachers and
administrators to design comprehensive and aligned college and career curriculum and
experiences throughout a student’s entire academic journey with minimal program
redundancies.
 06 Acknowledgements

This issue brief highlights

viewpoints and summarizes
Hawaiʻi P-20’s leading counseling
and advising pilot projects and
statewide initiatives that
occurred between 2017-2022.
Through the collaboration with
various funders, educational
stakeholders, and community
partners, our hope is to spark
change among our College and
Career Counseling and Advising
practices to better prepare
Hawaiʻi’s students for bright
futures.

Mahalo to our various project supporters which include Hawaiʻi State Department of Education,
University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges, Harold K.L Castle Foundation, GEAR UP Hawaiʻi,
Stupski Foundation, University of Hawaii Foundation, and Hawaii Community Foundation.
February 2023

www.hawaiip20.org

[email protected]