School-Wide Factors in NYS High School Counseling Program Readiness

While the dominant school reform paradigm in the United States focuses on the job performance of individual school professionals, research in industrial and organizational psychology has established the importance of system-wide factors for organizational outcomes. One critical factor for achieving quality public schools is guidance program readiness. In this study, a statistical analysis of original survey data from high school guidance counselors in New York State uncovered the crucial importance of counselor-student ratio for program readiness. This research contributes to a growing body of evidence in support of the whole system paradigm of school reform, which seeks to improve both individual and system outcomes through attention to school-wide and system-wide factors.