School for School Counselors Podcast

GRADED: Needs Assessments

• School for School Counselors • Episode 159

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Needs assessments are everywhere in school counseling, and they're especially enticing when you’re just starting out. They feel like the smart, strategic thing to do. But what if they’re just giving you more to carry?

In this episode, we’re taking a hard look at needs assessments: who’s pushing them, why they’ve become the go-to starting point, and what they can cost you. 

We’ll cover the real benefits and the overlooked drawbacks- like ethical risks, political landmines, and the guilt spiral that comes from trying to meet every demand.

You’ll hear how one research-backed insight helped shift the way I think about stakeholder feedback and why your professional judgment might matter more than you’ve been taught.

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “What am I supposed to do next?”, this episode has answers (and a grade you probably won’t expect!).


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Reference:

Zabek, F., Lyons, M.D., Alwani, N. et al. (2023). Roles and functions of school mental health professionals within comprehensive school mental health systems. School Mental Health 15, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-022-09535-0


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⭐️ Want support with real-world strategies that actually work on your campus? We’re doing that every day in the School for School Counselors Mastermind. Come join us! ⭐️

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Our goal at School for School Counselors is to help school counselors stay on fire, make huge impacts for students, and catalyze change for our roles through grassroots advocacy and collaboration. Listen to get to know more about us and our mission, feel empowered and inspired, and set yourself up for success in the wonderful world of school counseling.

Speaker 1:

It is time to start a new school year. You've got your lanyard, your office is prepped, your email signature is updated and ready to go, and now you're thinking about how do you start this year better, how do you get it started off the right way? Quote unquote. So, like every other school counselor out there, you fire up Google Forms and you build a needs assessment because you want to be data-driven, you want to gather stakeholder input and you want to do what you've always been taught to do. But here's the thing what if I told you that sending that form, especially at the very start of your role on a new campus, might actually hurt your program more than it helps? Keep listening and I'll tell you why. Hey, school counselor, welcome back In this episode of our new graded series. We're pulling back the curtain on one of the first tools that everyone tells you you need the needs assessment. It sounds strategic, but is it actually helping or just giving you more to worry about? I'll share why I thought a needs assessment was the right move early on, what the research says about its usefulness and why you don't need to carry the weight of everyone else's wish list just to prove you're doing your job. So if you're ready for some straight talk, my friend, some clarity on your work and a little bit of rebellion, you're going to be in the right place. I'm Steph Johnson and this is the School for School Counselors podcast, and this is the School for School Counselors podcast.

Speaker 1:

Back as a younger school counselor, I can remember being new on a campus and not really knowing what my predecessor had done. I had a vague idea. She talked a lot about guidance lessons and that was kind of it. I inherited an office full of yellow papers. There were some magnetic words on the side of one of the many filing cabinets in that office and I just I didn't feel like I had a really good hold on what she had been doing, what the campus expected of me or really even the direction that I wanted to build that school counseling program that I wanted to build that school counseling program. So, after I spent an entire summer planning out curriculum and aligning it across grades and doing all the things I thought I should do to be a prepared and professional school counselor by the way, that didn't work out so well I also prepared a needs assessment and I was chomping at the bit until professional development began. Our teachers arrived on campus and I proudly distributed the link to the needs assessment and virtually said tell me what you think. And boy oh boy, did they ever I got an earful or, I guess, an eyeful about what teachers really wanted, what their perception was of the things that had been happening on that campus and what they expected to see in the future. What I didn't realize at the time was that I was setting myself up. I was trying to be the conscientious school counselor, I wanted to be a respected member of the campus team, but ultimately what I really did was undermine myself.

Speaker 1:

So I want to talk about these needs assessments, why everybody is so gung-ho on them and some things that you should be looking at before you actually hit send. All right, so in case you don't know, I bet you do. But needs assessments are basically surveys. You send them out to teachers, parents, students or administrators and essentially you're asking what do students at this school need? The logic is if you don't ask what people need, how can you make a plan to meet those needs? So usually these needs assessments include questions about things like academic support, emotional needs, college and career readiness, behavior, attendance, sel anything that you can name as part of a school counseling program. It is intended to help you build a program that responds to the specific needs of the kids in your school, which sounds great in theory that in the real world of school counseling, theory does not always get the job done. So the reason that we hear so much about needs assessments at the start of the year is because ASCA recommends them. The ASCA national model includes needs assessments as part of your program foundation and your professors probably pushed them. If you had any courses related to school counseling and then if you've been in any school counselor Facebook group on the planet, you've seen this advice Start your year with a needs assessment.

Speaker 1:

It is like a rite of passage and I'll be honest, when I was new, as I just told you, I thought a needs assessment would be gold. It felt responsible, it felt professional and it felt like a super strategic move. Here's why needs assessments feel so good they make you feel like you're doing something productive without having to know everything about everything. Yet If you don't know your students, you can ask. Don't know the staff? Ask. Don't know what your role is supposed to be on that campus? Ask. It feels collaborative and professional and it gives you a sense of direction through an understanding of what your stakeholders are thinking. Sometimes we feel like they demonstrate our initiative, especially to administrators who really like structure and accountability, and they can help you feel like you're making good decisions when you're overwhelmed or you just straight up don't know where to start.

Speaker 1:

There are some huge drawbacks to needs assessments that no one tells you about, some huge drawbacks to needs assessments that no one tells you about. So here are five reasons you may want to hold off on sending out that needs assessment, at least for now. First, you get the everything but the kitchen sink problem. When you ask people what students on their campus need, they are going to tell you and they're going to tell you everything. You are going to get these unfiltered wish lists with no prioritization, and it's going to be very overwhelming because chances are you're going to get a list asking you for more SEL, more small groups, more behavior support, more mental health, more academic help, more parent outreach, more everything. And even if, logically, you know you can't do it all, a little voice creeps in and says if the students need it, shouldn't I be doing it? Which turns that list into this weight that you carry on your shoulders, and no matter how great your perspective is on all of this, that weight eventually starts pulling at your confidence and your energy and your sense of direction and it dilutes your efforts because you end up running around overextending yourself, trying to be too helpful and then it ends up being too much. So if you don't want to feel like the junk drawer of the school, you may want to think twice about soliciting all of this feedback, because you may end up feeling behind before the year even begins and you know you've got some surprises in store for you once you get into all of this in the school year.

Speaker 1:

Second, once you open the suggestion box, they're gonna be watching. The moment that you ask for feedback, you create an expectation on your campus because now people expect to see their ideas reflected in your programming and, trust me, they're watching. And when they don't see those ideas come to fruition in the way that they imagine them, you become the counselor who asked for feedback but didn't listen, even if you thought you were just being collaborative. What you really did was open yourself up to critique from people who do not understand your scope, your constraints or your goals, and you imply that other people on your campus are qualified to direct your programming. My friend, on the majority of campuses that I know about and remember, I work with hundreds of school counselors every week. That is a precedent that will not be helpful to you If you are on a campus where you feel like you are being constantly scrutinized by jealous staff who remain convinced that you effortlessly lounge in your office giving pep talks and talking about feelings all day. Soliciting other people's expectations is not going to be helpful to the level of respect that you garner each day that you're on campus.

Speaker 1:

Third, when we talk about needs assessments with regard to students, it's important to understand that there are legal limits to what you can ask in a school survey, especially if you have not gotten explicit parental consent. And in our current political climate, even a well-meaning needs assessment can raise red flags and damage trust with families and your district. Under the Protection of People Rights Amendment PPRA, you can't ask about things like mental health status, family dynamics, political beliefs or immigration concerns unless you follow very specific guidelines, and in some states even asking basic mental health questions can get you in a whole bunch of trouble. Fourth, you may not be able to act on the results you get anyway. Let's say. You dodge all the red tape, you send out a needs assessment and you get great responses. So now what You've got? 18 students asking for anxiety groups, teachers asking for more classroom support, parents requesting SEL nights and an administrator who has come up with this great, grand vision. For all of these things you're going to spearhead on campus, but you are already slammed. You don't have the time, especially if you're running a 1 to 500 or higher ratio where you are the only school counselor for hundreds and hundreds of students.

Speaker 1:

A 2022 study of school-based mental health professionals by Ali and team found that even when practitioners know what students need, they're often too overextended to provide it. Their time is being pulled away by administrative tasks, compliance demands and duties that have nothing to do with clinical skill. Does that sound familiar? I bet it does. You don't have six hours a week to build a brand new tier two intervention, even if that's what 62% of your survey respondents said they wanted, and then, in some situations, you don't even have the autonomy. Maybe you want to act on some of the suggestions, but your administrator is perfectly content with assigning you to a classroom as a glorified SEL specials teacher. So now you've asked for feedback, but you were powerless to follow up. And I won't even go into the liability that you may assume once you become aware of needs that aren't able to address them. That's a whole other conversation.

Speaker 1:

And then, fifth, needs assessments often reinforce the wrong power dynamic. This is a big one that most people don't think about. When you ask others to tell you what your program should focus on, you're sending a message and the message typically is heard as, and the message typically is heard as I'm going to build my program based on what you say. It implies that your expertise isn't quite enough, that others may know how to build this better than you, that you need direction before you can lead and y'all that's a problem Because you are the one trained in mental health, you're the one that understands the ethical frameworks of our work and you're the one who understands the difference between a tier one skill and a tier three referral and a Tier 3 referral. You can gather input on your campus, but do it in a way where you're not abdicating your counseling judgment in the process and implying that you need support to do your job. So what do you do instead? This is the part of the needs assessment conversation that no one ever hears.

Speaker 1:

You don't need a needs assessment to start the year successfully. What you need is to pay attention. You need to hear the hallway conversations. You need to watch during lunch duty. You need to take note of those weird pauses in the teacher's lounge or the nervous energy outside the front office. You need to know those things. That's data too, and it's usually better than what you can get from a survey if you're intentional about it, than what you can get from a survey if you're intentional about it.

Speaker 1:

I often advise new school counselors in my School for School Counselors Mastermind to spend at least the first year watching, listening and learning, because often when you're told the story of a campus, you are told the story that everybody wants you to know, right. You don't ever get the story behind the story that everybody wants you to know, right. You don't ever get the story behind the story. No one ever just comes right out and explains the unwritten rules or the power dynamics on that campus. Those are kind of the dirty secrets that linger in the background and those are really the things that you need to know in order to propel your campus toward happiness and healthiness in their school year.

Speaker 1:

Think about it this way. Think about being a chef and you walk into a brand new kitchen for the first time. You have no idea what ingredients are there, you don't know which equipment works and which is kind of dicey, and you haven't even turned on the stove. But instead of walking around the kitchen getting the lay of the land and understanding what it is you're working with, you walk straight into the dining room and you start asking customers what should I cook today? So now you've promised a menu and you don't even know if it's possible. You're trying to impress everyone without any real sense of what you're working with. That's what a rushed needs assessment does. It makes you look decisive for a little while, but it leaves you scrambling to deliver on promises that you really weren't ready to make. You don't have to start with a survey form. You can start with curiosity, with observation, with being present, and then, once you've learned your school, you'll be in a much stronger position to ask the right questions to the right people about the right things. And that's when, if you choose to use one, a needs assessment can actually be useful.

Speaker 1:

So now that we've talked about all of the ins and outs of needs assessments, how they can be helpful, how they can be not so helpful and some really dangerous things you need to keep an eye out for. Let's grade it. In this series, it's all about grading the things that we are told are the tried and true approaches for our profession. We've graded the ASCA national model. We've graded the idea of short-term school counseling, and now let's grade needs assessment.

Speaker 1:

In the category of clarity, where most people understand the what of the needs assessment but not the why, I'm going to give that a C+. When we look at effectiveness, we know that needs assessments only work when they're paired with some strong program boundaries as well as the ability to actually execute on the suggestions. The majority of school counselors working in public schools right now do not have the time or autonomy to follow up on most of the feedback they're going to receive. So in the category of effectiveness, I'm going to give needs assessments a C. Now, when we talk about the ethics of needs assessments, we know there are ways to use these surveys responsibly and in alignment with things like PPRA and district policies, but the political climate adds risk. So for that reason, I'm going to give the ethics of needs assessments a, b, minus. And then for real world fit. How realistic and sustainable is the idea of needs assessments? And, as I've talked about, most counselors cannot really act on the results in a super sustainable way. They might be able to pick up one or two suggestions and push the rest to the side for another time, but then again that's going to imply that you're not able to follow through. So for real world fit, I'm going to give needs assessments a D. That gives us an overall score for needs assessments of a C minus. They look professional, but most often they're setting you up for overcommitment and blame either from others or you just blaming yourself.

Speaker 1:

Building a school counseling program is hard, especially these days, and if you're tired of trying to build your program off of guesswork or off of Google Forms or off of everybody else's dang opinions. That's exactly why we developed the Smart School Counseling Framework inside the School for School Counselors Mastermind. It's built for real-world school counselors who want to lead strategically and not just react to every dumpster fire that lands on their desk. Instead of chasing what everybody says you should do, the SMART framework helps you focus on five simple, powerful shifts Start with strategy, move with intention, assess impact, relate to stakeholders and thrive through clarity. It is hands down how school counselors stop drowning in demands and start leading with confidence, and if that sounds like the shift you've been needing, you need to come check it out. You can find the link for the mastermind in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

Next time on Graded, you've been told that use of time tracking is your strongest advocacy tool, and y'all, I'm the biggest use of time geek you will ever hope to meet. But what if the spreadsheet isn't helping? What if it ends up being just another way to make you feel like you are not enough? Ends up being just another way to make you feel like you are not enough? In the next episode, we're going to talk about how use of time data gets weaponized, why it rarely works the way it's supposed to, and what you can do instead. So keep listening to the podcast and if this episode made you rethink your strategy, share it with a colleague, and don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you won't miss that next episode. We've got this y'all because we are truly stronger and smarter together. I'll see you back here again real soon, take care.

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