2.4 Needs Assessment Processes

The first step in the counseling program needs assessment process is to begin by analyzing the data that is already gathered by the state, district, and school. Your team will find this data is helpful in developing an overall assessment of what is known about the students in the district and schools.

Oregon’s Framework for Comprehensive Counseling Programs has many resources that can help districts complete a needs assessment, including examples of types of data that can help begin the process. Page 41 of this document includes examples of Achievement Data and Behavioral Data that is available to district counseling teams and Advisory Councils.

Achievement data measure students’ academic progress. Achievement data fields include but are not limited to: Promotion and retention rates, graduation rates, percentage of students on-track to graduate at the end of the ninth grade, drop-out rates, standardized test data (e.g., state exams, SAT/ACT scores), grade-point averages, at or above grade/achievement level in reading, math, etc, passing all classes, completion of specific academic programs.

Behavioral data elements having a strong correlation to academic achievement include: Discipline referrals, suspension rates, alcohol, tobacco and other drug violations, attendance rates, post-secondary education attendance rates, parent or guardian involvement, participation in extracurricular activities, and homework completion rates.

Read pp. 81-82 in the Oregon Framework. Use this School Data Profile Template to summarize as well as disaggregate the data. Student data sources available to you include: (a) School Report Card data, (b) School Continuous Improvement Plan or Comprehensive Achievement Plan, (c) School Climate Plan Survey, (d) Student Health Surveys, and (e) community engagement data.

Members of the counseling team work with students every day. You are the mental health professionals in the building and know many student needs, e.g., high incidence of anxiety and stress. There are also those students who need support because they are frequently being suspended and expelled. Team members are also very likely to be able to quickly identify students who could benefit from being in friendship groups to work on building positive relationship skills. You will still want to collect data about the depth and breadth of the prevalence of these needs. Having discussions with the members of your counseling team about your individual perspectives of your students’ counseling needs will begin to surface a shared perspective about the counseling needs of your district's students based on your combined professional experience.

Your team can provide valuable insights into current student needs and challenges. Utilizing your staff to determine students’ counseling needs also communicates to them that you want the CSCP to support the work they do. This approach can be particularly useful at the elementary and middle school level, given there may not be as much data available to collect and analyze at those two levels.

The Responsive Counselor shares how she collected information from her teachers to determine the classroom lessons she would teach during the year as well as the groups she would run.

Should you decide you also need to conduct a student needs assessment, there are a number of examples available for your team to consider. You also have tools like Google Forms or Surveymonkey available to administer the assessment. Here are a few resources you could use:

Download the High School Needs Assessment Dr. Eakin’s team used as one example of an instrument you could use. This team used this instrument to determine the groups that would of most benefit to their students. Dr. Eakin’s team had about 8% of the students in the school of 1400 students attending a group weekly.

High School Needs Assessment

You will see in this video how a middle school counselor explained to his students how he wanted them to complete a needs assessment survey similar to the one Dr. Eakin’s team used.

The Helpful Counselor has created The Ultimate Guide Need Assessments Made Easy with Google.

Megginson, A. & Maddox II, R. (2018). Upgrading Your Needs Assessment provides you with information useful to your work on developing and utilizing needs assessment instruments.

Annie Schlegel - SSW at Lot Whitcomb and a member of the Advisory Committee - shared these instruments in a Google Shared Drive.

Resources for strengths-based assessments of students:

All developmental stages: Embrace Families Child Strengths and Needs Assessment Guide.

Early Childhood: Family Strengths Needs Assessment Example, Community Action of Southeast Iowa

Middle & High School: Personal Strengths Grid, Journal of Child and Family Studies

Tools for Strength-Based Assessments and Interventions, Chapter 15: Children & Adolescents

Updating Your Needs Assessment

Research has continued to substantiate that student belonging is an important factor in both academic achievement and student well-being. The needs assessment approaches discussed previously do not provide any data that assesses student belonging. For that data, districts have turned to commercially available school climate inventories. The Salem-Keizer SD, for example, has used an inventory developed by Panorama Education. The Oregon Student Health Survey and GLSEN Climate Survey both provide a wealth of data to review.

Note that administering school climate surveys and discussing the results of the surveys may create a forum for discussing the need for systemic changes and/or staff development as discussed in the previous section.

In future years, you might also be interested in examining the surveys available at The National School Climate Center and the resources available at The Quaglia Institute for Voice and Aspirations. With their focus on creating schools in which students and staff feel heard and have the opportunity to follow their aspirations, the Quaglia Institute materials seem well-aligned with the community involvement domain with its focus on service.

You may want to collect data via the use of focus groups. While not typically discussed in either the ASCA National Model publications nor in the Oregon Framework, school counselors and school social workers are most often using focus groups to better understand and communicate the needs of specific groups of students such as those in the Gay-Straight Alliance group or other historically and currently underserved students. One set of directions on utilizing focus groups in schools can be found at School Focus Groups Guide. You way to check on the Student Success Advisory Groups being established at the Oregon Department of Education.

Aspirational design of CSCPs include Student Voice & Choice

Student voice and choice is a key foundation in both SEL and equity based practices. As in Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan’s book Street Data and Street Data Podcast, aspirational programs would include students being a part of the process of identifying their wishes, wants, and hopes; designing programming and implementation; delivery of services; and evaluating the CSCP help with student buy-in and CSCP outcomes. Student voice can be collected in a variety of ways including: surveys (such as the climate survey), feedback forms, focus groups, fish bowls, participatory research (like photo voice), collaborative problem solving sessions, advisory councils, empathy interviews, and informal conversations.

Note that we need to adhere to the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment when using universal screeners, surveys or needs assessments by informing parents/guardians prior to their use in accordance with school district policies and local, state, and federal law. Learn more about when consent is required by reviewing the PPRA FAQ. Download a model example of a PPRA Notification & Consent Opt-Out form.

PPRA Opt Out