What Gets Counted Gets Counseled

By Bruno V. Manno

Students and parents want to explore more than one path after high school. School accountability systems haven’t caught up.

More students and families are asking about post-high-school career pathways that don’t start with a four-year degree. But most schools still measure mainly who graduates and who goes on to college. School counselors see that gap up close.

A new national survey of 600 counselors by Britebound and the American School Counselor Association found that 90 percent report growing student interest in non-degree pathways. And 78 percent say parents support their children exploring these options. Yet only 47 percent of those same counselors say their school measures awareness of non-degree pathways as part of career readiness.

Just over half of counselors (56 percent) say their district does a good job measuring students’ self-discovery and career exploration. But that’s about what students do while they’re in school, not how schools judge success after graduation. Other counselors say data are collected but often unused, measures lean toward college, and reporting focuses more on meeting compliance requirements than helping students. 

If a district’s dashboard reports only high school diplomas and college acceptances, a student who graduates and then takes an apprenticeship or enlists in the military looks like a gap rather than a success. Options outside the college track exist for students who find them, but they aren’t central to every student’s planning.

Students are seeing the same thing. In a spring 2026 RAND survey, two-thirds of high school students said educators put “a lot of emphasis” on attending a four-year college, with much less attention to other paths. And while 66 percent of seniors planned to do an internship or apprenticeship during high school, only about one in five did. So most students aren’t getting the work experiences they hoped for.

Counselors want measures that track student growth over time and count work, military service, apprenticeships, and the trades as real outcomes. They also want data systems that support their daily work rather than produce a one-time report.

Several states do count more than college when they rate schools. Texas includes military enlistment and approved industry certifications in its College, Career, and Military Readiness measure. Tennessee’s Ready Graduate indicator gives schools credit for students who combine early college or advanced courses with industry certifications or qualifying scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test. 

School counselors also describe a progression across grade levels, from young people being curious in elementary school, to understanding skills and interests in middle school, to exploring the full range of options in high school. Awareness comes first, then exploration, then experience.

Sixty percent of middle school counselors want curriculum materials on skilled trades and technical careers, and 59 percent want support organizing job shadowing, site visits, and career fairs. They’re also wary of pushing students into a single track too soon. So the goal is to build curiosity and hope.

South Carolina and Delaware have built their systems around this sequence. South Carolina’s Education and Economic Development Act requires career exploration beginning in elementary school. Students start an Individual Graduation Plan in eighth grade and update it each year with their parents and counselors. Completion rates have run close to 100 percent. Delaware Pathways, co-led by the state’s education and labor departments, begins career exploration in seventh grade and works with more than 100 employers.

But staffing doesn’t match those priorities. Data for 2024-25 from the 35 states that report by level show high school ratios of 195 to 224 students per counselor. Elementary and middle school ratios range from about 570 to nearly 700 students per counselor. So the grades where career awareness is supposed to begin have the fewest counselors.

Good career guidance connects students with employers, mentors, programs, and experiences that help them reach the first rung of adult work. High school counselors’ top request is better information about local job opportunities (61 percent), followed by training on new pathways and credentials (58 percent). Rural counselors report few hands-on options and little information about local work.

Career specialists can help with this. Forty-five percent of high school counselors have one on staff, and nearly all who do say the partnership improves student readiness. But only 54 percent say they have enough time to work together.

In many districts, counselors, internship coordinators, and local workforce boards work separately. They come from different funding sources, report to different agencies, and are judged by different measures. Some states have begun to connect them. Massachusetts pays its regional MassHire workforce boards about $6.3 million a year to place staff in high schools and arrange internships and other work experiences. That work is recorded in each student’s career and academic plan. South Carolina moved 12 regional career advisors, one per local workforce area, into its workforce agency to connect students, schools, and employers. 

Artificial intelligence could also help counselors reach more students. Only 38 percent of high school counselors and 28 percent of middle school counselors use AI with students, mostly for resumes and interview practice. And that’s unlikely to grow unless districts provide guidance on how to use it.

K-12 leaders can take seven actions to close the gap between what families are asking about and what schools count. 

1. Broaden the scorecard for tracking success. Add apprenticeships, military enlistment, industry credentials, and employment to local readiness dashboards alongside graduation and college enrollment.
2. Use other information already collected. Review interest inventories and career plans to shape student course advising and conversations.
3. Start earlier. Direct counseling and career resources toward elementary and middle schools, where ratios are highest and early awareness matters most.
4. Protect advising collaboration time. Build dedicated time periods for counselors and career specialists to plan together, and share specialists across schools where budgets are tight.
5. Map local opportunity. Partner with employers, community colleges, and workforce boards to keep counselors up to date on local jobs and programs, especially in rural areas.
6. Set guidance on AI. Give counselors clear, practical direction on using AI tools in career advising so good practice spreads beyond individual early adopters.
7. Bring workforce boards into advising. Invite them to more closely coordinate their work with school staff, work from the same student career plan as counselors, and share data on what graduates do. 

Most of these steps don’t require a new program or a big budget. They do, however, require districts to give the same attention to the paths students are already asking about as they’ve always given to college. Counselors have identified the gap, and students and parents are asking the questions.

If districts count the full range of what young people do after high school, counselors will be better positioned to help students explore those options. And more young people will leave high school with a plan that fits who they are and what they want to do. That’s what it means to say that what gets counted gets counseled.

Bruno V. Manno is a senior advisor at the Progressive Policy Institute and is a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Policy. Follow him on LinkedIn.