How to Communicate with Congress
Communicating With Congress
Lessons From Recent Research
Thirty years ago, no one e-mailed their member of Congress. Today, millions of Americans do. What many people don’t realize is that members of Congress have virtually the same number of staff today that they did in the 1970’s, despite the explosion of the telecommunications industry and the growth of the U.S. population by roughly a third.
What does this mean? It means that form e-mails and letters no longer work. Congress has had enough of them. Lawmakers are still hungry for information about what their constituents really think, though, and on most issues even a small number of contacts can make a big difference. In order to be effective, contacts need to be individualized.
On Thursday, November 20th ACA hosted an hour-long conference call with counselors from across the country to hear from an analyst with the Congressional Management Foundation on the current state of communications between constituents and members of Congress. Click here to listen to the audio of the call and see the PowerPoint file used.
ACA needs strong, effective grassroots support to succeed on the public policy initiatives we’re pushing to advance the counseling profession. Thank you for getting involved!
The Effectiveness of and Need for Professional Counseling Services (2008)
New Research Shows Lower Student-to-Counselor Ratios Result in Fewer Disciplinary Problems
(News and Notes from Washington) 12.07.07
The Center for School Counseling Outcome Research and the School Counseling Program at the University of Massachusetts has published a research brief entitled: The Student-to-Counselor Ratio: Does it Matter? (PDF) by Susan A. Carrell, NCC. In this brief, Carrell summarizes an important study she conducted to determine whether smaller student-to-counselor ratios were related to better student outcomes. Carrell used linear regression modeling based on data from one large school district to estimate the impact of reducing elementary student-to-counselor ratios on the occurrence of student discipline problems. She found persuasive evidence that smaller ratios would result in fewer disciplinary problems.
Determining the most appropriate student-to-counselor ratios is a critically important professional issue. The establishment of guidelines for student-to-counselor ratios has thus far been based on professional judgment rather than on empirical research. This study is an important pioneering effort in empirically establishing that more favorable ratios produce better educational outcomes.
We hope that this research brief will be helpful to those counselors advocating for hiring elementary school counselors at staffing ratios that enable effective practice. We also hope that this brief will stimulate more research on the impact of staffing ratios on student outcomes. High school and middle school replications of this study are particularly needed, as are studies that examine the impact of reducing ratios on other student outcome variables (e.g. attendance, student engagement, and college transitions). In addition, evaluations of larger scale initiatives aimed at improving educational outcomes by adding counselors are also very much needed. Specifically, a statewide evaluation of California’s Assembly Bill 1802 and a national evaluation of the overall outcomes of the Elementary and Secondary School Counseling Demonstration projects would provide important information on the impact of reducing staffing ratios on student outcomes.
The full study is available at: http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/contributions/vol5/iss1/art11.
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