From the President-Elect: Do I Really Need Needs Assessments?

By this point in the school year, I’m sure everyone has completed their needs assessments for the year, reviewed the results and planned interventions to meet the needs of students. No? Perhaps you’ve been bombarded with scheduling, back-to-school events, enrolling new students, meeting with parents, chairing 504 and special education meetings and getting used to the new master schedule and teaming system your school implemented this year.
 
With all of school counselors’ daily tasks, completing needs assessments with our students and parents may find itself at the bottom of our lists. Trust me, I get it. But what if I told you that completing a needs assessment would actually save you time? That assessing student needs and providing Tier One or Tier Two interventions based on that specific need will decrease the amount of time you spend intervening in situations that could have been avoided by a proactive, data-driven approach? What if I told you that, by identifying these areas of need and providing targeted intervention, you can also increase student attendance, increase student achievement and test scores and decrease student behavior referrals? We can also use the results of needs assessments to advocate and define our role as a school counselor and to demonstrate our effectiveness and value to students.
 
Sounds great, right, but where to start? Developing a needs assessment should be your first step. Administering the survey will depend on factors including student population and access to technology. Be sure the survey includes questions related to basic needs, safety at school and at home, and students’ potential issues within the academic, college/career, and social/emotional domains. Once students complete the survey, the data analysis process can begin, followed by presentation of your results.
 
When analyzing needs assessment data, prioritizing the responses is important. Students with certain responses to questions regarding self-harm, safety or requesting to speak with someone immediately, should be met with individually first. Once you have reviewed individual student data, begin to look for themes: answers that are consistent across a certain population. For instance, after my students completed our department needs assessment at the beginning of this year, two areas of concern emerged in almost all of the sixth-grade responses: anxiety and studying in middle school. With that knowledge, I was able to create a targeted classroom guidance lesson on these topics that all sixth-grade students received before the third week of September.
 
You may be thinking, “Wait, I thought you said completing a needs assessment with my students was going to save me time, but this all sounds like a lot of work.” Consider the previous example, but take away the needs assessment. Without it, you are unaware that anxiety is a primary concern of your entire sixth-grade class. Each day, several students stop in to your office anxious and upset. You are even seeing some of the same students multiple times a week with the same issue. These students lack the knowledge and coping skills to deal with how they are feeling so they seek you out for assistance. After speaking with teachers, you learn that many sixth-grade students are failing due to poor test grades. The teachers state that sixth graders are struggling to understand how to study for middle school level tests. You are now responsible for meeting one-on-one with all failing students to develop a plan to improve their grades.
 
In the second scenario, the school counselor is putting out fires. In the first scenario, the school counselor proactively identified areas of need. Students received tools to manage their symptoms of anxiety and to effectively study for their exams and achieve passing grades. By taking a proactive, data-driven approach, your time is used much more effectively. You can also address concerns and issues before they become a major barrier for your students. (Read more about needs assessments in this issue.)
 
Contact Britane Bednar, KSCA president-elect, at britane.bednar@fortthomas.kyschools.us.