Hearing the Voices of Youth at Risk for Academic Failure: What Professional School Counselors Need to Know

Youth experiencing discomfort in educational settings find it difficult to engage and are often at risk for academic failure. Using consensual qualitative research (Hill, 2012), the authors examined students' perspectives on their own educational needs and concluded that humanistic counseling and educational tenets are strongly desired by at-risk youth. Keywords: humanistic education, school dropout, at-risk youth, school counseling, belongingness ********** Much has been written about engaging and retaining youth who are at risk for school dropout (e.g., Balfanz, Bridgeland, Moore, & Homig Fox, 2010; Bowers, Sprott, & Taff, 2013; Shin & Kendall, 2013; Suh, Suh, & Houston, 2007). Such interest is well warranted, because high school dropout has been linked to high rates of unemployment, poverty, incarceration, and increased health disparities (Chapman, Laird, Ifill, & KewalRamani, 2011; Pleis, Ward, & Lucas, 2010). Over the past decade, politicians and educators alike have responded to the need for school retention and reform by raising competency standards and expectations for higher test scores, hoping this will increase the academic outcomes of all students. Despite such efforts, the high school graduation rate continues to fall between 65% and 70% in the United States, suggesting that approximately one third of youth fail to complete their high school education (Chapman et al., 2011). As youth at risk of dropout bring different academic and psychological needs into the educational system (Fall & Roberts, 2012), administrators and teachers often do not have the resources to expand traditional practices and accommodate their unique needs. Consequently, such youth often go underserved (Watson, 2011). Professional school counselors have the skills and knowledge base to assist students at risk for academic failure in the school system, particularly to address the social and emotional needs of these youth (Lemberger & Hutchison, 2014). Students labeled at risk for academic failure are often vulnerable to a variety of social and emotional concerns, such as low socioeconomic status, family difficulties, and physical and emotional trauma (Flower, McDaniel, & Jolivette, 2011). Moreover, an estimated 20% of youth meet the criteria for a psychiatric disorder, with less than a quarter of these youth actually receiving treatment for their distress and likely fewer receiving services in schools (Tolan & Dodge, 2005). This is despite the fact that mental health services are just as impactful in the school setting as they are in outpatient/inpatient clinical settings (Baskin, Slaten, Sorenson, Glover-Russell, & Merson, 2010). With the recent push for testing outcomes and academic accountability reducing flexibility and attention to individuality in education, youth experiencing distress and marginalization have often been overlooked (Massey, Armstrong, Boroughs, Henson, & McCash, 2005). This development has moved education even farther away from humanist ideals of nondirectivity (Hansen, Speciale, & Lemberger, 2014) and attention to learning context, and it has influenced the school counseling profession to move in that direction as well (American School Counselor Association, 2012). School counselors have shifted their professional lives toward work tasks and technical interventions (Baskin & Slaten, 2014), despite empirical research suggesting that humanistic notions of acceptance, relational dimensions, and empathy are paramount for aiding youth experiencing distress. These tenets of the humanistic counseling framework are part of the core components of the widely accepted common factors model of how clients/students experience therapeutic progress (Wampold, 2001). When decontextualized from their social-political-cultural life experiences, the story of each youth becomes oversimplified, prone to labeling and overpathologization (Cosgrove & McHugh, 2000). …