Using a Rating Scale to Set School Counseling Goals

Using a rating scale to track school counseling progress can help quickly identify areas of concern and help students get back on track.

What is a Rating Scale?

A rating scale in counseling is some kind of numerical or ordinal number system that allows students to track their feelings, thoughts, or perceptions of what’s going on weekly. I use one for feelings and I use one to track the students perception of progress being made. This way I can compare information I get from teachers and parents to what the student thinks is going on.

Students rate things in each session and I’m able to look for patterns. These things usually show up right away. I can say things like, “What made you go from a four to a two this week?” or “last week you said that you were handling this situation at a 10, what’s made it harder this week?”. Then, students can reflect on what happened.

How do I Use a Rating Scale to Set School Counseling Goals?

When a student arrives in your counseling office, the first thing you can do to determine goals is conduct an intake session and use a rating scale. This does not have to be anything formal, in fact, with very young students, this may look like observing their play and gathering information from adults in their life. Otherwise, if you have a school-aged child or teen come into your office you could talk to them about what’s going on and try to gain some insight as to where improvements can be made.

Have students use the rating scale right off the bat to see where there problem areas may be, according to their perception. Then you can start focusing on things to work on. Make sure to write out goals together because students take more ownership in it when it’s something they helped come up with.

Who’s Responsible for Setting the Goals?

This leads us to talk about who’s responsible for making these goals. Of course, the student may have no idea why they are there or may not realize their behaviors are a problem. So, in that situation, you could share why they were referred and go from there. When talking about things to improve or work on, try to get the student to at least come up with one goal they want to work on.

You can also try the trick of… “do you want to hear what other student’s have tried?” Then provide some examples of what other students in that situation have tried to do and see if your student would like to try one of those. Allowing them to be involved in the decision making process starts the ownership of making change. They will not be able to learn, grow and apply if they don’t think there’s a problem.

How do I use a Rating Scale with Students?

I was needing something to track the progress of my students perceptions to change, so I came up with the Student Driven School Counseling Rating Scale! It’s so easy to use. I laminated it and put it vertically on the wall in my office. Either at the beginning or at the end of the session, we will rate different things and the students will track it on their form. Then we talk about what’s better and things we can change or cope with.

Of course, this entire process is done with tons of empathy and understanding where the child is coming from. There are no rules necessarily, as to getting better scores. Life if full of ups and downs… so expecting a students chart to always climb towards the better is unrealistic. However, this allows insight into what/where we might be able to help as school counselors.

There are different tracking sheets for students to record their progress. Here are some examples of the student tracking pages. Hopefully, after several weeks, you can start to see an upward trend. At the end of four weeks and six weeks, I like to check back in with teachers and parents. This way I can see what they think about the students progress and/or behaviors.