The counselor
deserts.
22,074 U.S. public schools — 23.6% of the 93,704 that report counselor staffing — reported zero school counselors on staff in the federal Civil Rights Data Collection, SY 2021-22. 6,828,706 students attend them. This page reports school staffing as filed with the U.S. Department of Education — it describes school resourcing, not school quality, and not the neighborhoods around any school.
Where zero-counselor schools concentrate.
Share of reporting schools with zero counselor FTE, by state — the fifteen highest. In four jurisdictions, more than half of reporting schools reported zero counselors.
Every state with more than 100 reporting schools.
Sorted by the share of reporting schools with zero counselor FTE. Median ratio is students per counselor among schools reporting at least one counselor FTE.
| State | Reporting | % zero | Median ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| RI | 301 | 53.8% | 262 : 1 |
| MI | 3,346 | 52.3% | 332 : 1 |
| IL | 4,149 | 51.6% | 279 : 1 |
| PR | 840 | 51.4% | 276 : 1 |
| MN | 2,255 | 49.7% | 328 : 1 |
| AZ | 2,045 | 45.0% | 384 : 1 |
| DC | 236 | 41.5% | 284 : 1 |
| AK | 491 | 41.3% | 280 : 1 |
| CT | 986 | 40.7% | 225 : 1 |
| CA | 10,001 | 37.7% | 382 : 1 |
| CO | 1,853 | 35.4% | 302 : 1 |
| ME | 557 | 28.7% | 252 : 1 |
| IN | 1,818 | 28.4% | 358 : 1 |
| OR | 1,262 | 28.1% | 297 : 1 |
| WI | 2,164 | 27.5% | 316 : 1 |
| WY | 353 | 26.3% | 225 : 1 |
| ID | 767 | 25.8% | 331 : 1 |
| OH | 3,473 | 25.2% | 370 : 1 |
| NY | 3,173 | 25.1% | 247 : 1 |
| NM | 857 | 24.7% | 288 : 1 |
| UT | 1,050 | 24.7% | 397 : 1 |
| WA | 2,372 | 24.3% | 360 : 1 |
| SD | 679 | 22.8% | 216 : 1 |
| LA | 1,288 | 22.0% | 368 : 1 |
| FL | 3,931 | 21.3% | 434 : 1 |
| IA | 1,295 | 20.8% | 325 : 1 |
| MT | 822 | 19.1% | 200 : 1 |
| MA | 1,802 | 17.9% | 207 : 1 |
| KY | 1,379 | 16.2% | 382 : 1 |
| KS | 1,330 | 15.4% | 291 : 1 |
| NV | 715 | 15.2% | 424 : 1 |
| NJ | 2,497 | 14.6% | 311 : 1 |
| NE | 1,034 | 13.6% | 270 : 1 |
| TX | 8,739 | 13.4% | 391 : 1 |
| DE | 224 | 12.9% | 336 : 1 |
| TN | 1,794 | 12.2% | 369 : 1 |
| MO | 2,325 | 10.3% | 283 : 1 |
| MS | 882 | 9.3% | 356 : 1 |
| ND | 486 | 8.8% | 210 : 1 |
| NH | 488 | 8.0% | 193 : 1 |
| HI | 294 | 7.8% | 259 : 1 |
| OK | 1,751 | 7.6% | 327 : 1 |
| VT | 287 | 7.3% | 170 : 1 |
| MD | 1,376 | 6.9% | 355 : 1 |
| PA | 2,847 | 6.1% | 333 : 1 |
| WV | 651 | 6.0% | 281 : 1 |
| VA | 1,957 | 5.0% | 306 : 1 |
| NC | 2,653 | 4.6% | 340 : 1 |
| GA | 2,284 | 3.5% | 431 : 1 |
| AR | 1,023 | 3.4% | 345 : 1 |
| SC | 1,166 | 3.4% | 342 : 1 |
| AL | 1,356 | 2.7% | 409 : 1 |
How these numbers were computed.
Source and vintage
Counselor staffing is the school counselor FTE field (counselors_fte) from the U.S. Department of Education Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), SY 2021-22 — the latest published collection of this biennial survey. It is joined to current-year school profiles in K12 Atlas release v2026.07.
Universe and denominators
The universe is 102,176 current-year U.S. public schools. 93,704 of them report counselor FTE; the 8,472 schools that did not report are excluded from every denominator on this page. A school that is silent is not a school with zero counselors — but a reported zero is a reported value, and we count it as one.
The 250 : 1 standard
The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends a ratio of at most 250 students per school counselor. Ratios here are total enrollment divided by reported counselor FTE, computed for the 70,967 schools that report both a nonzero counselor FTE and enrollment.
Facts, not judgments
This page states what schools reported to a federal collection. It makes no claim about school quality, staff performance, or the areas schools serve, and it is not guidance about where to live. Cite it as K12 Atlas, release v2026.07, k12atlas.us/data/counselor-deserts.
The school-level data behind this page.
Counselor FTE for every school — alongside 121 other cited fields — ships in every K12 Atlas pack. Read the free Austin ISD sample, or get a full State Pack.