The Counselor as a Gatekeeper: Guidance of "Disadvantaged" and "Privileged" Pupils by School Counselors / היועץ כשומר הסף: הכוון תלמידים 'טעוני-טיפוח' ו'מבוססים' בידי יועצים חינוכיים

This article concerns the role of the school counselor in the process of educational mobility, and it focuses on the determinants of counselors' guidance of primary school graduates regarding their secondary education. The study examines the guidance provided to 210 eighth grade pupils in one medium-sized, long-established town in Israel. These pupils were randomly sampled from all-male eighth graders of the ten state-primary schools in the town and they are divided in the study into two groups: 125 pupils from the established schools in the town's center, and 85 from schools in peripheral neighborhoods, known as schools for "disadvantaged" pupils. Following a pilot study on the counselling process in the town, a path model was constructed in order to explain the counselling variable. This variable was defined as the counselor's judgement as to the level of secondary school track in which the pupil should be placed. The antecedent variables of the model were: parental socioeconomic status, ethnic origin, results of ability tests (Raven and MILTA tests), academic achievements, the labelling of the pupil as "problematic" by teachers and counselors with respect to behavior at school, family background and other personal problems, and the pupil's motivation level, as defined by his home-room teacher. The path model was first examined for the entire sample, and subsequently for each of the two separate student groups. Findings for the entire sample indicate that counselling is influenced, primarily, by academic achievement and ability. The overriding effect of these meritocratic factors was, however, accompanied by a significant and direct effect of the pupils having been labelled as "problematic." Pupils defined as "problematic" were placed by the counselors in a lower stream than others. An important finding is the variations revealed in the guidance of each student group. The counselling of the privileged pupils was mainly influenced not only by academic achievement but also by ability. In contrast, the "disadvantaged" pupils were counselled according to academic achievement more than by ability. Other major factors were ethnic origin (Ashkenazi pupils tend to be tracked higher than Orientals), and the pupil's labelling as "problematic." The influence of the latter factor originates from the pupil's definition as "problematic" with respect to personal psychological or physical problems, which are not necessarily related to his other behavior at school. These