Kansas School Counselor

Written by School-Counselor.org Editorial Staff, Last Updated: October 14, 2026

Fact-checked by Scott Wilson

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Kansas has about 3,100 school and career counselors and advisors (May 2025), a federal count that includes some outside K-12. Roughly a third of them work outside any metro area. That’s worth knowing before you picture the job. Much of Kansas school counseling happens in small-town districts, not just in Wichita and the Kansas City suburbs.

• Become a Kansas School Counselor
• Kansas School Counselor Certification

What School Counselors Do in Kansas

Kansas school counselors work within the Kansas Comprehensive School Counseling Program, the state education department’s framework for supporting students in academic achievement, career readiness and social-emotional growth. The lessons and services counselors deliver are meant to help students meet both the Kansas School Counseling Standards and the ASCA National Model. So the work covers the same three domains you’ll see in most states, with Kansas’s own standards layered on top.

In practice, a counselor’s day rarely looks the same twice. At the elementary level, a counselor might spend a morning running a small group for students facing a hard transition, like a new school or a change at home. Later, she meets with a teacher whose student can’t stay focused in class. At the high school level, the work tilts toward college and career planning. Picture Jordan, a first-generation junior who wants to stay close to home. His counselor helps him sort out financial aid, then connects his interest in welding to a technical college program he didn’t know existed.

ASCA recommends one counselor for every 250 students. That’s a professional benchmark, not a Kansas staffing requirement, and actual ratios vary by district. When a student needs more than the counselor can provide, the counselor connects the family to outside help. That might be a community mental health center, a local provider, or crisis services. That referral and coordination work is one of the least visible parts of the job, and one of the most consequential.

Kansas doesn’t currently require a teaching license to become a school counselor. If you don’t have a teaching background, KSDE requires some additional field experiences in schools as part of your approved program. Individual districts may also have their own hiring preferences. The guide to the path to becoming a Kansas school counselor covers degree requirements, fieldwork hours and licensure step by step.

Job Outlook in Kansas

Kansas projects about 250 school counselor job openings a year from 2024 to 2034. These projections cover a broad federal counselor category, not K-12 schools alone. Most of those openings come from counselors retiring or leaving the field. The projection adds only about 140 new positions across the whole decade. That works out to 5.0% growth, a little above the 3.5% projected nationally for the same occupation over the same period.

Where the jobs are surprises people. About 1,040 of Kansas’s school and career counselors work in the state’s nonmetro areas, more than in the Wichita metro (680). The Kansas City metro employs 2,240, but that count covers both sides of the state line. Topeka, Lawrence, and Manhattan are smaller markets, with 170 to 230 counselors each. If you’re open to a small-town district, you’re looking at a big share of where Kansas counselors actually work.

School Counselor Salary in Kansas

How much do school counselors make in Kansas? The median is $56,590 a year (May 2025), below the national median of $64,330. These figures cover the federal category for educational, guidance, and career counselors and advisors (SOC 21-1012). That category includes some workers outside K-12 schools, and BLS doesn’t separate elementary from high school pay. Topeka and the Kansas City metro pay above the state median, while nonmetro Kansas sits well below it.

CACREP-Accredited School Counseling Programs in Kansas

Five CACREP-accredited school counseling programs operate in Kansas. The table orders four of them by how many master’s graduates each university reported for 2023, which measures size, not quality. CACREP accreditation and Kansas approval are separate things. KSDE licenses school counselors who complete an approved program, so confirm a program’s KSDE approval with its licensure officer before you enroll.

MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe is also CACREP-accredited, through October 31, 2033. It does not report graduates under the federal code used here, so it is listed separately rather than placed in the size order.

Wichita State University’s CACREP status is Accredited (Progress Report Required), with its current accreditation running through October 31, 2029.

Kansas State University’s program awards an Education Specialist (Ed.S.) degree rather than a master’s, so check how it fits your licensing plans before you apply. Its figure in the table is the university’s 2023 master’s completions under the federal code, not a count of Ed.S. graduates.

How this table was built. CACREP accredits every program here as a School Counseling program, verified against the CACREP register on September 30, 2026. Any program whose CACREP status shows a teach-out, closure, show-cause, or withdrawal is excluded, because a reader cannot reliably enroll in it. Programs are ordered by the number of master’s graduates each university reported to the federal IPEDS survey for 2023 under CIP code 13.1101, which measures size, not quality. That count covers the whole university, so a school running more than one school counseling master’s reports them together, and a low count can mean some graduates are reported under a different code. Treat the order as a rough guide to size rather than a ranking. Where a university reports no graduates under that code we name it below the table rather than place it in the order. CACREP accreditation is not the same as state approval: check the Kansas requirements for school counselor certification before you enroll.

School-Counselor.org Editorial Staff

School-Counselor.org covers school counseling careers, licensing and graduate programs. Program accreditation is checked directly against the CACREP register, licensing requirements against state departments of education and licensing boards, and salary figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics with the data period stated. Our editorial team drafts and updates articles with help from AI tools, and every article is fact-checked by a person before it’s published. Our fact-checker, Scott Wilson, checks each page against those sources. Licensing rules change often, so confirm current requirements with your state before enrolling. Read our editorial standards. Learn more about our editorial staff.