New York has more school psychologists and counselors relative to enrollment than most states, according to a national staffing index. The ranking describes workforce capacity, however, not how long any student actually waits for an evaluation or service.
The 2026 Student Support Wait Index, published Sept. 1 by school teletherapy company VocoVision, placed New York 49th of 50 states for staffing pressure, with a score of 9.6 on a scale where higher numbers mean greater pressure. Only New Hampshire scored lower, at 7.0. The index combines state-level measures of school psychologists, counselors and special education teachers; it is not a count of students who missed services or a measurement of actual wait times.
How New York compares
New York had about 545 public school students per school psychologist in the 2023-24 data used by the index. That was close to the National Association of School Psychologists' recommended ratio of one psychologist for every 500 students and well below the national ratio of about 1,065 students per psychologist. A lower student-to-provider ratio indicates more psychologists relative to enrollment, not necessarily even staffing across districts.
The state's 2024-25 ratio was 305 students per school counselor, according to the American School Counselor Association's state data. That remained above the association's recommended 250-to-1 ratio but below the national ratio of 372-to-1. The figures count statewide students and counselors rather than staffing or caseloads in individual Finger Lakes schools.
New York also had the lowest reported median caseload among school-based speech-language pathologists in the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's 2024 Schools Survey: 32 students, compared with a national median of 50. Survey respondents in New York identified 30 as a manageable median caseload, so the reported actual median was still above that level. The survey's state results cover responding speech-language pathologists, not every practitioner or student in the state.
New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maine and Connecticut joined New York among the five states with the lowest overall index scores. At the other end, New Mexico scored 88.0, followed by Utah, Florida, Alabama and Oklahoma. VocoVision cited more than 7,500 students per school psychologist in New Mexico, Alabama and Mississippi; its source data did not give more precise figures above that threshold.
What the ranking does and does not show
VocoVision weighted the student-to-school-psychologist ratio at 45% of its score, the student-to-school-counselor ratio at 30% and special education teacher capacity at 25%. The teacher measure counted full-time-equivalent special education teachers per 100 students ages 5 to 21 receiving services under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Each measure was scored relative to other states and combined into the final 0-to-100 index.
The underlying data came from different periods: psychologist staffing from the 2023-24 school year, counselor staffing from 2024-25 and federal special education personnel data. The separate speech-language caseload survey was used as supporting context, not in the overall score, because comparable results were available for only 32 states. Massachusetts lacked a published teacher value, so VocoVision adjusted the weights of its other two measures to calculate that state's score.
Those limits matter for families seeking help now. The ranking cannot show whether a child in a particular district gets an evaluation on time, whether a needed specialist has an opening or how staffing varies between communities. VocoVision acknowledged that no single comparable national dataset tracks average waits for school-based support in all 50 states.
The figures do show that New York's statewide staffing ratios compare favorably with many other states, while falling short of professional recommendations for counselors and, in the survey, manageable speech-language caseloads. District-level staffing and service records would be needed to determine whether those statewide advantages translate into timely support for students locally.
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