Accountability: Counselors Count.

Abstract

There was a time when school counselors were accepted on faith alone. The nation embraced the idea that timely counseling and guidance could help young people realize their potential and become productive citizens. More recently, one taxpayer said, seem like a good idea, but are they a luxury? Are they really essential and valuable resources in our schools? Counselors need to stand up and be counted. Perhaps more than at any time in their history, school counselors are being asked to be accountable (Allen, 1992; Hughes & James, 2001; Whiston & Sexton, 1998). To be accountable means being responsible for one's actions and contributions, especially in terms of objectives, procedures, and results. It involves describing goals, and what is being done to meet them. It entails collecting information and data that support any accomplishments that may be claimed. It could also require documentation that shows compliance with state laws or school board directives. Every counselor must ask and answer a few basic questions: What am I trying to make happen? How do I do that? Am I effective? Are there better ways of achieving the same thing? How can I be counted as part of the total school program? A SIGN OF THE TIMES, YET NOTHING NEW Being accountable is a sign of the times. However, it has been on educational and political agendas for decades (Gysbers, 1995). It drew attention when students in our nation were compared to those in other countries. The unfavorable results sparked the school reform movement and the concept of school report cards. After examining core academic areas such as writing, math, reading, and science, it was concluded that too many students were ill prepared for the changing world of work (Peak, 1997). What followed was an increasing demand to change the way things were being done and to use more standardized measures to assess results. School counselors, although not mentioned in any national school reform publications, began feeling the pressure to be more visible. Counselors needed to come out of their offices and tell more about their work. They needed to show how they were an integrated part of the educational process and were helping students learn more effectively and efficiently. It was time for counselors to be more accountable (Poppen, 1995; Schafer, 1995; Scruggs, Wasielewski & Ash, 1999; Otwell & Mullis, 1997). Congress mandated the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 1969 to continuously monitor the knowledge, skills, and performance of the nation's children and youth. It was during the 1960s that tests and measurements were viewed positively and used to identify students with outstanding abilities. It was part of the effort to train more scientists and win the race to the moon. In the 1970s, tests as part of guidance fell in disfavor. Categorizing and labeling people did not fit the humanistic movement. The validity of appraisal techniques and their practical use were questioned, even though assessment and evaluation courses remained as core requirements in counselor education programs. In addition, standardized tests were expensive and there was a lack of confidence in counselor-developed instruments. In the next two decades, data analysis and progress indicators began to work their way into the business community. Gains and losses were databased. This mindset soon transferred into student and school evaluation. State improvement plans set higher expectations for students and improvement plans were data-driven (e.g. Lapan, Gysbers, & Petroski, 2001). Some counselors mistakenly believed that they were immune to evaluation since they were support personnel and not classroom teachers. COMPREHENSIVE COUNSELING AND GUIDANCE PROGRAMS Comprehensive counseling and guidance programs have been described in the professional literature for many years (MacDonald & Sink, 1999). …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 80 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.