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Notes on the book:
School Counselor Accountability
A MEASURE of Student Success
Chapter 1: The Accountability Imperative for School Counselors
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Post-tests, self-reporting, surveys and needs assessments are
moving us closer to accountability, these are still soft measures of
accountability and not at the level of accountability expected by stakeholders.
·
Accountability is a means of assessing the impact of the
school-counseling program on school improvement.
·
Accountability is connecting our work to student outcome data.
·
Accountability shows that school counselors act on their belief
systems, not just talk about them.
·
School counselors can: impact student achievement, motivate,
access resources, help students take responsibility for their educational and
career planning, create safe school environment, promote drug free community and
use data to identify barriers that can impair student success.
Chapter 2: Beyond Tradition
- Accountability expectations
emanate from No Child Left Behind (2001), which require every
educator to use school-based data to demonstrate our engagement in the
school mission and student achievement.
- The quality of our public
schools affects all of us, yet too many children in America are segregated
by low expectations, low literacy, and self-doubt.
- If school counselors are
committed to high expectations for all students regardless of race,
ethnicity, and SES, then every student requires the academic and life skills
preparation that opens wide the door of opportunity to all options after
high school.
- No Child Left Behind
has four basic principals:
a)
Stronger accountability for results, which has created standards in each
state determining what a child should know specifically in reading and math in
grades 3-8.
b)
More flexibility and a greater say in how federal funds are used in
schools to
to meet student needs.
c)
Expanded options for parents of children from disadvantaged backgrounds
whose children are trapped in failing schools. (ex: tutoring, after school
services and summer school programs)
d)
An emphasis on teaching methods that have been proven to work,
strengthening teacher quality, and promoting English proficiency.
- The development of the
National Standards for School Counseling Programs
(ASCA, 1997) was an important first step in engaging school counselors and
stakeholders in a national conversation about the attitudes, knowledge, and
skills, in academic, career and personal-social development that every student
should acquire as a result of participating in the school counseling program.
- School counselors should
show how much they care by instilling the resiliency and coping skills in
children that are necessary for a successful completion of the school year.
Chapter 3: Demystifying Data
- School counselors need to
begin by using the data that is discussed in the school improvement plan to
design and implement a comprehensive school-counseling program.
- School counselors who
demonstrate accountability, document effectiveness, and promote school
counseling’s contributions to the educational agenda are in a unique
position to exert a powerful influence.
- Disaggregating data reveals
the dissonance between what people believe or assume is happening in schools
and reality.
- Knowing the power of data
to help all students be successful and knowing how to ask the right
questions of the right people who can get us the data, are the needed
skills.
- Data can: challenge
attitudes and beliefs, develop high expectations, provide career and
academic advising, change enrollment patterns, and impact the instructional
program
Chapter 4: MEASURE: A Different
Way of Focusing Our Work
- MEASURE is a six-step
accountability process that helps school counselors demonstrate how their
programs impact critical data, those components of a school report card that
are the backbone of the accountability movement.
- MEASURE stands for:
- Mission: connect your work
with your school’s mission.
- Elements: what indicator of
school success are you trying to positively impact?
- Analyze: the critical data
elements to determine which areas pose problems.
- Stakeholders-Unite:
identify stakeholders to help and unite to develop an action plan.
- Reanalyze: it is always
necessary to reanalyze and refocus to determine whether you met your
targeted results.
- Educate: disseminate to
stakeholders the changes in the targeted data elements that show the
positive impact the school counseling program is having on student success.
Chapter 5: School Counselors
Demonstrating Accountability
- School counselors are
challenged to demonstrate the effectiveness of their program in measurable
terms.
- School counselors must
collect and use data that support and link the school-counseling program to
students’ academic success.
- Working in a focused way
and connecting efforts to the mission of the school have positioned school
counselors in a more powerful, important light with the stakeholders of
their schools.
- This chapter also gives
examples of how school counselors used MEASURE in their schools.
Chapter 6: Transforming Our
Future: Impacting the System
- All the counselors who
participated with MEASUREs used advocacy and leadership skills and changed
attitudes with evidence.
- School counselors cannot
change children’s families, give them a secure home, or establish for them
conditions to make their time away from school happy, but we can influence
their ability to be successful learners and give them a chance through
education to change their circumstances and to be productive citizens.
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