Concerned about the problems facing students, a school community collaborated to transform the guidance and counseling program from its traditional add-on status to a vital element of the instructional program.
Faced with bone-crunching budget cuts, our community of Beaverton, Oregon, began to intensely scrutinize our school programs: Where would cuts least affect the education of our students? After many agonizing hours, the budget of only one support service remained intact: the newly restructured guidance and counseling program initiated in 1992.
Why? Both staff and community members are well aware of the alarming national statistics about adolescents who become pregnant, attempt suicide, become chemically addicted, or live with violence. We are also mindful of increases in the less dramatic problems of children, such as depression brought on by parents' divorce.
Awareness of these problems was an important factor in our decision to maintain program funding, but there were other compelling reasons. Parents, teachers, administrators, mental health professionals, state and county agencies, and students had participated in the restructuring of the guidance and counseling program and endorsed its outcome-based model. Likewise, we were confident that students' needs were being met by a program that was designed to do just that.
Outcome-based guidance and counseling is not new (Johnson and Johnson 1982), nor is the concept that guidance and counseling should be viewed as more than an assortment of services conducted within the confines of counselors' offices (Gysbers 1990). However, we found little to guide us in developing learner outcomes that would foster the use of performance assessment.
Children's problems are more severe and complex than they were in previous decades.Increasing numbers of children have problems, some of whom come from backgrounds different from our middle-class, middle-aged, predominantly white staff.
In many schools, the number of counselors has not kept up with the number of children who need help.To obtain more specific information about student needs, we gathered data from mental health professionals, state and county agencies, parents, and students themselves. Our study produced some interesting findings.
Input from parents indicated that while they recognize the need for students in crisis to receive immediate help from counselors, they feel that all children need assistance. Parents believe strongly that schools must help families inoculate children against the many threats to their safety and well-being—ranging from AIDS and drug addiction to living with the day-to-day stress of today's world.
High school students, on the other hand, indicated that they are primarily interested in learning how to successfully navigate their way through the school system. Issues that concern them include improving study skills, reducing test anxiety, and selecting the right courses, to name a few. Career options is another area of interest. Although many students (over 70 percent) want help in these areas, this is not to say that they focus exclusively on areas unrelated to emotional or social needs. For example, 40 percent indicated their desire to help a friend overcome drug and/or alcohol problems.
All children need support as they strive to achieve their potential. Children need to be successful in school; they need to aspire to and prepare for work that is stimulating and rewarding; and they need guidance in making plans for the future.
Children's needs can be met through preventive measures as well as appropriate and timely interventions. Serious problems will always arise that demand immediate attention, but an equally pressing demand is heading off these problems before they reach the crisis stage. A sad, but common example is the need for counselor intervention when students repeatedly miss school due to alcohol or other substance abuse. Intervention is critical for these students, but what about those 5th graders who are being pressured to use drugs for the first time? An effective prevention program in the elementary schools may pay greater academic dividends in the long run.
Families, community members, and school staff share responsibility for nurturing the normal, healthy development of children. Educators cannot do it alone, but we can collaborate and share resources with others. School counselors are in a unique position to do this. They can guide services as well as serve students directly, monitor progress, coordinate activities, and design programs to extend and supplement the work of others. As the key communicators, they can build bridges between schools and the community.
To achieve the hoped-for results, we clearly needed a guidance and counseling program that reached out to all students in new and different ways, a program with clear outcomes that would help us assess student progress. By using three levels of specificity, from broad to precise, we were able to prioritize the knowledge, skills, and attitudes we expected students to gain from participation in the program (see Marzano et al. 1992).
First, we developed outcomes to support the curriculum and instruction mission of our schools. As a result, the first outcome spoke to students' academic success. Another addressed the management of emotions and behavior. Next, we wrote standards to describe observable behaviors associated with the traits and characteristics established by the outcomes. Finally, student benchmarks interpreted the standards into developmentally appropriate levels at grades 3, 5, 8, 10, and 12. All students are expected to achieve the benchmarks when they exit that particular grade level.
Each outcome generated several standards, and some standards generated multiple benchmarks. For illustrative purposes, Figure 1 displays only a single standard for each outcome. All grades, not just key grade levels, will work toward the accomplishment of standards and benchmarks. For example, using the first outcome on the chart, 6th graders could learn to recognize their own personal characteristics and interests; 7th graders could identify skills required for jobs that matched their interests.
Defining Outcomes for Guidance and Counseling-table