ASCA Accountability System - Assignment Example

Insert Delivery - DBQ 4: Discuss the three major areas of direct services in the school counseling delivery system including guidance curriculum, individual student planning and responsive services. Direct services refer to personal interactions between the students and the school counselors. Direct services in the school counseling delivery system, among other things, include guidance curriculum, indirect student planning and responsive services. The guidance curriculum as a direct service in the school counseling delivery system is basically delivered throughout the school’s overall curriculum and comprises structured lessons engineered at assisting students gain the required competencies/ skills/ knowledge/ activities necessary for their developmental level. According to ASCA, the guidance curriculum should be systematically presented by school counselors in collaboration/ association with other professionals in group activities and in K-12 classrooms. In individual student planning, school counselors co-ordinate on-going systemic activities. These activities are aimed at helping the students establish personal goals and develop future plans. Responsive services, on the other hand, as a direct service, are basically those activities that help students meet their immediate concerns and needs. Responsive services can encompass counseling in individual or small group settings or even crisis responses (American School Counselor Association, 2012). Delivery – DBQ 5: Discuss three major areas of indirect services in the school counseling delivery system including referrals, consultation and collaboration. Indirect services in the school counseling delivery system, unlike direct services, are availed on the behest of students. These are a result of the school counselor’s interactions with others. Indirect student services, among other things, include referrals, consultations and collaborations. They can occur with the student’s parents, their teachers, other educators, community organizations/ figures, and so on. They can also be conducted on individual basis or performed in groups (small or large) depending on the students and the nature of the counseling. Indirect services suitably augment direct services and are generally purposed at also assisting students in contending with their immediate needs and concerns. Referrals are conducted for additional assistance where a student is referred to another person/ organization/ office for further assistance if the current counselor feels that additional help is necessary. Consultation encompasses the aspect of soliciting extra and vital data from relevant sources that may be useful in the counseling process. It is done when the information available to the counselor is ill sufficient. Collaboration is more of a multipronged approach where counselors team up and at the same time or different times offer counseling to students. The students in this case, for instance, can be more receptive to their own parents and therefore collaboration might work well for them compared to professional counseling from someone they consider a stranger (Kaffenberger and Young, 2013). Delivery – DBQ 6: Closely analyze the sample classroom lesson located in your class documents folder, apply any concept from your readings in the text thus far to discuss key areas you find in the lesson that not only support teaching students the disciplinary literacy of counseling but also align and support academic curricular. There are a number of areas within the sample classroom lesson that supports teaching students the disciplinary literacy while also aligning and supporting the academic curricular. The sample lesson allocates time for various activities that are very vital in the development of students academically, personally/ socially and career wise, as per the requirements of ASCA. For one, there is the important teacher time where the teacher introduces the topic of learning to the students and expounds on the content of the topic further. This part is followed by opening the floor to students to air their questions about the topic or any other matter in general as the teacher explains the areas of contention further. The teacher as per the ASCA guidelines encourages open questions and makes the students feel free to ask anything while at the same time promoting a free atmosphere amongst the students themselves so that none shies away. This session is then followed by the teacher asking questions, assuming that the students have now comprehended the topic content. The students can then either deliberate the questions in groups or individually, as the teacher allows them time to do so. The teacher again opens the floor for group answers and individual reflections. Other students and the teacher are at the moment allowed to make corrections or augment the points put across by the speaker(s). The teacher then makes themselves available to anyone who may need further and private consultations (American School Counselor Association, 2012). Management – DBQ 7: What is ‘Closing the Achievement Gap’? Apply the information gleaned in the ASCA text, how would you identify and develop school counseling delivery systems to ‘Close the Achievement Gap’ for students? There are significant pointers that indicate a disparity in the achievement between the economically disadvantaged students and those of color form the less disadvantaged students. For example, statistics indicate that white students are less likely to drop out of school or fall behind in class compared to their black and Hispanic counterparts. Measures aimed at eradicating these achievement disparities are what have come to be known as ‘Closing the Achievement Gap.’ Surveys conducted over time point to a plethora of factors that appear to be related with the achievement gap. These include students’ racial and/ or economic background, parents’ education level, economic background, school funding, teacher expectation, quality of pre-school instruction, peer influences, curricular and constructional quality, and so on. The school counseling delivery system, in order to close the achievement gap, needs to identify gaps, develop intervention, evaluate effectiveness and share the results. There is need to show that the school counseling program is making a difference and closing this gap by analyzing data to unearth inequalities, develop programs or interventions to address the inequalities and measure their results to determine the effectiveness of the programs/ interventions. It is also essential to ensure that school counselors receive training so that they can properly implement the information-driven comprehensive school counseling programs. Once the gaps have been identified, the school counselor ought to provide counseling interventions for the underperforming groups of students to close the achievement gap (Kaffenberger and Young, 2013). Management - DBQ 8: Counseling Advisory Councils are very important for the success of developing and sustaining a strong school counseling center. Discuss how you would use an Advisory Council to drive your school and develop three major goals you would have for your Advisory Council during the first year you implement the Advisory Council. Normally the Counseling Advisory Council would comprise parents, teachers, school counselors, administrators and community members. The main task of the Council would be receiving and making recommendations concerning school counseling program activities and results. This would help propel the school to greater heights. In addition, the Advisory Council would assist in setting and monitoring the counseling program goals and entry into the committee would be highly promoted and encouraged to increase the quality of this council. Meetings for the council would probably occur quarterly. There are a number of goals that I would set for the Advisory Council in the first year of its inception. For one, a goal would be to ensure the provision of proper support in addition to challenging and relevant instructional opportunities for the students in order to elicit academic, personal/ social and career success in the lives of the students. The second goal would be to see to the appropriate addressing of each student’s unique learning styles to maximize their potential for success by setting up an effective counseling program with strict accountability measures within the year. Thirdly, the Advisory Council would be tasked with enhancing the school’s ability to empower students to become life-long learners and responsible citizens by promoting focus on academic, personal/ social and career development of the students. The committee would additionally be required to assess the barriers to academic success in the school while also promoting favorable reform endeavors to ensure equal access of services within the institution (American School Counselor Association, 2012). Management – DBQ 9: Review the Program Audit (School Counseling Program Assessment) located in your course document’s folder and discuss how you would utilize this data annually to analyze and drive the effectiveness of your school counseling program. The program audit, often alternatively referred to as the school counseling program assessment, basically denotes an extensive and more of an annual accounting of the present state of the schools’ guidance program. In the program audit, each element of the guidance program such as foundation, management system, delivery system and accountability is gauged against the ASCA national model. This is done through 17 various subsections, each with multiple items. In the program audit, school counselors evaluate their progress on a simple scale which include None (not in place), In Progress (perhaps begun but not completed), Completed (but perhaps not yet implemented) and (fully) Implemented. In essence, data from a program audit is very important especially when we are talking about analyzing and driving the effectiveness of the school counseling program. The progress of the school counseling system can be ascertained from this audit and relevant measures taken to ensure the progress is maintained at the current standards or improved to higher and palatable standards. It also helps us sit back and reconsider how and where we are going wrong or getting it spot on. It can therefore be used to determine the effectiveness of the service and improve the same (from the recommendations set forth) (American School Counselor Association, 2012). Accountability – DBQ 10: The outcome of using ASCA’s Accountability System with data driven practices emphasizes ‘how are students different as a result of the school counseling program?’ Discuss how you can apply the various aspects of the accountability component to ensure that students are different as a result of your implementation of school counseling delivery systems. The main issue in the ASCA Accountability System is the end status of the students after the counseling program. The counselors, in this system, are held accountable to the needs of their students and to the ASCA model. Accountability entails Results Reports, School Counselor Performance Standards and Program Audit (discussed in DBQ 9 above). In Results Reports, counselors evaluate final perception and results data after counseling and this information is used to determine whether or not the counseling was fruitful/ achieved its original purpose. The school counselor performance standard is a tool for self-evaluation of counselor/ administrator/ leader/ department performance. After conducting the results reports, school counselor performance standards and program audits as part of the accountability program of ASCA, I would use the findings to determine whether or not the counseling is on the right track and if they are yielding the desired fruits. Questions such as whether the sessions work, whether the students acquired the intended skills, whether the sessions covered information the students already knew, and so on, are answered here. Such information is irreplaceable in ensuring the improvement of the counseling program and thus ensuring students are different as a result of the implementation of the school counseling delivery system (Kaffenberger and Young, 2013). Works Cited American School Counselor Association. ASCA national model: a framework for school counseling programs. 3rd ed. Alexandria VA: American School Counselor Association, 2012. Print. Kaffenberger, Carol, and Anita Young. Making data work. 3rd ed. Alexandria, VA: American School Counselor Association, 2013. Print. Read More