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.
What Do Children Need?
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.
We Need to Change
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.
Figure 1. Guidance and Counseling—Sample Learner Outcomes
Benchmarks to Be Achieved by:
Defining Outcomes for Guidance and Counseling-table
Outcomes: | Standards: | Grade 3 | Grade 5 | Grade 8 | Grade 10 | Grade 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All students will adapt to change by successfully making the transition between situations, settings, and endeavors. | All students will successfully make the transition between school programs, and levels, between educational and training institutions, and to the world of work. | Describe how one can capitalize on individual strengths and interests to successfully make changes (for example, social skills, adaptability). | Relate individual strengths and interests to preparing for middle school. | Develop a four-year academic plan based on personal characteristics and interests. | Compare and contrast various school and district educational options as they relate to academic and future plans. | Utilize a variety of resources to develop a post-high school plan. |
| All students will relate to adults and peers in positive ways. | All students will acquire the skills to counteract the negative influence of peer and societal pressures. | Differentiate between positive and negative social pressure at school. | Role-play refusal skills as related to alcohol/drug use and misbehavior. | Practice refusal skills in a variety of situations (for example, pressure regarding illegal activity, alcohol and sexual activity). | Identify ways to strengthen refusal skills that are judged to be most effective. | Identify situations in different situations (for example, work-place, college) that will require the use of refusal skills. |
| All students will make well-informed decisions in regard to their future. | All students will access information or services for the purpose of developing plans for the future. | Identify the basic information needed to make a decision. | Describe the steps to take in making a decision. | Use a decision-making model while working on a class project. | Apply effective decision-making skills in selecting goals. | Analyze the antecedents and consequences of decisions made regarding post-graduation plans. |
The Advantages of Outcomes
The outcomes have three important functions. First, they provide clear direction to guide the actions of staff members. As mentioned earlier, the outcomes are based on all students' needs. The implication is that we can no longer focus as much energy and time on individual students who have regularly recurring crises. Rather, we must work with these students in more effective ways—for example, involving them in group counseling sessions with peers. Or we must look to the community for additional help. In the meantime, however, we need well-developed plans for achieving the outcomes with all students.
Second, our outcomes convey to the community what we expect from children as a result of participating in the guidance and counseling program. They are also a means of increasing accountability. Decisions about program effectiveness are based on student progress toward achieving the benchmarks. They form the foundation upon which internal auditors, external evaluators, or counselors themselves collect information and make judgments about the program.
An additional benefit of an outcome-based guidance and counseling program is that it maintains school autonomy. Site-based decision makers can tailor their program to the special interests and needs of their student body and school structure. In addition, such a program fosters within-school collaboration; counselors are encouraged to set aside traditionally isolated roles and work with teachers and principals to develop opportunities for students to achieve the standards and benchmarks. Although the programs that schools design will look very different, they are guided by and designed to accomplish the same outcomes.
As we worked to restructure the guidance and counseling program, changes began occurring before the program was fully developed. Many counselors, freed from old expectations, began trying new strategies such as collaborative planning with mental health and social service agencies. The most powerful change has been the development of curriculum and instructional materials that match guidance and counseling standards and benchmarks. The skills that counselors are teaching range from preparing for an exam to resolving interpersonal problems. In addition, counselors are spending more time team-teaching with classroom teachers, who, in turn, are learning skills that they can apply when working with other classes.
The increased collaboration with teachers leads us to what we believe to be the greatest benefit of our restructuring efforts. Guidance and counseling, with its outcomes and accountability, is now recognized as an “official” entity like other content areas. Counselors regard their curriculum as essential to accomplishing the school district's goal of success for all students. No longer an add-on or a frill, guidance and counseling is an essential element in the instructional program.
