The Urban School Reform Opera

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, there have been numerous calls to reform the practices of school counselors. Some have situated these calls for school counseling reform within the context of urban schooling. This study examined the practices of school counselors in one urban school district, and how those practices aligned with the school district’s vision of ideal school counselor practices. Using Q methodology, 79 school counselors and 1 director of guidance sorted the 43 American School Counselor Association’s (ASCA) standards for school counselor performance. Results indicate dissonance between the ideal practice as construed by the district and director of guidance and the practices of current school counselors. Finally, the factors that foster or inhibit congruence between ideal and reality are explored.

Keywords

school counseling case study Q methodology school reform urban schools

ASCA supports school counselors’ efforts to help students focus on academic, personal/social and career development so they achieve success in school and are prepared to lead fulfilling lives as responsible members of society

~ The American School Counselor Association Mission

School counselors have a moral imperative to address the barriers facing our kids. If not us, who will do it?

~ LaTisha, Director of Guidance

Data do not interest me. Data are for politicians.

~ Gerald, School Counselor

An opera is not a play with music, rather a play in music. That is, the music and lyrics tell a story. Like most captivating stories, there is a protagonist and an antagonist that interact around a set of circumstances. Similarly, stories of K-12 school reform often have protagonists and antagonists rooted in a reform effort. School reform efforts have been largely triggered by grassroots and public efforts that publicized educational ineffectiveness (e.g., poor student performance [Sputnik Launch circa 1957], segregated schools [Brown v. Board of Education circa 1954], or educating student with special needs [PARC v. Pennsylvania, Section 504, FERPA, and IDEA circa 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1975 respectively]). Sides were drawn and debates were waged. In the end, it took governmental regulation in the form of legislative mandates to enact educational reform.

Today sides are being drawn around the educational reform debate swirling around calls to transform the form and function of K-12 school counseling. The quotes above exemplify distinct viewpoints that set the stage for this round of reform. Over the last 20 years, there has been considerable scholarship regarding the need for school counselors to shift their practices to better address the complex challenges facing students in rapidly evolving educational and occupational landscapes (Bemak, 2000; Gysbers, Hughey, & Starr, 1992; House & Hayes, 2002; Lee & Wagner, 2007; Sink & MacDonald, 1998). In an effort to increase accountability for school counselors in response to these changing landscapes, many have suggested that school counseling practices should shift to being programmatic with an emphasis on systems and the inequity often lurking within them, rather than the traditional focus of providing reactive counseling services to students on a much less comprehensive manner. The purpose of this article is not to cast a disparaging gaze on school counselors or those supporting reforming school counseling. Rather we wanted to closely examine why counselor reform efforts are underway and how the reform is or is not realized by school counselors. We begin with a brief overview of the current press to transform school counseling as a means to impact student achievement. Specifically, we highlight the current reform target, urban schools. Next we offer our methodological approach and the subsequent findings. We conclude with a discussion about the challenges of urban school reform and possible entry points into making reform reality.

Transforming School Counseling: The Good, The Bad, & The Urban

The Good

School accountability has been a primary impetus in the shift within school counseling from its conception as a reactive, overly mental health-focused position that is ancillary to the educational mission of schools to a program that is comprehensive, developmental, and supportive of schools’ academic mission (Sabella, 2006). The American School Counselor Association (ASCA)’s National Model has both exemplified and nurtured this shift within the school counseling profession toward comprehensive, developmental school counseling programs (2005).

The ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs was developed to provide an ideal and a structure that might aid professional school counselors in their efforts to help students reach their academic, personal, and social potential (ASCA, 2005). In addition to providing a framework for professional school counselors, some have stated that the ASCA National Model “is an explicit effort to link school counseling programs with standards-based educational reform approaches” (Carey, Harrity, & Dimmitt, 2005, p. 305). In doing so, the ASCA National Model is intended to facilitate a paradigmatic shift from isolated school counseling practices focused disproportionately on personal and social needs of students to comprehensive school counseling programs that can better meet the academic expectations for students 21st-century schools (Myrick, 2003).

The ASCA National Model represents efforts to contemporize and structure school counseling practices by organizing school counseling programs around four quadrants called foundation, delivery system, management system, and accountability (ASCA, 2005). According to the Model, the foundation establishes the “what of the program,” which is the desired student outcomes—or what each school student will be able to know and do as represented by student standards in academic, career, and personal social domains (p. 22). The delivery system represents how the program will be implemented. Included in the delivery system are some of the traditional practices of school counseling: services such as counseling, peer mediation, and referrals in response to student needs, individual academic and career planning, development and delivery of guidance curriculum based on desired student outcomes, and the support of school programs through collaboration, consultation, and management. According to the Model, management systems detail when school counselor practices should occur, why practices should be employed, as well as how school counseling programs and practices can be anchored and responsive to advisory councils. Finally, the accountability system described in the model seeks to address how school counselors and the programs they work within can demonstrate their impact on students (ASCA, 2005).

The inclusion of performance standards for professional school counselors working within the ASCA National Model framework is one example of the link to standards-based accountability. The School Counselor Performance Standards were envisioned as a mechanism for counselor evaluation that is aligned with the ASCA National Model (ASCA, 2005). The establishment and identification of these performance standards was intended to create a more meaningful method of evaluation of professional school counselors for use by both administrators and professional school counselors, themselves. These performance standards reflect the efforts of professional school counselors to implement, evaluate, and maintain school counseling programs. This model and the associated standards mark a fundamental shift that explicitly asserts that the activities of school counselors are central to the process of improving educational outcomes (Dimmitt, Carey, & Hatch, 2007; House & Hayes, 2002; Janson & Militello, 2009; Martin, 2002; Militello, Carey, Dimmitt, Lee, & Schweid, 2009; Militello & Janson, 2007).

The Bad

Although there exists conceptual and theoretical professional literature on the role and performance of professional school counselors, there is scant empirical research on the impact of school counselor practices and programs, with some notable exceptions (Brigman & Campbell, 2003; Lapan, 2001; Lapan, Gysbers, & Petroski, 2003; Lapan, Gysbers, & Sun, 1997; Sink & Stroh, 2003). One recent study analyzed archival data originally collected by the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC; Foster, Young, & Hermann, 2005). This study examined the data resulting from a national study conducted by NBCC regarding 193 work activities identified for professional school counselors. The participants in the NBCC national survey were 526 professional school counselors. The results of the analysis of the data produced from this study suggested congruence between participants’ ratings of the 193 work activities and their frequency performing them. Interestingly, the mean scores for both participants’ description of importance of the individual work activities and their frequency performing them were generally lower for those activities that involved collaboration, data-use, and program implementation.

The Urban

The problem of student achievement has been highly publicized in our urban schools. Jonathan Kozol (1991, 2005) and Hill, Campbell, and Harvey (2000) argued that urban schools are in crisis today. Hill and colleagues contend that “band-aids and aspirins are being prescribed for life-threatening educational illnesses” when it comes to redressing the problems facing city schools (p. xv). Rothstein (2004) warned that school reform can only go so far in urban settings: “raising the achievement of lower-class children requires amelioration of the social and economic conditions of their lives, not just school reform” (p. 11).

Nonetheless, school reform efforts continue to bombard urban school settings. Research has documented many of these efforts (see Bryk, 2003; Elmore & Burney, 1999; Hess, 2005; Hightower, 2002; Raville & Coggins, 2007; Supovitz & Christman, 2003). Currently, urban schools have become staging grounds for radical reform efforts such as mayoral control (see Wong, Shen, Anagnostopoulos, & Rutledge, 2007) and the Race to the Top Fund, authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 that is providing US$4.3 billion for competitive grants to states to encourage and reward States that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 2009). Urban center leaders (both mayors and superintendents) are looking for this funding as an opportunity for reconfigure and reconceptualize the roles and responsibilities of educators as a means to stem the tide of drop outs and underperformance (see Ballard, Booker, & Dean, 2009). The educational stimulus funds (e.g., ARRA’s Race to the Top grants), focused philanthropic educational grants (e.g., the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), and professional models (e.g., ASCA) may be able to leverage a marked and measured change in our urban schools.

The ASCA National Model was intended to assist professional school counselors in structuring the delivery of counseling services in “comprehensive, consistent, and systematic ways” (Sabella, 2006, p. 412) in order for school counselors to become more active in the core technology of schooling: student learning. Perhaps nowhere has the emphasis on tethering the practices and programs of school counseling to student learning and achievement more impassioned than within urban schools. Citing the unique contextual needs of students in urban schools, Lee (2005) noted that “urban school counselors must support young people as they explore options, make choices, and prepare for life after high school against a backdrop of the challenges that confront the school systems in which counselors work” (p. 185). Lee continued by describing many of these challenges, among them being “chronic absenteeism, family instability, high levels of student transience, increasing school and community violence, and high rates of teen pregnancy” (p. 185).

Beyond the challenging environmental context experienced by both students in urban schools and the school counselors who work with them, others have note the impact that school systems have on constraining school counselor practices (Bemak & Chung, 2005; Eschenauer & Chen-Hayes, 2005; Schultheiss, 2005). Bemak and Chung (2005) summarized this phenomenon by stating that “it is not to say that school counselors lack commitment and dedication to their work, but rather to suggest that school counselors, similar to disenfranchised students, have been in some cases inadvertent victims of the systems in which they work, adopting values and practices conducive to bringing about categorical discrepancies in achievement” (p. 197). Whether transformed school counseling practices and programs are constrained in urban schools due to counselors being inadvertent victims of systems of schooling, or are more active agents of the status quo can and should be explored further, but the prevalence of poorly defined and intentioned roles and practices have been noted elsewhere (Butler, 2003; Giles, 2005; Holcomb-McCoy & Mitchell, 2005).

A key element of the shift in school counseling practices toward greater alignment with the school accountability movement is the use of data. Specifically, this shift toward school counselor accountability through data use is directed toward efforts to use data in order to act with intention and purpose to close pervasive achievement gaps between groups of students—particularly those in urban schools (Stone & Dahir, 2006). More extensive use of data by school counselors is reflected within the tenets of the transformed school counseling movement (House & Hayes, 2002) and also within the ASCA National Model (2005). Unfortunately, there appears to be a lag among actual school counselor practices involving data use (Lachat & Smith, 2004), despite efforts to reform those practices to use data more consistently and purposefully. The relative lack of engagement in practices involving data-use was explored more thoroughly in a recent study conducted by Holcomb-McCoy, Gonzalez, and Johnston (2009). Results from this study suggested that school counselors are engaged in data usage relatively infrequently. More problematically, additional results of this study indicated that the most infrequent uses of data involved assessing whether students received equitable educational opportunities in schools and reporting student achievement data to parents of students. Finally, Holcomb-McCoy et al. identified that school counselor dispositions involving self-efficacy were “most predictive of data usage among school counselors” (p. 349). That is, school counselors were more likely to use data, not based upon their degree of training to do so, but rather as a result of their beliefs regarding their general abilities to manage the challenges of their jobs. These findings are troubling, particularly in light of professional literature exploring the impact data use can have in bolstering the capacity of schools and school systems to equitably distribute educational opportunities and reducing gaps in student achievement (Johnson, 2002).

In this study we focused of one urban school district’s reform effort to transform the role of the school counselor. We aimed to address a number of guiding questions including: Why was this urban school choosing to transform the role of the school counselor? What did the district do to bring about this reform? To what extent did the reform impacted school counselor practice? What fostered or inhibited educational reform in this district? And, what lessons can be learned from this study?

Method

To answer our research questions we chose to study one urban school district in the midst of school counseling reform efforts. We used a mixed methods approach to develop a case study of this urban school district. The case study design focused the research on the phenomenon of school counseling reform bounded within a given time period (Creswell, 2003; Merriam, 1988; Yin, 1994). The case was built upon traditions of in-depth analysis of complex processes via qualitative research (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992; Miles & Huberman, 1994) as well as the ability to factor analyze participants viewpoints (Brown, 1993; McKeown & Thomas, 1988).

The focus of this study was to examine the attitudes held by school counselors in a large, urban district regarding their current professional practices in light of a district-wide initiative intended to shift those practices. In doing so, we were interested in not only the subjective perceptions of the district’s school counselors, but also the perception of the district’s director of guidance and any similarities or differences between the two sets of participants that emerged. Q methodology was selected for part of this study because it provides a framework through a “distinctive set of psychometric and operational principles that, when conjoined with specialized statistical applications of correlational and factor analytic techniques, provides researchers with a systematic and rigorously quantitative means for examining subjectivity” (McKeown & Thomas, 1988, p. 7). Developed by William Stephenson in 1935, Q methodology was developed from factor analytic theory in order to provide a systemic means for scientifically examining human subjectivity (Brown, 1996). Instead of factoring tests or traits, Q methodology factors participants and their perspectives or viewpoints on a given topic. This provided us with the opportunity to examine response patterns across individual participants, rather than variables, in order to systematically identify groups of people with common structures to their perspectives.

Study Setting and Participants

The district in this study is located in the Northeastern United States in a metropolitan area. During the time of data collection, the school district had over 25,000 students enrolled in 45 schools. The ethnic composition of the school district’s student population was 50% Hispanic American, 25% African American, 18% Caucasian, 2% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 4% unspecified. Poverty was a pervasive issue confronting many of the students and families living in the district: 78% of the students were eligible for free or reduced lunch.

The director of guidance, LaTisha,¹ had one assistant and was in charge of the district 135 counselors. LaTisha had been in this position for 2 years when this study was conducted. LaTisha was a former elementary school counselor and principal prior to this role. She struggled to balance the demands of her career with family (a new mother) and her education (currently working on her doctoral degree in educational leadership). Seventy-nine of the school counselors participated in the study. Sixty-two of the participants were female and 17 were male. Fifty-seven participants described themselves as Caucasian, 16 as African American, five as Hispanic, and one as Asian. Thirty-three of the participants worked as school counselors in elementary schools, 18 in middle schools, 23 in high schools, and five participants indicated “other” for the school level in which they worked.

Data Collection

The data collection was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, a set of in-depth interviews was conducted with the district’s director of guidance, LaTisha. The initial interviews focused on two things: (1) Her vision of school counseling and (2) the district press for her to reform counseling practices in the district. The next set of interviews focused on LaTisha’s efforts to build professional counselor capacity. Specifically, interviews focused on the resources and support involved in the scope and sequence of the district’s in-service professional development of school counselors. Finally, LaTisha sorted the ASCA standards as part of the Q methodology. This sorting activity was done twice. First La Tisha sorted the cards based on how she thought her school counselors would sort the cards and in the second sort, LaTisha sorted based on what practices she wanted to see by her school counselors.

In the second phase of the study the 79 school counselors sorted the ASCA standards based what was most reflective of the work they do. After sorting the standards, each counselor was asked to answer a set of questions including a rationale for statement placement (see Appendix A).

Q Methodology Process and Analysis

Q methodology begins with the development of a Q sample of items or statements that the researcher seeks to study (see Brown, 1993; Watts & Stenner, 2005). In this study we chose to use a ready-made Q sample, the ASCA standards. There are 13 school counselor performance standards with each of the 13 standards containing substandards. We used all the substandards as our Q sample of items (see Table 1).

Table 1.

ASCA School Counselor Performance Standards.

Statements
1	The professional school counselor works to implement a school counseling program designed to meet the needs of the school.
2	The professional school counselor demonstrates interpersonal relationships with students.
3	The professional school counselor demonstrates positive interpersonal relationships with educational staff.
4	The professional school counselor demonstrates positive interpersonal relationships with parents or guardians.
5	The professional school counselor teaches school guidance units effectively.
6	The professional school counselor develops materials and instructional strategies to meet student needs and school goals.
7	The professional school counselor encourages staff involvement to ensure the effective implementation of the school guidance curriculum.
8	The professional school counselor, in collaboration with parents or guardians, helps students establish goals and develop and use planning skills.
9	The professional school counselor demonstrates accurate and appropriate interpretation of assessment data and the presentation of relevant, unbiased information.
10	The professional school counselor counsels individual students and small groups of students with identified needs and concerns.
11	The professional school counselor consults effectively with parents or guardians, teachers, administrators and other relevant individuals.
12	The professional school counselor implements an effective referral process with administrators, teachers and other school personnel.
13	The professional school counselor provides a comprehensive and balanced school counseling program in collaboration with school staff.
14	The professional school counselor provides support for other school programs.
15	The professional school counselor discusses the qualities of the school counselor management system with the other members of the counseling staff and has agreement.
16	The professional school counselor discusses the program results anticipated when implementing the action plans for the school year.
17	The professional school counselor meets with the advisory committee.
18	The professional school counselor reviews the school counseling program audit with the council.
19	The professional school counselor records information from school counseling advisory council meetings.
20	The professional school counselor uses school data to make decisions regarding student choice of classes and special programs.
21	The professional school counselor uses data from the counseling program to make decisions regarding program revisions.
22	The professional school counselor analyzes data to ensure every student has equity and access to a rigorous academic curriculum.
23	The professional school counselor understands and uses data to establish goals and activities to close the gap.
24	The professional school counselor is accountable for monitoring every student’s progress.
25	The professional school counselor implements monitoring systems appropriate to the individual school.
26	The professional school counselors develop appropriate interventions for students as needed and monitors their progress.
27	The professional school counselor uses a master calendar to plan activities throughout the year.
28	The professional school counselor distributes the master calendar to parents or guardians, staff and students.
29	The professional school counselor posts a weekly or monthly calendar.
30	The professional school counselor analyzes time spent providing direct service to students.
31	The professional school counselor measures results attained from school guidance curriculum and closing the gap activities.
32	The professional school counselor works with members of the counseling team and with the principal to clarify how programs are evaluated and how results are shared.
33	The professional school counselor knows how to collect process, perception and results data.
34	The professional school counselor completes a program audit to determine the degrees to which the school counseling program is being implemented.
35	The professional school counselor shares the results of the program audit with the advisory council.
36	The professional school counselor uses the yearly audit to make changes in the school counseling program and calendar for the following year.
37	The professional school counselor promotes academic success of every student
38	The professional school counselor promotes equity and access for every student.
39	The professional school counselor takes a leadership role within the counseling department, the school setting and the community.
40	The professional school counselor understands reform issues and works to close the achievement gap.
41	The professional school counselor collaborates with teachers, parents and the community to promote academic success of students.
42	The professional school counselor builds effective teams by encouraging collaboration among all school staff.
43	The professional school counselor uses data to recommend systemic change in policy and procedures that limit or inhibit academic achievement.

The participants in this study sorted the 43 School Counselor Performance Standards into a forced distribution ranging from −4 to +4. Each grid had three spaces available under the end points, seven spaces under the 0 column, and the rest scattered proportionately to resemble a normal curve (see Figure 1). As previously stated, school counselors were asked to sort the statements based on their current practices (whereby +4 was most reflective of their practice and −4 was least reflective) and LaTisha sorted the cards twice: once based on her vision of school counseling and her other sort was based on how she thought the school counselors would sort (see Appendix A for full Q protocol).

Figure 1.

Q sort distribution.

The two sorts conducted by LaTisha were analyzed qualitatively along with her interview data. The sorts conducted by the school counselors were factor analyzed. Q methodology utilizes a person-level factor analysis rather than a traditional variable-level analysis (Stainton Rogers, 1995). This distinction allowed us to cluster the school counselors around a model that was most representative of their viewpoints of their practice. It would be this model sort that would be described and compared to the qualitative data in the findings of this study. To obtain the model sort we used the Q analysis freeware MQMethod 2.06 (Schmolck & Atkinson, 1997). A correlation matrix is generated by principle component analysis to find associations among the Q sort correlations (Brown, 1986). Next the emergent factors are rotated using the Varimax method to “maximize the purity of saturation of as many Q-sorts as possible” without changing the relationships of the data (McKeown & Thomas, 1988, p. 52). What results is a set of model factor arrays that relate to individual sorts that significantly contributed to each array. In this study there was one predominant factor array. This dominant factor had an eigenvalue of 35.30 and accounted for 45% of the explained variance. This dominant factor dwarfed all others in the original rotation of seven factors (the factor with the next highest eignenvalue was 3.13) and also was the only factor on which participants loaded. This lone factor, then, was subject to interpretive findings.

Findings

The Protagonist’s Vision of Reform

The director of guidance had a vision of school counseling that is a departure for the traditional conception of counselor as mental health expert and gatekeeper to college entry. In fact, LaTisha was resolute in her view that it is the “moral imperative [for school counselors] to address the barriers facing our kids.” LaTisha was pulled from a short, but successful stint as the principal at a high achieving elementary school to her current position. LaTisha was confident that she understood why the role of school counselor needed to change. Moreover, she had examples of what this would look like. What she did not expect was the resistance that would be involved in how to get this done.

Before LaTisha could get her new business cards made she felt the pressure of the new job: “I felt completely overwhelmed. There is so much to do and the superintendent keeps telling me that I am the person for this job. That I am the one to turn things around. But this is such a huge organization. Where do I start?” LaTisha’s strategy was developed on two fronts. First, LaTisha redesigned professional development for the school counselors. Second, she focused on those directly responsible for hiring and monitoring the work of school counselor, the school principals.

LaTisha was very familiar with the work of ASCA. In fact, LaTisha worked directly with central administration to get the ASCA Model authorized by the Board of Education. Subsequently, LaTisha aimed all of the professional development time with school counselors to be delivered centrally. That is, she used the two professional development days in August and the ten hours of PD during the year to gather all the district’s counselors together. The initial work was focused on aligning the ASCA Model with the state’s school counseling framework. Next, in an attempt to build capacity for the practices associated with the Model, professional development experts were brought in from a nearby counselor education university program and from organizations such as the College Board as well as other organizations associated with ASCA.

Analysis of LaTisha’s sort of the ASCA standards reflected her vision of school counseling toward which she intended to shift the district’s school counselors’ practices so that they better aligned with the ASCA National Model, and in doing so better addressed the heightened needs facing many of the students in the district, itself. Figure 2 provides LaTisha’s sort while Table 2 highlights the placement of specific statements that best reflect the new vision of school counseling.

Figure 2.

LaTisha’s vision of school counseling Q sort.

Table 2.

Director of Student Support Service Sort.

Factor score	Statement number	Statement
+4	1	The professional school counselor works to implement a school counseling program designed to meet the needs of the school.
−3	10	The professional school counselor counsels individual students and small groups of students with identified needs and concerns.
+4	13	The professional school counselor provides a comprehensive and balanced school counseling program in collaboration with school staff.
−4	19	The professional school counselor records information from school counseling advisory council meetings.
+3	21	The professional school counselor uses data from the counseling program to make decisions regarding program revisions.
+3	22	The professional school counselor analyzes data to ensure every student has equity and access to a rigorous academic curriculum.
+4	23	The professional school counselor understands and uses data to establish goals and activities to close the gap.
−4	29	The professional school counselor posts a weekly or monthly calendar.
−4	33	The professional school counselor knows how to collect process, perception, and results data.

This viewpoint emphasizes a conceptual shift toward school counseling practices that focus on the level of systems in a comprehensive way. Two themes jump out here: (1) The use of data to inform counseling practice and (2) the shift from individual student to a school-wide, systemic approach to counseling. For example, statement 10 (“The professional school counselor counsels individual students and small groups of students with identified needs and concerns”) was placed in the −3 column by LaTisha. She made numerous references to the “disparity that exists between groups of kids” in regard to both academic performance and college access. The issue of equity and access was powerful theme for LaTisha. Moreover, she believed that the data was the means to illustrate such issues and it was the school counselor who had access to such data: “School counselors have all the data. It’s really sad to think that we ignore the data.” She went on to discuss the perils of the lack of data use:

We see kids not passing an English class so we beat them over the head with another class without really getting to know what their barriers to learning are. . . We have 9th graders who are repeating the grade for the third time so we put them in Special Education. Putting them in special education didn’t remove them from poverty, didn’t make their mother or father care more—and you know what? It didn’t help them with their academics. . . If we don’t embrace our data and we don’t take ownership of our data then there will always be a disconnect.

LaTisha also wanted data to drive equity and access through the practices of the school counselors. To do so, LaTisha believed her school counselors must move from embracing reactive approaches of addressing students’ personal and social concerns through individual and small group counseling toward becoming leaders who perform what LaTisha called educational triage:

The problems of academic under-achievement and lack of proper college preparation are so daunting that we need to step up, push other things aside, and address these things. It’s triage. . . Counselors need to move beyond saying they provide “opportunity.” If we know a student should be taking an AP course we should not allow a ridiculous referral form stand in the way.

Notably, LaTisha placed a data-related statement (No. 33 “The professional school counselor knows how to collect process, perception and results data”) in the −4 column. This supports her notion that clerical tasks should not be a function of the counselors’ job. This is further supported by the placement of clerical-related statements placed in the −4 column.

Resistance to these reform efforts came from two groups: the school counselors and the principals. LaTisha made two dramatic steps to free up counselor time to make room for this type of data-driven, systemic work. First she hired paraprofessionals for the counselors that did not have one: “I hired clerical clerks in every school so counselors could not say ‘we don’t have time’.” Additionally, LaTisha disaggregated all of the data through her office: “At first I thought they should analyze their own data so they’ll embrace it, they’ll own it. I realized that this was not a good use of their time so I get it [analyzed data] to them so they can quickly . . . have the information at their hands.”

Interestingly, LaTisha found another form of resistance from her former principal colleagues. In this district, the school principals had hiring and monitoring responsibilities of the school counselors. However, LaTisha found that the principals did not know about the ASCA standards and they were not holding their counselors accountable to the very standards on which she had focused her steady diet of professional development. LaTisha stated

This is frustrating. I’ve come to realize that a principal would not hire a teacher who refused to follow the [state] curriculum frameworks. Yet this is what they do with their counselors. Why would you hire or continue to have someone in your school who does not follow the district’s counseling policy or the reading plan or the math plan?

LaTisha had to add principals to her professional development work. After realizing that the principals were not using the counselor evaluation tool that was tied to the ASCA standards she began regularly meeting with the district’s principal group in order to teach them about the standards and the evaluation tool.

The Antagonists’ Reaction to Reform

The analysis of the school counselor sort marked a clear deviation from LaTisha’s vision of school counseling. One main factor was extracted from the rotation of the factors. This main factor accounted for the 45% of the explained variance in this study. Fifty of the 79 school counselor participants (63%) loaded exclusively on this factor. Seventy-five percent of these participants were female and 25% were male; 64% were Caucasian, 25% African American, 8% were Hispanic/Latino, and 3% identified their ethnicity as “Other.” The average school counseling experience for these participants was 8.3 years. Twenty-three of the participants worked in elementary schools, 17 worked in high schools, 8 worked in middle schools, and 2 indicated that they worked in settings that were “Other.”

The school counselors who comprised this current practice viewpoint seemed to perceive their practices in a manner that is dominated by historically more traditional school counselor roles. Notably, the school counselor practices that were highly reflective of this viewpoint were all based upon performance standards derived from the delivery system component of the ASCA National Model (ASCA, 2005). Figure 3 documents the counselor model factor array while Table 3 highlights the statements that were most reflective of their work (right side of distribution) and least reflective of their work (left side of distribution).

Figure 3.

School counselor Q sort.

Table 3

School Counselor Sort.

Factor score	Statement number	Statement
+4	2	The professional school counselor demonstrates interpersonal relationships with students.
+3	3	The professional school counselor demonstrates positive interpersonal relationships with educational staff.
+4	4	The professional school counselor demonstrates positive interpersonal relationships with parents or guardians.
−2	9	The professional school counselor demonstrates accurate and appropriate interpretation of assessment data and the presentation of relevant, unbiased information.
+4	10	The professional school counselor counsels individual students and small groups of students with identified needs and concerns.
+3	11	The professional school counselor consults effectively with parents or guardians, teachers, administrators and other relevant individuals.
−2	20	The professional school counselor uses school data to make decisions regarding student choice of classes and special programs
−2	22	The professional school counselor analyzes data to ensure every student has equity and access to a rigorous academic curriculum.
−2	31	The professional school counselor measures results attained from school guidance curriculum and closing the gap activities.

In the current practice viewpoint represented by the district’s school counselors, practices such as individual and small group counseling and relationships were emphasized. These practices have long been the traditional domains of the mental health aspects of school counseling and for the most part reflect interventions, strategies, and approaches that focus on either individual or small groups of students. Such practices are rooted in foundational counseling training that can prepare counselors for any setting but are generally translated to work in therapeutic settings. Important skills that undergird such practices are strong interpersonal skills and counseling techniques and procedures with both individuals and small groups.

Conversely, school counselor practices rooted in data use and measurement were de-emphasized in this perspective that represented the bulk of school counselors in the district. The rejection of these practices as evinced by their relative locations in the collective viewpoint’s factor array was further supported by open-ended written responses from various school counselors in the district. For example, in reference to analyzing data to ensure all students have equity and access to rigorous curriculum, one participant elaborated that “data do not interest me—I feel it is about the individual relationships.” This seeming distinction within the current practice viewpoint between perceived merits of the traditional responsive services aspect of individual and group counseling and the apparent antipathy toward the use of data was further described by many other district school counselors in this study. This distinction was exemplified by another school counselor in the study who stated that “Direct service is the core purpose of my position. I don’t think it needs to be analyzed and what does need to be analyzed, educational achievement patterns, is a district-level responsibility.” The deferment of data usage examining student achievement patterns in order to focus on responsive service intervention to individual and small groups of students was a common thread among the school counselor participants in this study. As another school counselor succinctly reported: “Closing the achievement gap is not a priority at this time, decreasing the number of disciplinary incidents and aiding students in having a productive academic experience is key.” Aside from specific reluctance to use data to identify and address achievement gaps, many of the school counselors seemed to perceive the utility of even general data use with skepticism. This perspective was best characterized by a participant who wrote that “data does not necessarily inform good counseling. Skills and strategies should be chosen on a case-by-case basis. Data does not interest me. Data are for politicians.”

Prognostication Powers of Our Protagonist

Many of LaTisha’s fears and frustrations regarding the practices of school counselors in her district were anticipated by her. That is, LaTisha’s situational awareness of her counselors allowed her to prognosticate the sorting of the standards with great accuracy. Figure 4 provides a side-by-side comparison of counselors’ sort and LaTisha’s sort based on how she assumed her counselors would sort. The shaded boxes provide a visual display of cards that LaTisha and school counselors placed in the same column. Additionally, the arrows are used to reflect cards that were place very close to one another.

Figure 4.

School counselor and LaTisha’s assumption side-by-side Q sort.

When LaTisha viewed her sort of presumed practices of school counselors in her district next to their composite factor she was not surprised. LaTisha anticipated that counselors in the district were focused on individual and small group counseling. LaTisha acknowledged that she had an accurate perception of the counselors’ beliefs and actions. The process of examining their composite sort signifying their actual practices was for LaTisha both confirming and emotional. While she was not surprised by the congruence between her sort reflecting her perception of the school counselors’ current practices and their composite viewpoint of their expressed practices, she was somewhat upended by her emotional response to seeing the empirical results in front of her:

You know, I don’t know what else to do. I have said openly to our counselors recently that I have begun to wonder—what is more important, the paycheck or really putting forth our best efforts to do what we need to do by our students? I told them that we need to accept our reality. . . [that] when you choose to work for [name of district] you sign up for what we have. The high poverty rates, parents who might be incarcerated or might be unavailable for whatever reasons, and kids who do not have the structures we might want them to have. . . I told them to get over it and begin to organize and motivate themselves to do something different.

LaTisha also saw the similarities of the two sorts as an indictment on her leadership abilities:

There is so much pressure to improve here. The new superintendent has been supportive, but has been clear that my office must directly impact student improvement. But how am I going to get the results that are needed when I know how the counselors continue to do their job? What else can I, should I do?

Discussion

This study examined the espoused practices of school counselors in one urban school district, and how those practices aligned with the school district’s vision of ideal school counselor practices as expressed by the director of guidance. In doing so, considerable divergence was found to exist between those expressed current practices and the district’s ideal, as represented by the director of guidance. The gap between current and ideal practices seemed to exist due to numerous factors—although many of the responses by school counselors in this study seemed to indicate that this gap was rooted in the unique context of urban schooling. For example, one school counselor stated, “there is not the time nor the resources to use data due to constant crisis intervention. Therefore it is useless to even try.” This expression of constrained school counselor practice emanating from the substantial environmental challenges many students in urban schools face was further described by another school counselor who wrote that “there simply is no time to delve into the causes of systematic barriers holding my students back. It’s like Maslow. I am forced to focus on the immediate needs of my students. We’re all just surviving.”

Table 4 highlights the consensus and distinguishing standards and how they where placed by the counselors’ and LaTisha’s vision and assumptions. Not surprisingly, a number of statements were clustered in the left part of the distribution in all three sorts. Specifically statements 17 and 19 (meetings and minutes with advisory committee) and statements 34 through 36 (audit data) were all perceived as bureaucratic standards.

Table 4.

Factor Scores Across Sorts.

Factor scores
V	A	C	Statement
Consensus statements
+4	+2	+2	1. The professional school counselor works to implement a school counseling program designed to meet the needs of the school.
−2	−2	−4	17. The professional school counselor meets with the advisory committee.
−4	−4	−3	19. The professional school counselor records information from school counseling advisory council meetings.
−4	−1	−4	33. The professional school counselor knows how to collect process, perception, and results data.
−3	−3	−3	34. The professional school counselor completes a program audit to determine the degrees to which the school counseling program is being implemented.
−2	−2	−4	35. The professional school counselor shares the results of the program audit with the advisory council.
−3	−3	−3	36. The professional school counselor uses the yearly audit to make changes in the school counseling program and calendar for the following year.
Distinguishing statements
−3	+4	+4	10. The professional school counselor counsels individual students and small groups of students with identified needs and concerns.
+2	+2	−2	20. The professional school counselor uses school data to make decisions regarding student choice of classes and special programs
+3	0	−1	21. The professional school counselor uses data from the counseling program to make decisions regarding program revisions.
+3	0	−2	22. The professional school counselor analyzes data to ensure every student has equity and access to a rigorous academic curriculum.
+4	−1	−1	23. The professional school counselor understands and uses data to establish goals and activities to close the gap.
+3	0	−2	31. The professional school counselor measures results attained from school guidance curriculum and closing the gap activities.

Note: V= LaTisha’s Vision; A= LaTisha’s Assumption; and C=Counselors Sort.

The chasms between LaTisha’s vision of school counseling and current counselor practices reside in a focus on student achievement on one side and the continued emphasis of personal counseling on the other. Statements 10, 20 through 23, and 31 were placed very differently. Many of these statements focus on the use of data to inform practice.

Two of the consensus sorts are of particular interest. Standard 33 ranked low across all sort even though it is focused on data. This is best explained by LaTisha’s efforts to get counselors out of “data collection business” and into the practical aspect of data analytics. Recall LaTisha’s efforts to minimize bureaucratic responsibilities—for LaTisha this includes data collection. Additionally, the consensus on Standard 1 offers hope that meeting the needs of the students is of paramount importance. However, the challenge remains in defining the needs of students.

Organizational Dysfunction and Dispositional Drag

Two clear themes surfaced when exploring the dissonance between current practices of district school counselors and LaTisha’s vision of school counseling. To begin, urban schools are hard to change. There was a strong push for change in the district while a simultaneous pull to conservation. For example, while LaTisha was implementing real change, the clear lack of support from principals, who had direct supervision over the counselors, impeded the change process. LaTisha stated that while principals were working on reforms with teachers, counselors were largely ignored: “Principals are not evaluating counselors based on our new model of counseling. They have not articulated a sense of urgency for school counselors . . . I think they have for teachers, but we cannot place all the accountability emphasis on teachers alone.” Recently principals were told they would get a bonus for reducing the special education referrals. Only then did LaTisha see principals working more closely with school counselors as LaTisha stated, “now that got their attention!” LaTisha provided another example of dysfunction: “A few years ago we started an afternoon high school—we took some of our neediest kids and put them in an alternative setting. And we did not provide them with a counselor!” Typical of urban school settings, leadership is often highly mobile and initiatives come and go. This phenomenon of transient building leadership was also noted by school counselors in the study. For instance, one school counselor wrote, “The building principal is new again—surprise!—and she has yet to share with our guidance department her vision or plan for addressing the many issues our school faces.”

Changing the beliefs or dispositions of the district’s school counselors was also a clear impediment for LaTisha. LaTisha stated, “I believe dispositions need to change, more than knowledge and skills. What you believe you will do because it transcends every part of your life.” In keeping with the results identified by Holcomb-McCoy et al. (2009) in their examination school counselor dispositions as predictors of the use of data, the constant press to build capacity (knowledge and skill) must be balanced with the necessity to motivate one’s will to utilize skills in order to act on knowledge and beliefs. LaTisha added, “I think our counselors went into this profession to deal with kids and parents—for relationships. I also think they were trained for that type of work . . . asking them to do something different from what they believe, from what they were trained in, is not easy.”

Like Malcolm Gladwell (2008), we believe that great “outlier” school counselors do not exist by accident. Rather highly effective school counseling is a by-product of an incredible amount of hours practicing. If we are to realize a profession that uses data to inform and transform their practices, we must give school counselors what they need to not only build the capacity, but to also develop the will to engage in practices necessary to revolutionize school counseling in order to impact student achievement, our clear and present need. In this respect, the findings and implications from this study echo those identified by Holcomb-McCoy et al. (2009). That is, school counselor disposition appears to be a primary influencer for whether practices involving data use are employed. For LaTisha and others intent on shifting school counselor practices to use data with more frequency, more effective efforts and approaches to address this dispositional drag are paramount.

Conclusion

The protagonist in an opera is often heard singing a lengthy aria when she is mortally wounded. Instead of coming to the hero’s aid, others gather to merely listen with heavy hearts. Similarly, urban school reform often ends in an aria where bystanders acknowledge the valiant effort of the reformer. And with those heavy hearts, a new cadre of witnesses has learned that while the reform lyrics may be different, the song remains the same.

Organizational constraints of school reform are a chronic problem. They may be more acute in urban settings. Organizational dysfunction that inhibits reform often manifests through administration and dispositional drag and produces a paralyzing effect. Nonetheless, LaTisha remains committed: “I have to stay on message. I have to continue to provide high quality professional development. They deserve that—they are professionals and deserve the best. I will not lower my expectations.”

As LaTisha readied herself for another school year she remained hopeful that these reform efforts would not have a tragic ending. LaTisha sees this change as a developmental process. To overcome dysfunction and drag she will need a positive attitude, but more importantly she will need reasons and rationales why school counselors to in her district need to change their practice. LaTisha has not given up, only come to the realization that “They’re not there yet, they’re just not there yet.”

Footnotes

Appendix A: Q Sorting Protocol

Please sort the statements on a continuum (+4 to −4) from the functions that you feel are most important for school counselors (+4) to those functions that you feel are least important for school counselors (−4).

Instructions

After your record your sorts please answer the following questions:

Acknowledgements

The authors want to acknowledge and thank the participants for this study. The authors are especially grateful to the director of guidance who has become an inspiration to them.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Matt Militello is an associate professor in the Leadership, Policy, and Adult and Higher Education Department and a research fellow at the Friday Institute for educational Innovation at North Carolina State University. He was a middle and high public school teacher, assistant principal, and principal in Michigan.

Chris Janson is an associate professor in the Department of Leadership, School Counseling, and Sport Management at the University of North Florida where he teaches both school counseling and educational leadership courses. He was a public middle school teacher and high school counselor in Michigan. Interestingly, the authors had worked together as public school administrator and counselor for two years.

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