Accountability, It's your job too!

After reading this chapter on accountability, I am reminded again of the observations I had during our research project whereby we were taking in the roles of school counselors. I had dedicated a lot of my discussion in that project to the differences I saw, not all of them good. Since none of you, fellow classmates, read my project you need a little back story. I chose to interview the school counselor at my high school (not the same one that was there when I was in school) and my high school's competitor in everything; academics, sports, materials, community participation- you name it. I went to Annville and as is normal in high school, I loathed Cedar Crest, our arch nemesis. I was pleasantly surprised to see the growth that Annville has had in the last seven years but I left my interview feeling like they were still in their infancy steps. The question of accountability came up in my head numerous times during my discussion with the school counselor, but I never knew how to approach the situations that were red flags for me in a diplomatic way. My concerns stemmed mostly from an initial comment that “the ASCA national model is what everyone strives for” the fact that “the district does not require us to be RAMP certified so we focus more on listening to our students” heightened my fear that there may not be as much data driven programming going on here as I initially thought. As it turns out, there was a very large gap between where Annville is currently and where Cedar Crest is. Cedar Crest (or CCHS) has been using the National Model much longer and is more in the stage of smoothing out minor bumps, or increasing their outreach to raise their numbers for effective programs. I learned a lot from this project, but mostly that accountability is everyone's job.


Dollarhide and Saginak (2012) really isolated the importance of collecting, collaborating and presenting data. We also discuss the importance of being current, and data driven pretty much every class, so the fact that some schools with today's resources are still not with the program is concerning. Not to go on a political rant but a problem that we will all deal with as professional counselors is the financial state that our country is it. It is a terrible thing to think that this will so greatly have an impact on our schools when there are places in other countries that have one-one-hundredth of what we have, and still have successful schools. This realization makes me see even more how important it will be to be a cautious, yet supportive cheerleader. Buy in can significantly change the opinion about school counseling and its importance. But again, financial responsibility, data driven programming, buy in....accountability is everyone's job.


Dollarhide, C. T., & Saginak, K. A. (2012). Comprehensive school counseling programs. (2nd ed.). New York: Pearson, Inc.