This
chapter is near and dear to my professional life these days. HACC is still in
the middle of a Middle States Accreditation warning, and one of the areas of
warning is related to assessment. Gone are the days when departments can meet
and not follow-up with surveys, tie their meetings to the strategic plan, etc.
We can no longer submit annual reports using anecdotal information or have
goals unrelated to our college-wide plans. Our entire professional culture has
changed to become a culture of assessment, data tracking, and evidence-based
practices. Thankfully, our assessment warning was lifted in September, but that
does not mean that we do not have to follow the practices that are integral to
their Standards of Excellence. The case study in this chapter echoed what I
work with on a daily basis and learning to become a data-driven institution is
an extremely daunting task, both personally and for each of our departments.
Developing
a Comprehensive School Counseling Program is the best way to tie your
department’s data back to something concrete. The CSCP acts as a strategic plan
for your department and allows counselors to have a high degree of
accountability for their jobs. It also allows school administrators to have
measurable, evidence-based outcomes that speak to why School Counselors are
essential to the school district. With budget cuts mowing down positions in
school across the country, we need
concrete data to prove our value to the school.
I
identify with the comments in the text that state, “ unless school counselors
know why collecting data and using it
is important, and how to gather and
make sense of the data, school counselors and the schools they serve will
continue to flounder with how to influence students’ educational success most
effectively” (Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012, p. 109). It is very difficult to
roll out a new data-driven culture if it is a new concept to the school, and it
is especially hard to market this new idea under the banner of threats of lost
jobs if the new model is not followed. Training, education, and a data-driven
administration (to act as models for the rest of the school) are essential
components of getting School Counselors on board with using assessment to drive
their departmental practices.
The
statement that hit home with me in the reading was “Data by itself is generally
useless unless compared with or viewed in relation to other data” (Dollarhide
& Saginak, 2012, p. 110). This screams the importance of having a CSCP in
your guidance department. A well-developed and thoroughly followed CSCP will
eliminate the question “what do we do with the data?” because you will have
specific goals and outcomes to reference as well as a bank of data to use as a
comparison guide and tool for future planning. “Thus, we need to analyze data,
examine, and interpret the data in ways that generate meaning and inform us”
(Dollarhide & Saginak, 2012, p. 110). A CSCP will provide the framework for
us to follow the guidelines set forth in this chapter.
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