A review of the school counseling literature for themes evolving from The Education Trust initiative

Professional School Counseling, Oct, 2003 by Charlene M. Alexander, Theresa Kruczek, Adam Zagelbaum, Maria Chase Ramirez

The authors examine themes evolving from The Education Trust Initiative to determine how these themes are reflected in the professional school counseling literature.

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The Education Trust conducted a series of focus groups in 1996 with school counseling stakeholders (i.e., school counselors, counselor educators, principals, counseling graduate students) and identified specific problems and solutions for school counseling and counselor education programs. The findings included the following: (Guerra, 1998a):

* School counselors focus too much on counseling students with serious emotional and social problems while denying students sufficient academic guidance and direction.

* Current counselor training programs offer a core of genetic counseling courses that do not provide counselors with the specific knowledge and skills needed to be effective in schools. For example, the vast majority of counselor preparation programs emphasize a mental health model with few connections to student achievement as an important indicator of student success. (p.36).

Following the publication of the Guerra (1998a) article, a firestorm of debate ensued about the education achievement vs. mental health focus identified by The Education Trust. Guerra (1998b) reported that many of the responses "centered around what focus and direction school counseling, and concurrently school counselor education, should take.... The Education Trust seemed to advocate what counselors were calling a 'guidance' model, other counselors were advocating for a 'counseling' or 'mental health' model" (p.2). House and Hayes (2002), on behalf of The Education Trust, further argued that school counselors must work to be proactive leaders who are effective collaborators in advocating for the academic success of all students. This means that school counselors' primary focus should be to close the achievement gap between poor students and students of color and their more advantaged peers. House and Hayes outlined a "New Vision" for school counselors, moving from a present focus as mental health providers to a focus on academic/student achievement.

This debate about the appropriate emphasis for school counselors has similarly been voiced in other recent Professional School Counseling articles with some authors advocating a need for a stronger mental health counseling perspective (e.g., Lockhart & Keys, 1998; Luongo, 2000; Taylor & Adelman, 2000) and others focusing on the educational achievement role (e.g., Sink, 2001, Guerra, 1998b).

The "New Vision" for school counseling put forth by The Education Trust was examined in a study conducted by Perusse and Goodnough (2001). This study was conducted to determine counselor educators' perceptions of the importance of the concepts defined by The Education Trust and the extent to which these concepts were reflected in their master's-level school counseling programs. The results of their investigation showed that, overall, counselor educators perceived that the concepts defined by The Education Trust vision for school counseling (i.e., education equity, access, and academic success, with a concentration on interventions that close the achievement gap) are important and should be included in school counselor preparation programs.

While the former investigation was designed to investigate counselor educators' perceptions of The Education Trust initiative, this study was designed to determine how The Education Trust National Initiative for Transforming School Counseling, which promotes academic achievement as the primary focus of school counselors vs. a mental health focus (House & Hayes, 2002), is reflected in the professional school counseling literature. While it is beneficial to the profession to understand how counselor educators perceive The Education Trust Initiative, it is also beneficial to determine how the concepts of education achievement and mental health are reflected in our professional literature.

Professional publications of any discipline reflect current issues, trends, and values of the profession as well as information deemed necessary for adequate practice (Flores, Rooney, Heppner, Browne, & Wei, 1999; LeUnes, 1974). One way to assess the information deemed relevant for practice by a profession is to review the professional publications. Additionally, professional publications typically serve as a primary forum for defining appropriate focus for the profession as well as providing guidelines for training professionals within the field.

This investigation included articles published in professional school counseling journals. The establishment of the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) in 1952 led to the development of the first journal specifically devoted to the profession of school counseling, The School Counselor. In keeping with the trend started by the NDEA in 1958, a second journal, Elementary School Guidance and Counseling, was developed for school counselors. More recently, the ASCA merged the two previous journals into one, Professional School Counseling. Baker (1997) indicated a desire to maintain continuity in content and emphasis between the two journals while increasing the quality of manuscripts published. Professional School Counseling is the official publication of ASCA and, as such, serves as the gatekeeper of what is deemed important in the profession of school counseling. Articles published in the journal are cited in other professional journals, both nationally and internationally, as indicative of the current issues, trends, and values in the school counseling profession.