Advocating for the ASCA National Model

School counselors have made great strides since the launch of the ASCA National Model. Now, 20 years later, professional advocacy is needed more than ever, as school counselors are still tasked with fulfilling their ethical obligation to advocate for appropriate roles and responsibilities.

Professional Advocacy 
I am trained in using the ASCA National Model, and I am really excited to use it at my school. However, I am at a school that hasn’t implemented it. At my school, school counselors oversee testing and scheduling, which requires a significant amount of time and planning throughout the entire school year. When I met with my principal about implementing the ASCA National Model, he asked who would take over the testing and scheduling. How do I advocate for using the ASCA National Model when people at my school don’t understand my role? 

School counselors have unique qualifications and skills that put them in an optimal position to implement a comprehensive school counseling program that meets all students’ academic, career and social/emotional needs. The ASCA Ethical Standards state that school counselors should “strive to address and remedy the work environment and conditions that do not reflect the school counseling profession’s ethics, using advocacy and problem-solving skills.” Furthermore, school counselors are called to engage in leadership, advocacy, collaboration and consultation efforts to have a positive impact on student outcomes. This may involve striving to create systemic change when school counselors work in environments where they are unable to use their training and expertise to support student needs. 

Often, administrators and other stakeholders are unfamiliar with the school counselor’s role or may rely on past memories of “guidance” when they were students. Therefore, it’s important to be proactive in advocating for your professional role, just as you are when advocating for your students. Although striving to create systemic change can be a daunting task, there are proactive steps you can take to advocate for change in your school, including the following:

• Educate stakeholders about your education and training. 
• Use the term “school counselor” and differentiate it from “guidance counselor.” 
• Advertise your comprehensive school program by creating a website, sending email blasts/phone dialers and posting programs/opportunities on school-approved social media sites. 
• Create a school counseling advisory council consisting of a diverse group of stakeholders that meets at least twice a year
• Request to be a part of the school leadership team to ensure collaborative efforts for goal setting.
• Proactively set meetings with administrators throughout the school year to highlight the school counseling program (e.g. progress toward goals, topics covered in classroom lessons, current
• small groups, outcome data, etc.).
• Complete the annual administrative conference at the beginning of each school year.
• Provide a calendar to stakeholders that showcases the school counseling services to students and the school.
• Seize moments to advocate for your role (e.g. faculty meetings, IEP/504 meetings) by speaking up and letting the team know how you can support them/students (e.g., connecting with outside resources, short-term counseling, etc.). 
• Advocate for a compromise with fair-share responsibilities to ensure that non-school-counseling duties do not interfere with the ability to deliver a comprehensive school counseling program.

It can be a challenging task to create systemic change around the school counselor’s role in a school that’s used to school counselors only being test coordinators, but the positive student outcomes as a result of implementing a comprehensive school counseling program make all your efforts worthwhile.

Fair-Share Responsibilities
I’m a new school counselor, and I know it’s important to be a team player. My administrative team often asks me to take on non-school-counseling duties, such as assisting with lunch duty and bus duty. Although I am willing to help my school team, I am concerned about having enough time to design, implement and manage my comprehensive school counseling program. Should I take on these responsibilities at my school? 

Schools are busy, fast-paced environments, and an all-hands-on-deck approach is often needed for operations to run smoothly. School counselors are members of a school team, which means they may be asked to take on fair-share responsibilities to support their schools and students. Although school counselors often take on these tasks to support their schools, when these non-school-counseling duties and responsibilities become an expected and routine part of the school counselor’s job, they may become problematic and interfere with the school counselor’s ability to provide direct and indirect services to students. 

The ASCA School Counselor Professional Standards & Competencies indicate that school counselors should use their time appropriately according to national recommendations and student/school data. The standards provide that school counselors should identify, evaluate and participate in fair-share responsibilities. However, as you consider your fair-share responsibilities, it’s critical to track your time to ensure you’re spending 80% or more of your time in direct and indirect services to students and 20% or less in program planning and school support. Be sure to conduct use-of-time assessments throughout the school year to truly capture how you’re spending your time.

ASCA’s Ethical Standards for School counselors indicate that school counselors should, “Avoid inappropriate roles and relationships such as providing direct discipline, teaching courses that involve grading students and accepting administrative duties in the absence of an administrator.” Additionally, they also say school counselors should, “Advocate for a school counseling program free of non-school-counseling assignments identified by ‘The ASCA National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs.’” 

Similarly, ASCA’s position statement The School Counselor and School Counseling Programs indicates that school counselors should spend at least 80% of their time in direct and indirect services to students and 20% or less of their time in program planning and school support. When considering indirect services, school counselors should support their school teams by focusing on program planning and utilizing their unique skill set (e.g., leadership, advocacy and collaboration) to benefit students. Furthermore, the position statement provides that fair-share responsibilities should not prevent school counselors from designing, implementing and managing their comprehensive school counseling programs. 

At the beginning of each school year, schedule an annual administrative conference with your principal. During this meeting, discuss and agree on your use-of-time percentages. If your use-of-time from the previous school year isn’t within ASCA’s recommended percentages (80% direct & indirect services to students/20% program planning and school support), you can share ASCA’s appropriate and inappropriate activities for school counselors document (schoolcounselor.org/role) and the results from your use-of-time assessments. This gives you objective data to advocate for appropriate activities.

School Improvement Goals
At the beginning of each school year, I review and disaggregate my school’s data to set annual student outcome goals and create action plans for my school counseling program. However, I often find that once I’ve set my goals and action plans, my school leadership team will task my school counseling department with addressing additional goals. This often makes us feel overwhelmed and spread thin throughout the school year. How can we strategize addressing our annual student outcome goal, while also supporting our school leadership team’s goals?

ASCA’s Ethical Standards indicate that school counselors should review and use school and student data to assess and address needs, including but not limited to data on strengths and disparities that may exist related to gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability and/or other relevant classifications. For example, school counselors may review the results from year-end state testing and disaggregate the data to determine if there are any differences between student groups. Based on their review, school counselors will design and implement interventions to support the students in an effort to close achievement/opportunity gaps. By using existing data, school counselors can be more purposeful, intentional and goal-oriented as they implement targeted interventions for students. 

Furthermore, ASCA’s Ethical Standards also state that school counselors should work collaboratively with their school team to set school improvement goals. Accordingly, it’s imperative to work in tandem with your school leadership team as you review and disaggregate school data. By doing so, you can set program goals and create action plans that support and align with the school leadership team’s goals. 

School counselors can advocate for their professional role by requesting that at least one school counselor be a member of the school’s leadership team. This ensures school counselors have the opportunity to work in conjunction with the school leadership team to evaluate school and student data to set school improvement goals. 

ASCA’s Ethical Standards also provide that school counselors should share data outcomes with stakeholders. Therefore, when school counselors serve on their school’s leadership team, it is important that they share how their action plans helped to close achievement, attainment, information, attendance, discipline, resource and opportunity gaps. By doing so, you can illustrate to the school leadership team how the leadership team’s collaborative efforts with you have helped to meet the team’s school improvement goals as well as your student outcome goals.

Angelica Greiner, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at Liberty University, serves on ASCA’s Ethics Committee and is an ASCA-certified Legal and Ethical Specialist. Crystal Hatton, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at Liberty University, serves on ASCA’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and is an ASCA-certified Legal and Ethical Specialist. Submit your ethics questions to ethics@schoolcounselor.org.