Module 2
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The work of creating equitable systems that respond to student needs and support historically underserved students and translating those student needs into program outcomes can be very collaborative and engaging.
Module 1 presented the Oregon Department of Education’s Education Equity Stance and the American School Counseling Association’s (ASCA’s) Position Statements on equity and anti-racist school counseling practice. ODE provides this information on the Education Equity Lens and this pdf on Equity Lens and Tools.
A comprehensive needs assessment can be a tool to help districts identify educational inequities through the disaggregation of the data collected. Dr. Holcomb-McCoy (School Counseling to Close Opportunity Gaps, 2022) states: Antiracist and social justice-focused counselors rely on data to promote systemic and programmatic changes with schools and counseling programs. Essentially, antiracist and social justice-focused school counselors use data to identify opportunity gaps for intervention planning and then use data again to determine the effectiveness of those interventions. (p.110).
The Oregon Framework reiterates this message and directs your team to the types of data to analyze: “School counselors are uniquely positioned to identify systemic barriers that impact student achievement. School counselors have access to school wide achievement, attendance and behavioral data that not only informs the school counseling program but often underscores the need to identify and remove barriers that prevent all students from achieving college and career readiness. School counselors use these data to support leadership, advocacy and collaboration designed to create systemic change.” (p.18)
Note that p.40 in the Framework discusses disaggregating data and on p.45 you will find information on how to develop a Closing the Gap Action Plan.
CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, developed an Equity Centered Data Reflection Protocol and Establishing Norms for Data Conversations. You can access these tools by creating an account (free) and downloading the two resources.
Check the AP/IB data, dual-credit data, and CTE course participation data. Education Northwest collects and reports this data. What are the barriers that could be addressed in order to close the opportunity gaps?
Your team may want to review one or more of the resources recently developed by the Oregon Department of Education:
As you look at your school, staff, students, families, and community, ask: (a) Who is represented? Whose voices are we hearing from? (b) Who is left out? Who are we not hearing from? (c) What is going well? What needs to be improved? (d) As you consider your curricular resources, art on the walls, staff, guest speakers, etc., who is represented and who is left out?
Consider the possibility that members of the team may approach the data with their own biases. The systems that created a lot of this data are centered in the dominant culture and don't always tell us the full story and/or are biased toward the dominant culture. Adults can have emotional responses to data that include: defensive, dismissive, dejected, and downplaying the negative. How can we center ourselves and be curious when we look at the data?
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The development and implementation of comprehensive programs is beginning to include more frequently the identification of students’ strengths and developmental assets as well as their counseling needs. While assessments and evaluation data can provide an opportunity to explore and interpret what is found, it is important to remember that each data point provides one set of information and may be incomplete.
There is other data that can be collected to provide a more well-rounded, comprehensive and holistic picture of students. Strategies such as empathy interviews and focus groups with students and families can be used to get a more complete picture of the strengths, cultural assets, lived experiences, wants and needs, and voice and agency of those being served by the CSCP.
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Doing a comprehensive needs assessment is hard work. Your team is encouraged to discuss your Big Why for this work.
One elementary school counselor who engaged in a needs assessment process stated, “I realized that during my first year on the job, I was doing random acts of counseling. Next year I want to spend more time addressing the highest priority needs of my students.” This counselor realized that random acts of counseling may be helpful to some students, but they do not support a strategic approach to counseling or support the ability to measure the effectiveness of a given intervention.
School counseling personnel will always be busy; a comprehensive counseling program that is strategic, data-informed, and centers student voice can enable counseling team members to spend more of their time addressing the counseling needs that will make the biggest difference for the highest percentage of students.
Examples
In this video, school counseling team Rebecca Cohen and Ricky Almeida at West Sylvan Middle School utilized needs assessment data gathered in the Portland Public Schools to determine whether student belonging should be prioritized as a program outcome in their Comprehensive Counseling Plan. They implemented their interventions, and then gathered data to assess the efficacy of the interventions. They looked at disaggregated data from before and after the implementation of the intervention to determine the impact on the various student groups in their building.
Wynn Arellano, who was also in Module 1, provides us with a useful “frame” for data. He says in this short video, “Data tells a story. And, that story is usually about students.”
Assessing the counseling needs of students and the school is essential to designing, implementing, maintaining, and improving a comprehensive counseling program, and requires thoughtful planning and coordination for implementation. A comprehensive needs assessment uses multiple forms of data to understand what is happening in the school and opportunities for interventions at the individual, group, classroom, or school-wide level and is to be responsive and adaptive to community needs.
Guiding Principles for Conducting the Needs Assessment
Before the counseling team and Counseling Advisory Committee begin a needs assessment, there are a few important guiding principles to hold at the center of the work.