School Counseling at a Crossroads: The Road Ahead for Iowa’s School Counselors

David Ford is Postsecondary Success Lead for Mississippi Bend AEA in Bettendorf, Iowa.  Dave is also part of a statewide collaborative known as the Iowa College and Career Readiness Roadmap Team, which has been leading the charge in Iowa to ensure that ALL Iowa students will be able to #ReachHigher and have postsecondary success. In this blog, he shares the work that is being done and how it will impact the role of school counselors.  Check out this interesting and exciting account of school counselor advocacy at the highest level!

Exactly one year ago, I sat in the audience at the ISCA Conference and listened as Trish Hatch asked us to make a personal commitment to improve college and career readiness outcomes for students.  I committed to “provide targeted professional development for school counselors and training for graduate students aligned with proven strategies to increase postsecondary outcomes for students” (yes, I had to go back in my twitter feed for that one).  I am not exactly sure how I did, but I do know that I honored the intent of that commitment.  In fact, so much that it has become my professional identity - quite literally (if you need further evidence, my twitter handle is @TheCCRAdvocate)!

Throughout the last year, I traveled around the state engaging in conversations with a wide variety of stakeholders, organizations, and education and business leaders.  Using those good old-fashioned counseling skills of listening, reflecting, and paraphrasing, I learned a lot about what others think of school counseling, specifically as it relates to college and career readiness.  It has taken its toll on me - I had to face some harsh realities that the perception we hold of ourselves is often quite different from the perceptions others hold of us.  Let me share some of the comments I heard, often from very influential individuals in high-ranking positions:

• “Counselors don’t want to provide career guidance to students”
• “Counselors aren’t interested in helping students with postsecondary planning”
• “Counselors lack the training to support students career development and college planning”
• “Counselors say they are too busy with mental health issues to take on college advising”

My initial reaction (in my head) was, “Which counselors?  I’ll call them!”  But the reality is there may be a degree of truth to these statements.  As Dr. Hatch mentioned last year, we are “a marginalized profession advocating for marginalized students.”  School Counselors must engage in important advocacy efforts to change this perception. Now is the time to get in the game and refuse to sit idly by while others define the role of School Counselors in Iowa.  

Now is the time to take a stand and BE BOLD!

Unfortunately, I will not be attending the ISCA Conference this year.  Instead, I will be representing ISCA, along with Meredith Dohmen, ISCA’s VP for Counseling Directors and the Student Supports Coordinator at Des Moines Public Schools, at the White House Convening on Strengthening School Counseling and College Advising.  We will be attending along with seven other leaders strongly committed to this cause.  Even more exciting are the names and positions of the others who will join us and thus have accepted the call to strengthen school counseling and college advising in Iowa:

• Nancy Ankeny-Hunt, Consultant, Iowa Department of Education, Bureau of Learner Strategies and Supports
• Rob Denson, President, Des Moines Area Community College
• Jeff Herzberg, Chief Administrator, Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency
• Wade Leuwerke, Associate Professor and Department Chair, Drake University, School of Education, Department of Leadership and Counseling
• Duane (D.T.) Magee, Executive Director, Iowa Board of Educational Examiners
• Rachel Scott, Division Administrator - Outreach, Iowa College Student Aid Commission
• Amy Vybiral, Consultant, Iowa Department of Education, Bureau of Career and Technical Education

These individuals represent agencies which have a vested interest in supporting school counseling to achieve Future Ready Iowa’s goal - 70% of Iowans in the workforce to have education or training beyond high school by 2025.  The outcomes of their respective organizations and professions are tightly connected to the idea that strong school counseling and college advising is necessary.  

Specifically, the White House Convening will address state policies and metrics associated with six areas, all of which were identified in 2014 during the first White House Convening on this topic:

1. Designing or revising school counselor preparation at higher education to ensure adequate standards for school counselors in College and Career Readiness (CCR)

2. Developing, improving, and sustaining partnerships between university training programs and K-12 school districts to ensure field site placements and activities during fieldwork and training for site supervisors and administrators align with new requirements in CCR

3. Writing and implementing minimum credentialing/certificate standards for all who participate in CCR activities (university training programs, K-12 school districts, college access staff, and not-for-profit/non-profit college access groups)

4. Supporting professional development in districts for school counselors and CCR service providers ensuring a collaborative scaffolding of agreed upon roles and services

5. Creating policies, practices, and procedures that support hiring, supervision, and placement of appropriately trained/certificated/licensed CCR service providers ensuring responsibilities are tied to training (job descriptions, evaluation tools, etc.)

6. Providing opportunities to develop strategic partnerships with donors, funders, and researchers interested in evaluating or supporting any or all of this work, promoting new systemic change models, and discovering evidence based practices to support school counselors and the students they serve

The Convening will bring together state leaders and national experts to create state-specific action plans and address policies and practices most likely to leverage an impact toward creating a Future Ready Iowa and support President Obama’s College Opportunity Agenda and the First Lady’s Reach Higher Initiative.  Hosted by the National Consortium for School Counseling and Postsecondary Success, the end goal is to “increase the number of traditionally underserved students prepared for, entering, and succeeding in postsecondary education by focusing on ways to strengthen, align, and expand the college-going pipeline locally, and concomitantly, at the state and national levels.”

To continue the question Trish Hatch posed to us all at last year’s ISCA Conference, what will your commitment be to improve college and career readiness outcomes for all students?  Earlier this year, First Lady Michelle Obama tweeted, “School Counselors are truly the deciding factor in whether our young people attend college” - what other inspiration do we need?  Now is the time.  Be BOLD.

David has been a school counselor in New York and Iowa and has worked in the elementary, middle and high school levels. His previous position before working for the Mississippi Bend AEA was the District At-Risk/Counseling Coordinator at Southeast Polk CSD.   

David Ford

Postsecondary Success Lead & General Education Consultant

Mississippi Bend Area Education Agency

729 21st Street

Bettendorf, IA 52722

563.344.6571

dford@mbaea.org