Running head: PROGRAM AUDIT

Program Audit:
Yorktown Middle School
Elizabeth Jones
Ball State University

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According to the ASCA National Model, it is a school counselor's responsibility to create

and implement "comprehensive school counseling programs which are...comprehensive in scope,
preventive in design, and developmental in nature" (2012, xii). In order to ensure that their
programs are comprehensive and continue to meet the needs of their students in the most
effective way, school counselors can use evaluation tools. In a culture where there are many
demands on a counselor's time, the results of evaluations can help the counselors know which
parts of the program are strong and stable, and which areas need further development.
In order to evaluate their school counseling programs, counselors have access to multiple
forms of assessment, including the Change Agent for Equity (CAF) School Counselor
Evaluation (Chen-Hayes, Ockerman, & Mason, 2013). No single evaluation will be a perfect fit
for every school (2013), so there is no singular assessment that is deemed to be more appropriate
than any other. For Yorktown Middle School, I deemed the CAF model to be the best tool to
assess the depth and breadth of the school counseling program.
The school counseling program at Yorktown Middle School (YMS) is an amalgamation
of distinguished initiatives, nonexistent or very basic initiatives, and initiatives that are strong,
but still have room for improvement, according to the CAF model (Chen-Hayes, Ockerman, &
Mason, 2013). The YMS School Counseling program is comprehensive in scope, but certainly
not all of the elements are equally strong, leaving opportunities for growth and improvement.
Leadership, Collaboration, and Communication
Leadership as change agents for equity
The school counselor is highly involved in several school and professional teams. This
includes, the Response to Intervention (RTI) team where she plays an integral role in tracking

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student progress and identifying students who are not keeping up in order to provide them with
equitable resources in order to succeed academically. Additionally, the school counselor is a
leader at Yorktown Middle School as well as the corporation as a whole, by being an active
participant in the behavior team. The purpose of the behavior team is to provide training and
offer resources to teachers to help them best manage difficult students. Through this team, the
school counselor not only finds and applies new programs to address current behavioral needs,
she has also facilitated trainings at all the schools in the corporation for the teachers.
Furthermore, the school counselor takes steps to initiate change in the school based on
the gaps she identifies regularly. She is plugged in to the pulse of the school and is aware of
ongoing issues and is prepared to adapt and react to the changing needs of the students and
teachers alike. One example of this happened not long ago. Yorktown Middle School offered an
opportunity to advanced eighth grade students to take a biology class at the high school. Every
day the school bussed the group of students to the high school. However, the school counselor
noticed that the volume of students seizing this opportunity was growing exponentially, and
found a way to adapt the middle school to offer the class on site in order to meet the growing
demand.
Educator/School Counselor Collaboration
Distinguished in seeking the input and expertise of other professionals and collaborating
to co-deliver and co-present activities. The school counselor relies on communication from her
network of school counselors, as well as through other professionals like the principle and
superintendent. As mentioned, she also serves on both the RTI and Behavior teams alongside
teachers and the principle, collaborating to provide equitable services to all students.

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While the school counselor shares the school counseling program goals and outcomes
with the staff at Yorktown Middle School, and is likewise aware of academic instruction
initiatives, she does not explore the specifics of those initiatives to tweak her own materials to
adjust to changes.
School-Family Partnerships
The school counselor utilizes some varied sources to communicate and partner with the
community and families, but this partnership is relatively basic. The community resource guide
is developed, but has not been updated every year, and is not in electronic form for easy
dissemination. Nor does the school counselor collaborate with many community resources to
provide services in schools. Yorktown Middle School does have a relationship with Ball State
University, and has partnered with the Counseling Department to implement the Choose Respect
program to educate students about healthy relationships. Outside of that relationship, there is
little other partnership.
The school counselor also utilizes technology (email, Twitter, webpage) to communicate
with parents when needed, but could use Twitter and update the webpage about current events
more regularly. Furthermore, she reads the newspaper to gain a better understanding of the
culture of the community, and to know about the goings-on in local business. This helps to
inform the school counselor of potential needs her students will have that her programs can
address.
School-Wide/Multi-Systemic Intervention
The school counselor takes on several school-wide committees in various areas in order
to effect systemic change. Using school-based data, the school counselor is able to help address

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the needs f all students. However, there are still areas that she has not extended into, particularly
those that do not have as strong an academic component. Much of the focus of her efforts our on
assuring academic success, and while she certainly addresses personal and social needs on an
individual and occasionally a group level, there could be more programs initiated throughout
the year on a regular basis in order to ensure that students emotional and social needs are not left
unattended. While those certainly affect academic performance and achievement (Kuo et al.,
2013), they are more likely to be overlook at YMS than initiatives with a more direct association
with academic success like organization and study skills.
Advocacy/Public Relations
The school counselor at YMS identifies underserved populations and their needs, stays up
to date with current school and education-relation legislation, and communicates data from the
program to advocate to stakeholders the necessity of the school counseling program. The school
counselor staunchly believes though that she could always do more to advocate for students and
the program. One way to do this would be to become more active at school board meetings.
Additionally, Yorktown Middle School has staff meetings and team meetings most mornings
before the students arrive. Some are monthly, while others are weekly or once a year. The
school counselor presents her goals and successes only once per year. I contend that instead of
doing it just once yearly, she could collaborate with her principle to arrange that once a quarter
she communicates her program initiatives and outcomes at a staff meeting in order to increase
their understanding of the program. This could also work to create a more collaborative
environment; if teachers are more aware of the school counselors initiatives, they may be more
likely to identify students with needs that can be addressed by the programs (Nisbett, 1980), and
consequently refer more students to reduce the number of students who fall through the cracks.

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Program Assessment/Accountability, Achievement/Opportunity/Attainment Gaps, Ability,

Disability, and Gifted/Talented
The School Counseling Program at YMS relies heavily on data to identify the success of
programs, and also to gauge the needs of students. Typically, this data includes ISTEP and
NWEA scores, as well as student grades and any assessments used in Response to Intervention
approaches. The school counselor helps teachers interpret data in order to inform their teaching
practices, and also uses it to identify students who have high abilities and are gifted and talented,
as well as to identify students who require special education resources. The school counselor
also uses observational data and reports from teachers and students to identify low-income,
immigrant, and LGBTQ students who may need additional services.
The data collected using these methods helps the school counselor implement programs
that specifically address the unique needs of the student body to close attainment and
achievement gaps. Sometimes this requires changing students schedules so they can be in a
more appropriate level class, or revamping the entire bell schedule to extend class periods to
increase instructional time. Other times, the school counselor uses the data to determine what
kinds of groups or classroom guidance would be the most beneficial in promoting the success of
all students. The school counselor even looks at the data to inform her decision about her goals
for the year. However, the process that she uses to implement these changes is not the method
outline by the ASCA National Model (2012). She does use the Indiana Standards of Guidance,
as well as Student Learning Objectives through RISE an evaluation meant to assess educator
performance through rigorous and fair methods (http://www.riseindiana.org/what-is-rise) to
create and evaluate yearly goals, but they are not necessarily in line with her methodology. This
is a simple fix, though. In order to adjust this and help to strengthen the School Counseling

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Program, it is important to obtain the resources from the ASCA National Model, read over them,
and identify what exactly is different between her own methodology and the recommended
standards and plans outline by ASCA. The school counselor can incorporate missing
components and communicate those to her supervisor (the principle) during their next meeting to
discuss her progress and performance.
Cultural Identity/Language
YMS does not offer more than one language (Spanish only) so there is no opportunity for
the school counselor to encourage students to take more than one. However she does encourage
them to take Spanish as a part of the middle school requirements
Proficient in delivering the ASCA personal/social competencies to respect self and others,
and has also partnered with Ball State to implement the Choose Respect program in order to
enhance the personal/social curriculum. Another strength in this area is the school counselors
advocacy for bilingual students as well as students who are not fluent in English. Over the
course of the last several years, YMS has seen more of an influx of immigrant students,
particularly from Afghanistan. Through the registration process, the school counselor identifies
these students and helps link them to resources that will help them learn English, and she creates
Individual earning Plans (ILP) for these students in order to facilitate appropriate
accommodations for their classes and tests. When she first started, there were no resources for
these students, and when she raised her concern for the needs of these students, she was met with
the remark that there was no budget. However, the school counselor fought for the
implementation of an affordable and effective resource, and now students have access to them.

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While finances continue to be an impediment, the school counselor continues to advocate for this
program.
The area that could use the most growth is in teaching a diversity curriculum for students.
While each year the school counselor facilitates guidance lessons on tolerance and accepting
differences, the lack of diversity of the student body has taken an emphasis away from the
importance of a full diversity curriculum. However, this could be remedied easily. The way that
the class schedule is structured, each student has a class called Interventions and Extensions.
Students who are identified as at or above their level in literacy receive a guidance curriculum
once a week. There is a theme for each quarter, including character, study skills, organization,
etc. With some minor reconstruction (like combining organization and study skills), the schedule
could easily allow for an entire curriculum centered on diversity. Literature suggests that
diversity is important to helping individuals increase not only their level of understanding of
multiple perspectives, but also their sense of self-efficacy and helps them to find more satisfying
careers (Higgins, 2001), so there is a great need for teaching diversity. To address this, I would
implement a curriculum utilizing the materials from the workbook Diversity Activities for Adults
and Youth that was set out by the College of Agricultural Research and Cooperative Extensions
at Penn State.
College-Career Readiness and Planning
The School Counseling Program at YMS certainly address College and Career Readiness and
Planning. The school counselor facilitates classroom guidance lessons in for all seventh- and
eighth-grade students. The focus of these lessons is primarily upon assessing the students
interests and skills, and matching those to potential majors and careers. The purpose of this

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curriculum is to get students to begin thinking about their future. However, most of the effort in
this area is diverted towards helping students plan for high school before they plan for college
and their careers. For the purpose of high school planning, the school counseling program has
events and meetings for students and parents to better understand the high school requirements
and make their high school plan rather than focusing on college information.
The most glaring weakness in this area is that sixth-graders are not recipients of the
college/career planning, or even the high school planning curriculum. Instead, much of the
curriculum for them is geared toward adjusting to and planning for their middle school careers.
However, in the same way that the school counselor delivers the college/career readiness
curriculum to the seventh- and eighth-graders, so, too could she deliver it to sixth-graders. All
students are required to take an elective called BIT. The school counselor collaborates with the
teacher of that course so she goes in for a few days in each of the seventh and eighth grade
classes to present her curriculum. Adding the sixth grade classes would merely require just a
little more communication and scheduling.
Ethics
The school counselor at Yorktown Middle School takes steps to ensure that her program
adheres to ethical guidelines. Through consultation with other school counselors and
administrators, as well as the school lawyer, the school counselor takes every step to ensure that
she continues to practice ethically. She communicates her responsibility of confidentiality, as
well as its limits, and then abides by it. One way to further improve this area would be to add the
ethical guidelines to her webpage, and also keep copies on hand to provide to stakeholders when
they meet with her.

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Technology and Administration

At Yorktown Middle School, the culture of the school dictates the importance of
successful technological integration and administrative collaboration. Without technology, the
school counselor would not be able to successfully or effectively communicate with teacher or
the principles, keep track of student information and scheduling, etc. The school counselor uses
technology to enhance her ability to gain and disseminate information in order to facilitate a
collaborative relationship with personnel. Furthermore, she updates her webpage regularly to
ensure parents are able to access accurate information. Additionally, the school counselor has
working relationships with all teachers which helps her in determining which classes to put
students into in order to set them up for success. In fact, her ability to have strong relationships
with her coworkers has enhanced her relationship with the principles, allowing them to
collaborate effectively and maintain open communication about what is happening in the school,
initiatives that need to be implemented to address needs, and to communicate about and advocate
for her responsibilities.
Anti-Violence/Anti-bullying
The School Counseling Program at YMS addresses anti-violence and bullying that are in
line with Indiana State requirements. The school counselor tries to implement evidence-based
curriculum, like Bully Proofing your Middle School (Bonds, 2000)). However, she abides that
there is always room for improvement, so keeps her eyes out for ways to improve the curriculum
to best fit the needs of the current students in the school, so she is on the look out for
professional development workshops that address these issues, among others.

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School Data Profile

To gather information about a school in order to inform the practices of the school
counseling program, it can be helpful to investigate the population that comprises the student
body. At Yorktown Middle School, there are 595 students ranging from sixth to eighth grade. Of
these 595, only a small percentage is not White by ethnicity. This can hinder several factors: it
makes securing accurate, disaggregated data at the state level difficult which hinders the school
counselors ability to adequately assess the needs of the minority populations in the school.
Further exploration of the student body reveals that nearly half of the students (44%) are
enrolled in advanced courses, and many of those are identified by the school as gifted. This
should prompt the school counselor to consider implementing programs that address the unique
challenges of gifted students. At Yorktown, many of those needs are addressed through
additional resources in classes, and a period set aside for extending students knowledge and
skills that enhance academic achievement, but may not necessarily be tailored to academics.
These include lessons on character and stress management.
On the other hand, approximately 10% of students are identified as requiring special
education services. This number does not include individuals who require accommodations. At
YMS, the students who are identified for special education services receive a variety of
additional support, ranging from remedial classes to additional assistance.
Overall, the School Counseling Program at YMS addresses a range of needs in a variety
of domains, and therefore qualifies as a comprehensive program. However, there continues to be
a need for continued growth and improvement in order to further enhance the impact of the
program.

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References
American School Counselor Association (2012). The ASCA National Model: A framework for
school counseling programs (3rd. ed.). Alexandria, VA: Author
Bonds, M. (2000). Bully Proofing Your Middle School. Sopris West, Dallas, TX.
College of Agricultural Research and Cooperative Extension. Diversity Activities for Youth and
Adults. Penn State, PA.
Chen-Hayes, S., Ockerman, M., & Mason, E.C.M. (2013). 101 Solutions for School Counselors
and Leaders in Challenging Times. Thousand Oaks, CA. Sage Publications.
Higgins, M. (2001). Changing careers: The effects of social context. Journal of Organizational
Behavior, 22, 595-618
Kuo, E.S., Vander Stoep, A., Herting, J.R., Grupp, K., Elizabeth McCauley, E. (2013). How to
identify students for school-based depression intervention: Can school record review be
substituted for universal depression screening? Journal of Child and Adolescent
Psychiatric Nursing, 26, 42-52. Doi: 10.1111/jcap.12010
Nisbett, R. (1980). "Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment." Prentice
Hall: NJ p. 17-42: 333
What Is Rise? (n.d.). Retrieved September 8, 2014, from http://www.riseindiana.org/what-is-rise