Chapter 3 and Ekstrom

This week I was quite pleased with the topics that were being covered in Chapter 3 and throughout the Ekstrom article (2004).  It was a change to have most of the concepts be a review for me rather than learning brand new information.  Unlike many of my classmates, I felt somewhat at ease that the statistical concepts are a part of this class.  Instead of taking the Research Methods class as many school counseling students do, I chose to take a Statistics class because of my past experience with it and my love of math.  I did really well in the class and afterwards felt that I had a strong understanding of the material and the connections within the material.  This chapter felt very much like a review of my entire Statistics class condensed to give a brief overview.  I feel it was important to have this information in our textbook and so close to the beginning as well because of its importance within assessment.  These concepts build on each other and become valuable when interpreting and understanding the tests and results within schools.  As school counselors it is crucial for us to speak this language and be able to have a conversation with students, teachers, parents and administrators about assessment. I believe that having this previous knowledge and foundation will benefit me within this class and my practicum.

I found the article for this week's reading to make some very insightful points about the role of school counselors in relation to assessment and other important characteristics of our job.  The introduction of the article presented previous research that had been done with all educators within a school in regards to their background, training, and expertise with assessment.  Teachers, school administrators and school counselors were all surveyed and it was found that school counselors had the greatest knowledge of assessment.  It was "found that counselors had a better understanding of assessment information than teachers and secondary school principals, especially in regard to test selection, validity, communication of test results, and ethical practice" (Ekstrom, p. 25, 2004).  This statement told me a few different things about assessment.  First of all this confirmed just how important assessment is to a school counselor's role and what strengths we can bring to a school setting.  It also told me that other professionals within the school are not as informed as they should be especially about things that are becoming so crucial to a child's success.  Finally, I was somewhat shocked that this research found that teachers were coming to school counselors for help in these areas.  Teachers use assessment on such a regular basis that I believe they should have the background in ethical issues, communicating test results and even just understanding how assessment works.  Knowing this could be beneficial to a future job or internship because my knowledge of these topics brings a different perspective to the school.  Another quote that really stuck out to me within the article was: " 26% of the responding counselors did not feel that evaluating their strengths and areas needing improvement in assessment and evaluation and developing a plan for personal and professional growth was part of their professional responsibility" (Ekstrom, p.29, 2004).  This completely confused me.  I firmly believe that any professional should be constantly trying to improve themselves professionally and personally.  It made me wonder if part of this plays into why many school counselors get stuck doing things they aren't supposed to be doing or why some other professionals do not have a good view of our role.  I will always strive to better myself and one of those ways will be to gain a better understanding for assessment and its benefits.

Drummond, R. J. and Jones, K. (2010). Assessment Procedures for Counselors and Helping Professionals. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

Ekstrom, R.B., Elmore, P.B., Schaefer, W.D., Trotter, T.V., & Webster, B. (2004). A survey of assessment and evaluation activities of school counselors. Professional School Counseling, 8 (1), 24-30.

Blog 2: Assessment

          After reading the article and chapter this past week, it opened my eyes to a lot of new information that I was unfamiliar with.  I only took one statistics class and I do not feel as though I got much out of it due to the frequent absences of my professor.  However, I was familiar with mean, median, mode, and some of the graphs that were presented due to my teaching experience.  Other graphs, such as the interval and ratio still have me confused but my hope is through more discussions I will be confident in the field with testing.  I understand that this course will help deepen my understanding of assessment procedures and how to interpret the results but I find myself nervous due to my lack of background knowledge of statistics. 

            In addition to being exposed to a lot of new information, I found it interesting that they brought the vital roles counselors play in the assessment process.  Drummond and Jones stated that counselors need to have knowledge of statistical concepts.  It makes me wonder if it varies across districts or counselors are supposed to be always playing this role across the state.  Ekstrom (2004) brought up the fact that it was found in a study that 67% of a group of 423 ASCA members considered assessment to be a very important part of their work.  I am sure it is because it allows you to learn more about the child in a variety of ways if done correctly.  Throughout the assessment process, you are completing observations, interviews, and asking questions related to the assessment.  In the School District of Lancaster the school psychologist are the ones that are working with the students.  The counselors do not have too much interaction with testing and interpreting.  It will be interesting to learn about what their job descriptions actually say.  I feel that assessment should fall under a category and that might be the case with the School District of Lancaster.  However, they are just not required due to having a school psychologist on site.  In addition I also gathered that it is important for you to continuously stay updated with any new or evolved information that comes our way.  In conclusion, even though there are some schools where the counselors are not playing a role in the assessment, we still need to be knowledgeable incase the situation arises where we either have to administer a test or interpret an assessment for parents.   

Drummond, R. J. & Jones, K. (2010). Assessment Procedures for Counselors and Helping Professionals (7^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Ekstrom, R.B., Elmore, P.B., Schaefer, W.D., Trotter, T.V., & Webster, B. (2004). A Survey of Assessment and Evaluation Activities of School Counselors.  Professional School Counseling, 8 (1), 24-30.

Blog 2: Happy Valentine's Day!

Understanding Assessment Scores: What a romantic topic to address on this glorious Valentine’s Day Thursday! I was going to attempt to carry this theme into the rest of my blog post, but I don’t think that will be possible, so I’ll now just go ahead and actually comment on the text. Last week, I was speaking to another graduate student who is actually completing his practicum and has taken the School Counseling Praxis exam. I was reassured when he said that this course prepared him well for taking the test, and I’m assuming that it is topics such as the content covered in this chapter that will be especially useful for us as practicing school counselors, and in my case, future Praxis exam test-taker. I appreciated the discussion of norm-referenced and criterion-references test scores, as I have heard these terms referenced before without really understanding what they meant. I liked the suggested questions used to evaluate the norm group detailed on page 67, as the authors state that counselors “ are obligated to evaluate the norm group and determine whether it is suitable for comparison with their client’s scores” (Drummond and Jones, 2010). It was also interesting to note that many of the assessments we’ll be studying about in this course (and perhaps learning more about during our class presentations) have varying sizes of norm groups. For instance, the Basic Achievement Skills Inventory was standardized over 2,400 students, while the Beck Depression Inventory had a normative sample of 500 students. This will be important information to include when communicating results of various inventories to students, parents, and other members of the school community. The other content in the chapter, and the discussion of z and t scores, percentiles and percentages (and the importance differences between them), quartiles, and deviations IQs brought back nightmares of the “Public Management Statistics” course I had to take a few years ago, but I certainly can understand how being familiar with this information will be critically important as a practicing school counselor, as we cannot just present raw scores without providing some context for how they were computed. I assume we’ll also garner more respect (and trust) if we actually sound like (or better yet, do actually know!) what we’re talking about when conducting, analyzing, and presenting assessment results for our students. Drummond, R., and Jones, K. Assessment Procedures for Counselors and Helping Professionals. (2010). 7th Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Blog #2

             The more that I learn about the role that a school counselor plays in a school; the more I am realizing how important this assessment class will be for my career.  From administering, to scheduling, to measuring results, it is very likely that it will be a major piece of my job. 

            When I first thought about changing careers and going back to graduate school for school counseling I always just assumed that the role of the counselor in the school was to simply be the counselor.  It really wasn’t until I talked to a friend until I realized that counselors in schools are used for many other different things, especially scheduling.  My thoughts about it at that time were much like the counselors thoughts in the Ekstrom article, “How is that a good use of a school counselor?”  Maybe I was being ignorant to the situation, but I assumed that anyone could learn how to schedule or give assessments, but not everyone could learn how to be a school counselor.  In my way of thinking, it takes a certain special kind of person to be a school counselor, and those talents and much of their time should not be wasted on other tasks.

            Even though I have my strong opinions about the role that the school counselor should play in the school, I live in the world of reality.  I have accepted the fact that I will probably be doing many things that are not necessarily associated with counseling.  As a result, I would like to be as educated and prepared as much as possible.  I just need to look at it in a different way.  Everything I do as a school counselor is going to help and support the school that I will be working at in some way.  No matter what kind of task it is, I want to own it and make it my own.  I would also rather know that the person who is in charge of assessment or testing process in the school has some sort of background and/or training associated.  If that happens to be me, than so be it.

            After reading chapter 3, I have come to realize why I was not looking forward to the statistical concepts that were going to be introduced in the world of assessments.  It has been too long since I have worked with any type of statistics.  I try my best to avoid math in general.  Just trying not to get overwhelmed and hoping for the best.

Ekstrom, R.B., Elmore, P.B., Schaefer, W.D., Trotter, T.V., & Webster, B. (2004). A survey of assessment and evaluation activities of school counselors. Professional School Counseling, 8 (1), 24-30.

Drummond, R. J. and Jones, K. (2010). Assessment Procedures for Counselors and Helping Professionals. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

Week 2 Blog: Ch. 3 and Article

Before reading the chapter on statistics, I had some fears about the topic.  I have never before taken a course on statistics. My only instruction in statistical concepts was about three years ago in my Research Methods course, which consisted of a brief, simple explanation during part of a single class period.  However, as I read through the chapter I became slightly more at ease.  Much of the vocabulary was familiar, and I realized that many of the concepts are those that I have taught either for middle school science or math.  I realized that my fears stemmed from the symbols used for mean, summation, test score, number of cases, etc.   The formulas used for things like mean and variance looked slightly frightening until I saw the one for the Pearson r formula; describing that as frightening is an understatement.  There is a reason I am not a statistician!  

After reading the chapter I also feel more confident in my understanding of standard deviation.  Standard deviation is a term that I see often when looking at evaluation results for my students, but have tended to skip over.  I knew that it related to the bell curve and the distance from the mean, but actually seeing it in graphic form on page 55 of Drummond & Jones (2010) helps it make more sense to me, as I am a very visual learner.  The step-by-step explanation of how to find standard deviation makes finding it more manageable, but after trying to reason through it I realize just how much I really do not understand it. For me to really understand something I need to understand the “why,” or the process.  The “why” for standard deviation is beyond me, but at least I have a better understanding now of what it means!

             In trying to understand some of the statistical concepts I tried to relate them to tests with which I am familiar: PSSAs.  Thinking about how the PSSAs relate to scale, I was wondering if the performance levels of PSSAs (advanced, proficient, basic, and below basic) were examples of interval scales.  Since values on an interval scale cannot be multiplied or made into ratios because one interval might have a different value than another, I thought it might make sense.  For example, you cannot say that “advanced” is not twice as good as “basic;” their values are based on ranges of scores.  Also related to PSSAs is the concept of regression.  During our indescribably exciting (no sarcasm here) data day each year to process and plan using PSSA data, we look at predictions of student performance for the next PSSA based on the previous three scores.  I wonder if the predictor scores are based on regression measures of relationship because they analyze relationships among test scores in order to predict another.

            The article raised some questions for me as well.  Ekstrom, Elmore, Schafer, Trotter, & Webster (2004) stated, “67% of a group of 423 ASCA members considered testing and assessment an important or very important part of their work.”  In addition, “An earlier survey of secondary counselors found they frequently administered their schools’ testing program and helped students and parents interpret test information” (Ekstrom, Elmore, Schafer, Trotter, & Webster, 2004).  This reminded me of a class conversation with Dr. Garner in one of the Theory and Practice classes.  She said that a counselor’s job should not be to proctor tests, as this type of duty takes away from their duty to counsel students.  Much of what has been described as counselors’ roles in assessments are roles that, for the past 6 years, I have viewed as the school psychologist’s role.  I’m sure that this varies from district to district, but I wonder how a counselor can be an important support for a caseload of 400+ students if a major component of her job is to administer and interpret assessments. Ekstrom, Elmore, Schafer, Trotter, & Webster (2004) addressed my concern when they acknowledged “Although 65% of the responding counselors said their work involved scheduling testing or assessments, many in the field feel this is not a wise use of expertise and not an appropriate activity for a professional school counselor.”  While I believe that counselors should play a part in utilizing appropriate assessments and understanding implications of the results, I hope that scheduling, administering and interpreting assessments is not at the forefront of my duties when I take on the role of a counselor. 

Drummond, R. J. and Jones, K. (2010). Assessment procedures for counselors and

            helping professionals. (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Ekstrom, R.B., Elmore, P.B., Schafer, W.D., Trotter, T.V., Webster, B. (2004). A survey

of assessment and evaluation activities of school counselors. Professional School Counseling, 8(1), 24-30.

Week 2

            I remember shadowing a counselor at a local high school and she was in charge of the PSSA testing in the school.  Her office was piled high with test booklets and she spoke of that responsibility with a modicum of disdain.  While counselors may get frustrated with sharpening hundreds of number two pencils and hold the conviction that such a task should not be the focus of their work.  While pencil sharpening may diverge from the ASCA model,  the Ekstrom (2004) article makes it clear that testing has been part and parcel of the counseling profession for many years.

            I found it very interesting to think about the respective backgrounds and training of others in the school environment in regards to interpretations of assessments.  Teachers certainly do many assessments, such as quizzes and tests on academic subjects, but I wonder whether they have not all received training in the many psychometric measures discussed in our textbook.  I think parents do look to counselors to help interpret testing data.  I remember getting results on the yearly STAR tests for my children, which is the California equivalent of the PSSA’s in Pennsylvania.  The counseling department always enclosed a letter with the results, offering to be of assistance for any parent who wanted help understanding the test results.

            Given common practice in many school districts and the guidelines of ASCA, it would seem wise for any counselor to be well versed in assessment interpretation.  Additionally, school counseling programs do well to provide training to support such competencies.  Again, in California, a college level statistics course was a requirement to enter the school counseling program.  After reading this week’s assignments, I am further convinced of that wisdom, if for no other reason than to assure a certain comfort level around assessment results and design.

References

Drummond, R. J. and Jones, K. (2010). Assessment procedures for counselors and helping professionals. (7^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Ekstrom, R.B., Elmore, P.B.,  Schaefer, W.D., Trotter, T.V., & Webster, B. (2004). A survey of assessment and evaluation activities of school counselors. Professional School Counseling, 8 (1), 24-30.

Response to Ekstrom

I had several moments of déjà vu while reading this week.  The first occurred while reading the Ekstrom (2004) article.  Ekstrom begins by giving a brief history of how assessments have been used by school counselors.  The piece of history that stuck out to me the most was that, “in the wake of Sputnik in the late 1950s, school counselors were asked to ensure that students’ academic abilities, especially in science, were fully assessed and realized” (2004, p. 25).  I recalled hearing my two oldest uncles talk about what school was like for them during this time period.  To this day they hold grudges against the people, government mandates, and institutions that inflicted enormous amounts of work and expectations on them.  They felt violated by their educators.  They felt pressured to go into fields related to science and math, and once they got to college they were expected to outperform the Russians in science and ingenuity.  I faintly remember one of my uncles making a remark about “guidance counselors” who seemed to only be concerned with pushing students into certain types of careers, perhaps through the use of assessments like the ones Ekstrom refers to.  Ethically, this seems like an unacceptable practice.  If counselors were using assessments and then” interpreting” them with an agenda in mind, how could the results from the assessments have been fully accurate and/or unbiased?  I am also reminded of the many other instances of unethical testing that occurred around the same time period.  In my statistics class last year, we discussed the many issues associated with the Tuskegee Men’s Syphilis Study, in which African American men with syphilis were told that they were being given treatment for their disease, when in reality the researchers were simply interested in watching the progression of the disease to the point of watching the men die.  The researchers even went as far as banning the men involved in the study from receiving proper treatment (antibiotics, which would have cured them) in surrounding area hospitals.  Knowing that practices such as these once occurred sickens me.  The cruelty which human beings are capable of is astounding.  While the Code of Ethics which most professionals in various fields are now bound to in no way prevents unethical practices from happening, it is good to know that there is now a set standard of what is and is not acceptable practice so that unethical practice can be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  Reading the Ekstrom article reminded me of the responsibility I will have as a counselor to use and interpret assessments appropriately, and the ramifications of failing to do so.

 Reference

Ekstrom, R.B., Elmore, P.B.,  Schaefer, W.D., Trotter, T.V., & Webster, B. (2004). A survey of assessment and evaluation activities of school counselors. Professional School Counseling, 8 (1), 24-30.