Stone & Turba (1999)JTCAdvocacy

School counselors are increasingly recognizing the benefits of using computer technology to increase their efficiency, to assist in the supervision of counseling interns, to aid in delivering developmental guidance lessons, and to facilitate individual counseling areas such as bibliotherapy (D’Andrea, 1995; Gerler, 1995; Glover, 1995; Myrick & Sabella, 1995; Sabella, 1996). Adoption of computer technology into developmental guidance programs is moving forward, however, the use of technology in the school counselor's role of social advocate has been largely unexplored and underutilized. Social action for counselors involves addressing significant social, cultural, and economic challenges that have the potential to impact negatively upon clients (Lee & Walz, 1998).This article will examine how school counselors can use computer technology to fully participate in eradicating institutional and environmental barriers which impede students’ academic success.

Opportunities for social action and social intervention are especially available to school counselors as they function in that critical American institution called school."Research has helped school people realize not only that equity is a moral obligation of schools, but that student learning and achievement are highly related to equitable practices" (Shakeshaft, 1990, p. 213).Martin (1998) described the school counselor of the future as one who will be prepared in a preservice program to possess proactive, socially critical behavior and skills needed to strategically plan to challenge the status quo in systems where inequities impede students’ academic success. Counselors who understand how to access student data and advocate with facts in hand about such areas as student enrollment in higher-level academics and failure and success patterns among students, are in a powerful position to challenge the status quo. "Social advocacy [for school counselors] implies questioning the status quo, challenging the rules and regulations that deny student access, protesting changes . . . that decrease opportunities for the under-represented" (Osbourne et al., 1998, p. 201).

Computers have been considered the tool to expedite tedious repetitive tasks but computer potential for the roles, responsibilities, and effectiveness of school counselors is being expanded (Sabella, 1996). It is predicted that computer use in the advocacy role of school counselors will be the next area to be explored. Technological skills are needed by school counselors in the role of social advocate to support student’s academic achievement. Technology enhances the counselor’s role in advocacy, and in certain situations such as looking quickly at course enrollment patterns, the advocacy task can only be accomplished through the use of technology. "Today's students have changed the way they learn and today's counselors must change the way they communicate on behalf of student academic success . . . .If learner outcomes can be better achieved through technology, it is incumbent that counselors adapt their strategies accordingly" (Casey, 1995, p. 34).

Equity in Educational Opportunity

The American free public school system is a mechanism that should guarantee an open society in which students from all segments of society and from all social classes have an equal chance to develop their talents and achieve success. Higher education is tied to occupational placement and social mobility. Access to critical high school curriculum programs accounts for differentiation of opportunity and access to higher education. Access is adversely stratified for certain segments of society, and this contributes to the reproduction of a stratified social order by offering greater opportunities to students from certain segments of society (Oakes, 1997; Slavin, 1988).

Opportunities are stratified between schools and within schools. Schools whose students are predominately White, middle-class, and relatively high achieving, offer more chances for enriched and rigorous academic experiences (Oakes, 1997). Within-school stratifiers are also in place.Despite tests of academic ability which often determine the allocation of educational offerings, minority and lower socioeconomic students are less likely to be placed in college preparatory or high-ability courses (The College Entrance Examination Board, 1990; Lee & Ekstrom, 1987; Stone, 1998). In one California school district, it was determined that of every 100 high scoring students in each of the four largest ethnic groups, 88 Whites were admitted to algebra as compared to all 100 Asians, 51 African-American, and 42 Latinos even though all of these high scoring students had demonstrated the ability to do higher level mathematics and should have been admitted to algebra, a critical gatekeeper mathematics course (The Education Trust, 1997). In a study by Stone (1998), analysis revealed a strong association between socioeconomic background and placement in algebra for 6000 eighth-graders in one large urban school district. In examining the records of all students who scored in the upper quartile on a nationally normed mathematics test, Stone found that high-socioeconomic students were three times more likely to be placed into algebra than low-socioeconomic students. Low-income students were accessing higher-level academics in dismal proportions even though they had achieved the standards set for admissions into rigorous academics. Pelavin and Kane analyzed the experience of nearly 16,000 American young people and found that minorities were enrolled in geometry, a critical gatekeeper mathematics course, at less than half the rate of enrollment by White students. Nineteen percent of Blacks and 17 percent of Hispanics enrolled in geometry as compared to 40 percent of Whites (The College Entrance Examination Board, 1990).

School Counselors Role in Equity in Academics

One facet of the organizational process within the public school system that contributes to the furthering or hindrance of educational opportunity is guidance counseling. The school counselor as academic advisor is ideally situated to act as an advocate in important areas such as helping students access and be successful in rigorous academics. The academic counseling program in schools deserves a high priority. School counselors can positively impact students desire to stretch and strive academically by helping them understand their choices and the full weight and meaning of those choices. The National College Counseling Project (1986) stated, "outstanding counselors . . . consistently emphasize that their students have the potential to better themselves and to meet ambitious goals" (p. 32). Counselors should be a key advocate to provide opportunities for all children to stretch and strive toward rigorous academic course work. Students need to understand the logic and interrelatedness of the curriculum and the consequences of academic choices. The school counselor as academic advisor to all students, would clearly communicate to students and their parents that academic choices widen or narrow future options and opportunities. The academic advising role includes assigning students into courses, helping students understand the interrelatedness between curriculum offerings and future economic success, helping students understand that financing a higher education is possible, and using relational student information data bases to find patterns and problems that require intervention and attention.

Counselors Need Skills for Advocacy

Advocacy to support student achievement involves specific skills not just a philosophical orientation to function as an advocate. It is important that counselors be taught how to bring about change. Simply suggesting that counselors be change agents without teaching them the specific skills required for educational advocacy is unlikely to produce positive effects on students, schools, or counselors. The continued status of counseling as peripheral to the educational reform initiatives, i.e., to further rigorous academic achievement for all students, reflects the need to rethink advocacy training in graduate and in-service professional training of all counselors.

One of the most powerful and neglected skills in our preparation and in-service programs is technology. "Today, we are witnessing a barrage of reports on the use of educational technology in our schools and classrooms; and once again, no mention in any of these reports is made of the unique and important use of technology by our school counselors" (Hartman,1998, p. 1). School counselors have been slow in exploring technological advances for offering better services and the adoption of computer technology by counselors has lagged far behind adoption by other educators and other occupations (Casey, 1995; Gerler, 1995). "Infusing technology into the guidance suite . . . will require a concerted effort . . . technology has the potential to enhance and change forever the way school counselors support teachers and foster student development" (Hartman, 1998, p. 3).

Martin (1998) described technology as a critical tool in advocacy, explaining that counselors must learn to use technology for monitoring student progress, student career planning, and acquiring and accessing data needed to inform decision-making of individual students and of the entire school.School counselors who understand equity issues and have technological skills to aggregate and disaggregate student information, have critical, powerful skills that can allow them to act as advocates to identify and eliminate school practices that deter equitable access and opportunities for student success in higher level academics.The school counselor/advocate can identify through the use of technology, broad system-wide practices that deter access to rigorous course work as well as inequitable situations for individual students.Using school district data through the student-information-management-systems, school counselors can manage and monitor patterns of enrollment and student success.

Technology in Advocating for Equity

Pre-service and in-service technology curriculum includes analysis of data using relational databases to monitor student progress. The use of data can positively affect the academic curriculum opportunities of K-12 students. For example, school counselors can analyze curriculum enrollment patterns and curriculum problem areas for the purpose of proposing a course of action and evaluating the results. Turba (1998) described technological skills needed for the school counselor/advocate.

For counselors to perform their job functions adequately, at the minimum, they must possess basic computer literacy skills. The present and future of counseling, however, dictates that counselors' technology skills should be far beyond the minimum. This should include extensive knowledge of Internet resources, software that relates to guidance and counseling, distance learning, virtual activities such as chat rooms, discussion groups,listservers, using internet video conferencing, constructing virtual guidance offices that help students access internet resources, and the interest to stay current on the changing scene of computer technology. (p.10)

Hartman (1998) described as critical the use of data in planning and evaluating the effectiveness of an entire school and its guidance department. Hartman explained that collecting and analyzing data should be a team effort, with input from the instructional staff, administrators, and parents. "As a key member of this team, counselors need to be knowledgeable and proficient in software that collects the aggregated and disaggregated data needed to review, monitor, and improve performance, specifically in the areas of student achievement, attendance, enrollment, discipline, socioeconomic status . . . , mobility rate, language, dropout rate, graduation rate, college scholarships, postsecondary options, and standardized test participation and results" (p. 1).

Many school counselors have databases available that contain biographical information as well as scheduling, attendance, discipline, and test history. This information is useful in itself when working with students about any

of the information contained in the database, such as attendance, past academic performance, etc. The information in these databases can be exported to relational databases to provide more flexibility and increased accessibility to more student information. For example, Duval County Public Schools, in Jacksonville, Florida, has initiated a computer training program called School Wide Assessment Through Technology (S.W.A.T.T.). This program provides to the principal, principal's designee, and counselor of every school in the county, data formatted into an integrated software program.The data contains biographic information, attendance, test scores, and current grades. Within this program, forms, reports, and other useful data formats are included so that data can be easily accessed, printed, charted and used in any other way that would help all students. By containing the data in this type of program, assurances are built into the system that no students are left out of the picture when viewing the data. This provides equity in analysis as well as in access to opportunities, and also guarantees that no group of students will be left out of calculations.

Application of Technology for Advocacy

"School counselors can take advantage of rapid communication and networking with time, data, people, and contacts; analyzing data; and presenting information via multimedia formats. The potential that computer technology has for the roles, responsibilities, and effectiveness of school counselors has only begun to be explored" (Sabella, 1996, p. 83). Following are four examples of how "rapid communication and networking" has changed the role of school counselors and their ability to advocate for students.

The case of Reggie.Course assignments in high school significantly differentiate students’ opportunities beyond high school. The process of curriculum selection in the secondary school often finds equity, competence, and individual choice in conflict. Using her S.W.A.T.T. training, a high school counselor was able to be an advocate in the process of curriculum selection. Using her database containing student enrollment data, this counselor identified rising ninth graders who had not scheduled a second year of a foreign language. Through merging capabilities, this counselor generated letters and labels to all rising ninth graders who had dropped the second year of their foreign language. Through technological advances that this school system already had in place, Reggie, along with other ninth graders was contacted before the school year began and given a telephone academic advising session. Reggie changed his schedule to add French II. This contact by the counselor prevented Reggie from making a decision that would considerably narrow his future opportunities. High school counselors understand the importance of two years of a foreign language for college admissions but in many cases time constraints and large student caseloads prohibit a counselor from advising the ninth grader until well into the school year. Technological advances make timely advocacy possible.

The case of large group intervention. Scarcity and lack of access to services is discrimination. Lack of access to guidance services means academic counseling at critical junctures will be weak or nonexistent. The case that follows demonstrates how the counselor at one high school was determined to offer services to all students. This counselor established a relational database in the guidance office using the information from the school's student information system. The guidance department ordered the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) scores on disk and imported these scores, along with all information the students provided on the PSAT application, into the database. The students' biographical information and their PSAT scores were paired with their mathematics and language arts teachers. Reports were given to each math and language arts teacher that contained the students' names, verbal, math, and writing scores, and the answers that the students gave for each question. The teachers were also given the correct answers and a class set of unused PSAT booklets. The teachers used this information and reviewed the test questions and answers. Teachers held sessions with the students and helped the students to understand their incorrect answers. In this way, students (especially tenth graders) were able to understand more about the PSAT, its format, and how they could improve their scores for eleventh grade. This is an example of counselors being able to take data and use it for advocacy to affect large numbers of students with a minimal amount of time.

The case of Catrina. A third case illustrated advocacy by connecting students to the important world of cyberspace. A guidance counselor built a web site that provided students with links to many of the resources that are available on the World Wide Web. An example is a Cyber Guidance Office at http://www.jacksonville.net/~bobturba/. Catrina, a twelfth-grade student came to this counselor to seek advice on careers. The student's parents told her that she must choose a major before they will send her to an out-of-town college. The counselor helped Catrina begin her search on one of the special computers in the guidance office set aside for Internet searches by students. First, the counselor showed Catrina career sites that had links on the Cyber Guidance Office, such as the one at http://www.cba.bgsu.edu/. The counselor was able to handle other office matters while Catrina answered career inventory questions. Catrina received immediate feedback linking her results to national organizations where she could get up-to-date information on her chosen career and discover trends in employment, salary, and other useful information. An example can be found at Career Mosaic at http://www.careermosaic.com/. After narrowing her choices of careers, Catrina used the college search portion of the Cyber Guidance Office to link directly to college web sites that offered her career choices as majors, such as at Yahoo’s College Search Site at http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/Higher/Colleges and Universities/By Region/U S States/..Catrina compiled a list of colleges that interested her and took this information home to her parents. She and her parents decided that she could apply to three of the colleges that she discovered with her search. Catrina then used the guidance office computer to apply on-line to these colleges, such as Florida State University’s On-Line application at http://www.ais.fsu.edu:82/admissions/step1.jhtml. She was also able to search the virtual college catalog for all information about the college, and she even interfaced with students who were attending the college and majoring in the same field! Next, the student used the Cyber Office to go to sites that offered financial assistance. She was able to take her parent's financial information and do an on-line financial need estimation form that indicated the expected family contribution for a year of college expenses. An example of a site where this can be done is The Financial Aid Information Page, http://www.finaid.org. Catrina turned her attention to scholarship for which she was eligible using a scholarship search site such as FastWeb at http://www.fastweb.com. This particular site offered Catrina the opportunity to receive any subsequently posted scholarship information. Finally, Catrina linked to the Free Application For Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) web site at http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/ and completed an on-line FAFSA, receiving her results in 48 hours. With a little help from a counselor, Catrina began and finished a career, college, and financial aid search without leaving the computer.

The case of Mr. Marks. Equitable curriculum opportunities demand not only inclusion in the system but also the provision of appropriate conditions for learning. Counselors are empowered to impact learning conditions when they can develop an action research question, collect data relevant to the question, organize the data into an understandable format, analyze and interpret the data, and create a plan of action. Counselors can use an action research method as a consulting tool to help other educators improve the total environment for all students. The last case study demonstrates how a high school counselor used computer-generated data for action research to change the learning environment for all of Mr. Marks' students. This school counselor routinely examined computer generated student achievement and course enrollment data to monitor her students’ academic progress. A disturbing pattern was emerging in which one particular mathematics teacher had an unusually high rate of poor and failing grades. Students were complaining to the counselor that the material being taught was not on the quizzes and tests. Together, the counselor and teacher developed an action plan. First, they identified a question -- Why were students having problems on tests and quizzes? They took one test and looked at the format of the test and studied all of the students' responses. Next comparisons were made of the test format to the study sheets that the teacher distributed to the students. They noticed that the questions on the test were noticeably different in the way they were asked. The counselor and the teacher developed a plan whereby the teacher would meet with the department chair for ideas, review other tests and worksheets, and adjust test grades if necessary. This peer mediation was made possible because this counselor knew how to access and use computer generated data in an advocacy role. Peer mediation of this type can sometimes be difficult, but practice will develop confidence, enabling counselors to assume a leadership role in making a difference for all students in similar situations.

Conclusions

We are faced with a need to prepare all students for a society that will be unlike any that has come before us (see the College Board Equity 2000 at http://www.collegeboard.org/equity/html/indx001.html.) We can no longer be satisfied with a select few achieving rigorous standards and the assignment of students to a predictable category of achievement and employment. The school counselor as advocate, can ensure that all students have access to the information and experiences that will allow them to influence the society of the future. School counselors are ideally situated to act as advocates, providing academic advising which supports and encourages students to change their perceptions between educational achievement and the opportunities and rewards available in society. School counselors can offer a solid academic advising program which stresses education as the gateway to greater social and economic opportunity.

Through efficient, effective use of technology, school counselors are in a better position to provide administrators, teachers, parents, and students appropriate timely information needed to help all students to set ambitious goals and to realize their goals. Analyzing and interpreting data is a critical consulting skill around which a proactive guidance program can be developed. If counselors can analyze data from their particular student body, they can implement changes which are tailor made for their school and their students. The counselor as leader using computer generated data, can help the school community explore the current status of students' curriculum enrollment patterns and success in the curriculum. Armed with a clear understanding of the achievement of the student body, educators can develop high-leverage strategies to raise student achievement and use data to drive and document change. The counselor/advocate with computer technology skills can develop high aspirations rather than just attending to aspirations as they emerge.

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