At the most recent CSCA Board Meeting on Saturday, April 17, the Board discussed SB 191. The Board concluded that if the bill was going to pass, the Board would like to have language written in specifically for the school counselor role. The Board wanted this inclusion so school counselors would be evaluated in the appropriate role instead of as a teacher. The evaluation would be based on a comprehensive, developmental counseling model (click here for example standards or cut and paste the following into your browser: http://www.RunMyClub.com/CSCA/ClientFiles/School Counselor Performance Standards.doc). The Board also felt that if there was any incentive pay for this bill, counselors should be included.
The CSCA Board provided these recommendations to our lobbyist and the lobbyist gave us this feedback: We reviewed ". . .SB191 Teacher Evaluation, about possibly including the counselors in the bill. We looked at the bill's definition of licensed professionals and it does not specifically include or exclude counselors. It is somewhat open at this point. We also took a look at the [ASCA Counseling Standards] sent last night and it provides a great framework for evaluating counselors.
Based upon [our] conversations about this with Senator Johnston and our evaluation, we would recommend waiting to be included in an official evaluation outlined in legislation. SB 191 instructs the Governor's Council on Educator Effectiveness to develop an evaluation
system to determine the effectiveness of licensed personnel. As used in this legislation, licensed personnel are teachers and principals. Sen. Johnston indicated that counselors and other school personnel are not intended to be impacted by the bill. The Council is tasked with establishing levels of effectiveness for "each category of licensed personnel to be evaluated under this article." Therefore, it is possible that the Council could determine whether counselors will be included, but they will then be required to define effectiveness and create career ladders for counselors as well as for teachers and principals.
However, it is [our] recommendation that CSCA wait to put counselors forward for evaluation in statute. It is definitely possible that after the evaluation systems are created and implemented the counselors could be included for evaluation. We recommend this for
several reasons:
1) Allows us to wait and see how this all works and if it would be beneficial for counselors to be involved
2) If included in current version counselors would have no control over system of measurement
3) Counselors would be evaluated by administration with no knowledge of counselor roles/duties, especially if various types of counselors are evaluated differently"
At this time, CSCA is in contact with the Governor's Council on Educator Effectiveness but will not take a position on SB 191.
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