2011

Closing the academic achievement gap has become the central topic in the professional school counseling discourse and has redefined the role of school counselors as advocates for social justice. Students of color, second language learners, and lowincome students do not perform as well as middle and upper socioeconomic and White students academically or on standardized high-stakes tests. The traditional role of the school counselor may have inadvertently contributed to maintaining the status quo of inequities related to sustaining schools where race and class are tied to students’ successful academic performance or school failure. Part of this pernicious problem stems from the school counselors’ traditional service orientation, where they have not been trained to use data systemically in promoting access, equity, and rigorous educational opportunities for underserved, underrepresented, and underperforming students (Cox & Lee, 2007; Erford, 2007; Goh, Wahl, McDonald, Brissett, & Yoon, 2007; House & Martin, 1998; Jackson, Holt, & Nelson, 2005; Stone, 2003). The transformed role for school counselors defines an ethical obligation to use data to measure the effectiveness of their actions, programs, or interventions (Dimmitt, Carey, & Hatch, 2007).