Our mission:
Comprehensive Counseling and Guidance Program is designed to assist students through specific self-appraisal and self-improvement activities, to enable effective planning to meet their personal education and career goals.

GOALS
School guidance programs are unique to each individual school and community. Programs focus on goals that will:

• Impress all students in a powerful and effective way with the importance of decision making and planning for life after high school.
• Encourage and assist each student in developing a Student Education Plan (SEP) or a Student Education Occupation Plan (SEOP).
• Direct the guidance program to provide opportunities for student growth in the areas of academic/learning development, life/career planning, and personal/social/global citizen development.
• Involve the school (students and staff), the home (entire family), and the community (neighborhood and workforce) in implementing a comprehensive counseling and guidance program.
  
  The program provides every student with decision-making and planning skills in order to prepare for his or her future.

Our vision is to provide every student with the assistance and guidance to effectively identify, select, plan, and prepare for a career of choice, while giving each student the encouragement to achieve the goals which will enable him or her to have increased confidence when embarking on a career and/or entering the workplace.

PROGRAM DELIVERY COMPONENTS

• Guidance Curriculum is delivered through classroom presentations and activities, and structured group activities.
• Individual Planning is a process that includes activities to assist students and their parents or guardians in planning, monitoring, and managing the student’s learning as well as his or her personal, educational, and career goals. Every school district has adopted policies to support the SEP/SEOP process as an essential element of the student’s education.
• Responsive Services meet the immediate concerns and needs of students, usually with a prevention focus, e.g., programs for dropout prevention, student assistance teams, peer leadership, and drug and alcohol prevention.
• System Support focuses on program development, implementation, and management, and connects the guidance program to existing family and community support and to school improvement and student achievement.

FUNDING
Career and Technical Education (CTE) provides incentive grants, based on school enrollments, to schools that meet the rigorous standards of the Guidance Performance Evaluation. These evaluations are performed by out-of- peer-to-peer evaluation teams, which encourage programs to connect to the mission of the local school and provide evidence of contributions to student achievement.

PROGRAM RESULTS
The Student Education Occupation Plan (SEOP) is a primary strategy for recognizing student accomplishments and strengths and for planning, monitoring, and managing education and career development in grades 7-12. Research shows that students find greater success in school if:

• They have the best schedule for their abilities and needs.
• They can identify their interests and abilities.
• They have a plan for high school and beyond.
• They can set goals.
• Their parents are involved in the process.
  (Brown, Duane. (1999) “Improving Academic Achievement:What School Counselors Can Do.” http://ericcass.uncg.edu/digest/brown.htm)
• Students who are enrolled in schools with highly implemented Comprehensive Counseling and Guidance Programs take more high-level math and science classes and perform better in every area of the ACT exam. (IBRIC, 1998)
• CTE students who receive effective guidance and advisement services are much more likely to complete a rigorous curriculum of English, science, and math and have higher test scores than those students who have not received such guidance. (SREB, 2002)
• 248 of a target 252 secondary schools participate in the Comprehensive Counseling and Guidance Program.

Updated April 21, 2008