Improving School Guidance and Counseling Practices Through Effective and Sustained State Leadership

The article by Dean Miller tells a story, a very important story about how guidance supervisors at the state level served as catalysts and leaders in a sustained effort to improve school guidance and counseling practices. The article, "How Collaboration and Research Can Affect School Counseling Practices: The Minnesota Story," describes how they were instrumental in bringing relevant groups together and in initiating the necessary research to improve these practices. Miller knows this story better than anyone because, as a former state supervisor of guidance and counseling in Minnesota, he was directly involved in this sustained effort. This story is important for several reasons. First, the article describes an exciting period of time in the evolution of guidance and counseling in the schools. The 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s witnessed many substantial improvements in school guidance and counseling, in part propelled by collaboration and research such as that described in Miller's article. Second, his article highlights the critical role that state supervisors of guidance and counseling can and do play. They are in key positions to make things happen statewide. Personnel in colleges and universities, professional associations, and school counselors can and do influence practice. However, it is often difficult to orchestrate and coordinate statewide work without leadership at the state level. It can be done but it is very difficult. STATE LEADERSHIP FOR GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING Today, the importance of state leadership for guidance and counseling is often overlooked and undervalued. This is unfortunate, because as Miller reminded us, state supervisors of guidance and counseling did and do play important roles in strengthening guidance and counseling in the schools through collaboration and the promotion of research. A few readers today may not understand Miller's premise about state leadership, so some background may be useful. Miller's article, describing what happened in Minnesota, gives me the opportunity, to highlight the importance of state leadership and the work of state supervisors across the country such as Dean Miller and several of his colleagues in Minnesota including Julius Kerlan and Reynold Erickson. I start with when and how state-level guidance and counseling supervisors were first employed. Then I briefly describe how these positions evolved over time. Finally, I discuss the importance of state-level guidance and counseling leadership for today and tomorrow. In the Beginning According to Kitson (1948), New York state appointed the first supervisor of guidance and counseling in 1929, followed by Vermont in 1936. Then, through the Smith-Hughes Act (An Act to Provide for the Promotion of Vocational Education, 1917) and the George-Deen Act (An Act to Provide for the Further Development of Vocational Education, 1936), money became available to "maintain programs of state supervision of occupational information and guidance" (Studebaker, 1938, p. 105). As a result, by 1947, 41 states had appointed supervisors of guidance (Kitson). As the number of state supervisors grew during this early time period, they formed an association, the National Association of Guidance Supervisors. They were a powerful group that heavily influenced the direction of guidance and counseling in this country during the late 1930s, the 1940s, and 1950s. As more counselor educators (then called counselor trainers) became involved, the title of the organization changed to become the National Association of Guidance Supervisors and Counselor Trainers. Finally, today we have the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (Wellman, 1978). As an example of their influence, in 1948, with funds from the Vocational Education Act of 1946 (P.L. 79-586), commonly referred to as the George-Barden Act, state guidance and counseling supervisors and counselor trainers met to establish the basic training program for school counselors. …