Guidance Self-Study Tommi Leach Kelly Arrington ODCTE

The question is why… How can guidance accreditation be more useful to the technology center student services staff? How can guidance accreditation help ODCTE Career and Academic Connections (CAC) staff have a better understanding of what goes on at the technology centers in the way of guidance?

How we do it now… Student Services Staff spend approximately 6 months prior to the accreditation visit copying and organizing documentation for the past 5 years ODCTE staff spend hours reviewing this documentation Stress levels are high

Does that work for you??? 5 years is a long time for tech centers to struggle with guidance issues without assistance from ODCTE CAC staff 5 years is a long time for the ODCTE CAC Staff to not realize what remarkable things are being done at the tech centers and to be able to share those successes with other tech centers Communication/assistance should be more frequent

This was our process… We looked at the ASCA National Guidance Standards as a model We compared guidance plans from numerous states Oklahoma is unique so we designed our own plan We solicited input from the field We piloted with the schools being accredited last year

and… We solicited input from other ODCTE staff members We are rolling this out at Summer Conference 2012

Now let’s look at the Guidance Self-Study document Directions – (submitted by site) Rubric Self-Study – Part A – Criteria –Guidance Services –Individual Planning –Partner Collaboration & Coordination –Responsive Services –System Support Data – Part B (a guidance report will be provided) Planning documentation – Part C

Let’s look at the Guidance Standard (Standard 4) We have changed the documentation required However, some documentation is required by Perkins Legislation Guidance Self-Study will replace much of the documentation

When Accreditation time comes around… We will discuss this document with the Student Services staff We will have been in communication for the past 5 years so there shouldn’t be any surprises Hopefully stress levels will go down

Work will continue… We will continue to work to improve this document to make it more useful to the field and to the ODCTE staff

It’s important to remember… How the student services staff rates themselves on the self-study does not determine whether or not they will pass the accreditation standard Ratings are meant to change from year to year depending upon where the tech center is in the process of improvement

Questions? Please contact us. Tommi Leach Career and Academic Advisement Specialist Kelly Arrington Guidance Coordinator