School Counseling to Close Opportunity Gaps

School counselors can play a powerful role in closing the opportunity gap by incorporating principles of social justice, antiracism, equity, and advocacy for all students into their practice. Written by Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, American University school counseling professor and advocate of transformational change in school counseling and social justice, this new edition of her bestseller for preservice and in-service school counselors addresses the reasons why some students are more likely to encounter challenges at school due to racism, sexism, heterosexism, and classism, and shows readers how to play an active role in bringing about conditions that support student success. Offering a variety of vignettes, strategies, activities, and reflective individual and group study questions, the book provides the framework for how school counselors can mitigate the impact of negative factors that hamper academic performance and healthy development. It details six functions of a school counselors that move schools toward more just practices and, ultimately, to higher test scores and increased student achievement--