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Editor's note: Our guest blogger today is Amanda Fitzgerald. Amanda is Director of Public Policy at the American School Counselor Association (ASCA, a Learning First Alliance member).

You have to look hard to find anything about school counseling services or the role of the school counselor in the outdated No Child Left Behind education law. Currently, the only place the definition of the school counselor can even be located is in a small, discretionary grant program called the Elementary and Secondary School Counseling program. This program, housed in the disappearing Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools (OSDFS), started out as a pilot in a school district in Iowa more than a decade ago. The purpose of the three-year grant is simple: To create and enhance a district’s comprehensive school counseling program. Funds can be used for hiring personnel, professional development, and school counseling curricula. Since its inception, the need for this program and school counseling services has grown so much that the Department of Education (ED) receives far more applications than they can come close to considering. ...

Last week, NPR revisited Rhode Island’s Central Falls High School. You may remember the school from the controversy that erupted last year after the district proposed to fire all its teachers, a move that both the U.S. Secretary of Education and the President appeared to support. You may also remember that many of those teachers were ultimately retained, after stakeholders agreed to a series of reforms – a “transformation” that was to include a longer school day, more after school tutoring and a tougher evaluation for teachers, among other changes.

But the school has struggled ever since. Last year, just 7 percent of Central Falls’ students tested at grade level in math, and 24 percent did so in reading. Some anticipate this year's test results will be worse.

Why have they continued to struggle, in spite of a plan that included a great many reforms that in some contexts have had success? Some ...

We have been hearing a lot recently about the importance of teacher evaluation in ensuring high-quality teachers in every classroom. We have been hearing a bit, though it seems to me much less, about the roles of teacher preparation and professional development in ensuring high-quality teachers in every classroom. But until very recently, we haven’t heard much about the role of hiring decisions in ensuring that high-quality teachers are in every classroom.

To me, it seems like kind of a “duh” statement. If you are serious about raising achievement substantially, you need teachers who can hit the ground running. And also, as has been made clear of late, it can be difficult – and costly – to get teachers out of the classroom once they get there.

But in the past, it seems that some districts have not always taken a close look at their new hires. According to a recent EdWeek article, teacher hiring in some districts typically consists of ...

The Washington Post recently featured an article by Donna St. George that discusses the trend to reevaluate zero tolerance approaches in school discipline. Zero-tolerance policies enacting severe punishments for offenses related to weapons, drugs, and behavioral issues caught on among schools in the early 1990s—aided by federal legislation through the Gun-Free Schools Act that requires students who bring guns to school be expelled, and intensified after the school shooting at Columbine High School. The article summarizes that “over the years, ‘zero-tolerance’ has described discipline policies that impose automatic consequences for offenses, regardless of context. The term also has come to refer to severe punishments for relatively minor infractions.”

Though this approach is still commonly implemented, there is evidence that it can be ineffectual, misapplied, and even counter-productive, leading a growing number of educators and elected officials to scale back on implementation. A University of Virginia education professor (Dewey Cornell) interviewed for the article claims that suspension and expulsion—common punishments in zero-tolerance policies—do not improve student behavior or ...