Evaluating school counselors with the Danielson Framework

School counselors are almost always in the teacher bargaining unit, so they have to be evaluated on the same cycle as teachers. Their work does not look like teaching. A counselor runs individual and group counseling, crisis response, scheduling, college and career planning, and family outreach.

Scoring that against a classroom instruction rubric is unfair to the counselor and hard to defend if the evaluation is ever challenged.

What we provide

A counselor-specific rubric built on the same four-domain structure your administrators already use, in both the 2013 and 2022 editions.

• Evidence is recorded against components written for counseling work, not classroom instruction
• Counselors complete self assessments against their own rubric
• Observations, walkthroughs and summative evaluations run on the same calendar and in the same system as your teachers
• District reporting stays consistent across every role

The rubric derives from Danielson consulting work published by state education agencies. The 2022 edition is our own.

More than the rubric

Evidence can come from counseling work, family outreach and college planning rather than classroom instruction. The rubric is not a document you print and fill in. It is built into software that runs the whole cycle: observations scheduled and recorded, rubric language inserted into the evaluation for you, self assessments and professional development plans running against the same rubric, and district reporting at the end of the year.

Plenty of districts already have the right rubric sitting in a filing cabinet. The work is in running the cycle with it. See how the software works → Talk with us about evaluating this role →

The 2022 rubric at a glance

22 components across 4 domains, written for this role rather than borrowed from the classroom teacher rubric.

Planning and Preparation

• 1a Applying Knowledge of Counseling Theory and Techniques
• 1b Knowing and Valuing Students
• 1c Setting Goals for the Counseling Program
• 1d Using Resources Effectively
• 1e Planning a Coherent Counseling Program
• 1f Designing Program Evaluation

Learning Environment

• 2a Cultivating Respectful and Affirming Environments
• 2b Fostering a Culture for Productive Communication
• 2c Maintaining Purposeful Routines
• 2d Supporting Positive Student Behavior
• 2e Organizing Spaces for Counseling

Counseling Practice

• 3a Assessing Student Needs
• 3b Supporting Academic, Personal/Social, and Career Planning
• 3c Using Counseling Techniques in Individual and Classroom Settings
• 3d Brokering Resources to Meet Student Needs
• 3e Responding Flexibly to Student Needs

Principled Practice

• 4a Engaging in Reflective Practice
• 4b Maintaining Records
• 4c Engaging Families and Communities
• 4d Contributing to School Community and Culture
• 4e Growing and Developing Professionally
• 4f Acting in Service of Students

Each component carries level-of-performance descriptors in all four levels, written in first, second and third person so self-assessments and evaluations read correctly from the same source. Ask us for the full rubric and we will walk you through it. See the other 13 roles

Evaluating school counselors this year?

Tell us how your district evaluates counselors today, and we will show you the counselor rubric and how the cycle runs alongside your teachers. If we are not the right fit for your district, we will tell you that too. Talk with us about counselor evaluation →