School Counseling to Close Opportunity Gaps

"This book should be required reading for all school counselors as the profession takes on the challenges of 2021 and beyond. School counselors must be armed with the words written here to create lasting impacts in the lives of students and communities. The profession is at a pivotal juncture, and this book provides a map to transform the way we serve children and communities."

"School Counseling to Close Opportunity Gaps is the book school counselors have needed for some time. School counselors are uniquely trained to identify and work to remove the social-emotional barriers to learning; however, first they must identify the role they have played in creating, enabling, or monitoring the barriers to academic success for some students. Dr. Holcomb-McCoy courageously addresses the racial and social injustices that infiltrate the education system. She presents it clearly in this book: 'If school counselors focus on fixing access to opportunities, they aren’t furthering racist ideas but providing resources and opportunities for student success.'

Dr. Holcomb-McCoy pushes the reader to examine further the underfunding of schools that Black and Brown students disproportionately attend. She explores the economic and academic impact this has on the education of these students and the community. 'According to the Century Foundation (2020), the U.S. is underfunding public schools by nearly $150 billion annually, robbing millions of children—predominantly Black, Brown and low-income children—of the opportunity to success.'

In this book, Dr. Holcomb-McCoy does not allow the reader to focus solely on the challenges but encourages the school counselor to transform the way they think of their role in the school. She then provides the reader with tools needed to deconstruct the systems of oppression in place in education. This is the book that school counselors have needed for some time, and it is finally here. Now it is time for this book to be transformed into a course to train school counselors."

“Dr. Holcomb-McCoy brilliantly educates, inspires, and calls every school counselor to antiracist action, NOW. This is mandatory reading for everyone connected to the school counseling profession.”

"Once again, Cheryl Holcomb McCoy lands a seminal read that is not to be missed! This second edition, a decade after her first, doesn’t disappoint. Dr. Holcomb-McCoy calls for school counselors to actively address flawed racist policies, white-centered curriculum, and white supremacy culture in schools. One of the most significant shifts in the text is the focus on 'opportunities' rather than achievement gaps. Dr. Holcomb-McCoy implores school counselors to no longer be silent, but rather to commit to disrupting oppressive practices and policies in their schools. Throughout the text she pleads for counselors to rise up and re-structure programs that continue to marginalize and oppress Black and Brown students. She calls for counselors to move the needle of the conversation in schools by identifying and describing racist policies, practices, and procedures and then be personally and collectively active in eliminating them. This is the proactive work of today's anti-racist school counselor. Finally, Dr. McCoy introduces six key elements along with multiple scenarios and self-reflective activities for school counselors to draw from as they commit to addressing long standing disparities in education by dismantling racism."

"Dr. Holcomb-McCoy’s new book is timely and informs counselor educators, preservice school counselors, and in-service school counselors on the latest information on closing achievement and opportunity gaps for ALL students. It provides information to produce equitable schooling outcomes for the most vulnerable student populations."

“School Counseling to Close the Opportunity Gap is a very timely and relevant book for the school counseling profession and transformational educational leaders. This book contains steps and activities to guide you to use data to plan, implement, evaluate, and advocate locally and systemically in order to remove barriers and promote more opportunities, specifically for our students who have traditionally been minoritized.”

"Differential access to opportunities in life represents the primary issue in our society, and systemic discrimination does damage to a young person’s sense of hope and possibility for the future. Discrimination represents a cancer transmitted by the power structure intent on controlling access to power, opportunity, resources, and influence. As the human development specialists in our schools, school counselors are called to be social justice strategists—social justice oncologists if you will—addressing this cancer and meeting students and stakeholders at the crossroads of what has been, what is, and what could be, pushing back against such discrimination. For our future to be the best that it can be for all students, we must engage in social justice and anti-racist work. This is the call of this important book. It should be mandatory reading for all school counselors and educators."

"Once again, Dr. Holcomb-McCoy has written a critical and cutting-edge book that takes the reader on a comprehensive review of historical and current events that marginalize and harm Black, Brown, and Indigenous children. This edition builds on the author's prior work and utilizes student experiences to showcase the ways in which school counselors engage in oppressive and racist practices and serve as bystanders to policies that reinforce a deficit lens. This deficit lens unjustly places blame on the targeted group for the educational opportunity gaps the policies created. The author makes an urgent call for change and provides a six-step framework for school counselors and counselor educators to embed an antiracist and social justice approach to their work."

"Dr. Holcomb-McCoy has done it again! She has taken a book that once reformed the school counseling field and, with clarity and heart, has transformed it into a love letter to the entire school counseling community. In this contemporary and authoritative update, Dr. Holcomb-McCoy reminds us that simply claiming to be an anti-racist educator is not the same as actively dismantling long-standing racism in schools. School counselors who are looking to make good on their commitment to support all students, rather than merely perpetuating the status quo, will need courage, tenacity, and a copy of this book."

"The updated edition of School Counseling to Close Opportunity Gaps revisits the lauded school counseling book more than 10 years later. The book serves as a reminder and a continued call to action, asking the simple question, 'Why haven’t school counselors disrupted their students’ uneven access to opportunity?'

With a powerful foreword by Dr. Ibram X Kendi, challenging school counselors to shift their focus from the failures of their student to the negligence of the education system to our most marginalized students, the book servers as a spirited guide to continue to reimagine school counseling as a tool of equity and opportunity.

The edition isn’t a simple update of statistics and figures. The book structurally reworks school counseling through not just a social justice lens, but also an antiracist lens. Antiracist practices are highlighted, including defining opportunity, identifying affirming practices, and self-reflecting through the process. All these sound antiracist practices and more are highlighted while continuing to challenge the reader to Do the Right Thing. There are updated student stories showing the contours of opportunity and disparity. The new counselor snapshots create relevant and contemporary scenarios reflecting the increase complexity of modern education with practical guides and thought-provoking questions.

More than other social justice in education books, Dr. Holcomb-McCoy interweaves themes of empowerment and liberation, not just for students, but into the school counseling repertoire. The guides and self-assessments provide the foundation for counselors to transform themselves and their programs to instrument of liberation and opportunity for all students.

School Counseling to Close Opportunity Gaps is a needed companion for school counselors of all experience levels to transform disparity to opportunity, bias to connectedness, and build a foundation of hope in education as we move forward from the pandemic and the legacies of oppression in education."