There has been extensive criticism of schools for allowing counselors to be used for duties that lie beyond defined counselor roles. The purpose of this study was to determine if counselors are still being misused today as they have allegedly been in the past. The problem was divided into nine questions in order to ascertain differences in actual and ideal roles of secondary school counselors as perceived by counselors, principals and counselor educators. The study was limited to secondary schools in the Region X Education Service Center in Texas. The study included brief definitions of roles and an extensive review of literature. Twenty-three schools from the Region X Education Service Center in Texas were chosen using a random, stratified selection process. A counselor and the principal from each of these schools were interviewed using a Q sort. Three counselor educators were randomly selected to participate from each of three universities in the area. The Q-sort technique was used in order to determine differences in actual and ideal perceptions of the counselor's role as held by counselors, principals, and counselor educators. Cohen's equation for Q sorts was used to establish correlations between the different perceptions. A t distribution for correlation was used to determine significance. There was a significant positive correlation for these groups concerning their perceptions of secondary school counselors' roles: 1. Counselors' actual and counselors' ideal. 2. Principals' actual and principals' ideal. 3. Counselor educators' actual and counselors* ideal. 4. Counselors' and principals' actual. 5. Principals' and counselor educators' actual. 6. Counselors' and counselor educators' actual. 7. Counselors' and principals' ideal. 8. Counselors' and counselor educators' ideal. 9. Principals' and counselor educators' ideal. The Q-sort questions were also analyzed to determine which roles were ranked by these three groups to be most and least important.

This study investigated the sex-role attitudes of vocational guidance and counseling personnel in Texas. The population was comprised of vocational guidance counselors and vocational guidance teachers. The results demonstrated the association between their sex-role attitudes and the independent variables, occupation, sex, age, level of education, marital status, and school district size. Data were obtained by sending the Osmond-Martin Sex-Role Attitude Scale with questions for the collection of demographic information. The SRAS is an instrument designed to identify the traditionality of the respondents' sex-role attitudes in four separate categories. The survey instruments were sent to two randomly selected sample groups.

This study assessed the impact of the Texas Counselors' Network (TCN) on students of counselors who attended TCN workshops. TCN is a professional organization created in 1996 for the professional development of counselors. TCN impacts primary and secondary school students by providing counselors with selected skills to assist them in helping students. In theory, TCN thus impacts these students by improving overall skills of participating counselors. This study assessed the progress of students before and after implementation of TCN. Students' progress was considered in four areas: Texas Accountability Assessment Scores (TAAS), attendance rates, dropout rates, and high school student enrollment in technical programs. The current study compared student performance in the above four areas during a two to three year period prior to the establishment of TCN, with the initial six years of TCN existence. This study examined data attained through the Texas Educational Agency (TEA) Website using their Academic Excellence Indicator System (AEIS) for four regional TCN groups. The study used a paired t-test to compare the performance of students before versus after counselor participation in network workshops. The findings indicated that overall, counselor participation in TCN could have a significant effect on student performance. In fact, eight tests were run and all were found significant at the .05 alpha level.