Figure 1.-Expenditures for the short-term institutes in the summer of 1959

a few standard categories. Some institutes called for much more individual instruction and supervision than others, and were naturally more expensive to operate. Institutes with a heavy emphasis on special lecturers and consultants required more funds for salaries and travel allowances to be used for this purpose. The reports also show that there is considerable variation in general salary levels. Since the faculty of each institute were paid in accordance with the regular summer session salary schedule for their institution, the same

course might cost more to offer at one institute than another. Thus no overall norm or standard for the costs of instruction can be set up. The question "How much is your program going to cost?" was not the first or most basic consideration used in evaluating proposals for institutes. As has been stressed in earlier sections, the emphasis was on needs of an area, and a plan through which such needs could be met.

There was no attempt to secure instruction at bargain rates. The representatives of the Office of Education who examined the proposed budgets expected that salaries and other costs would be set at the standard rate for the sponsoring institution. If some scaling down of expenses was necessary, it was accomplished by reducing the size of a proposed program rather than by changing its nature.

No research funds were budgeted for the Counseling and Guidance Institutes program, since the law made no provision for research under this title. Stipends to enrollees and direct and indirect costs of instruction were the only things for which institute funds could be spent.

PART III. A CLOSER LOOK

CHAPTER 7

Area Needs and Institute Objectives

ITH THE BASIC FACTS about the Counseling and Guid

WITH

ance Training Institutes in mind, a more complete descriptive account of their work may now be considered. Each of the chapters of this section includes first, features that characterized all or most of the separate programs, and then, discussion of some constructive ideas that were tried in one or only a few institutes.

As previously indicated, an institution initiated its planning for an institute with a consideration of the special needs of the area it would serve. While not all institute directors make clear in their reports how they went about this task of determining needs, many of them do give information and suggestions that will be helpful to others.

As one of the most common procedures, the institute director set up an advisory committee to share in the planning. The membership of such committees varied, but usually the State guidance director and some representative of school administrators in the area were included, along with persons from the training institution itself. Another commonly reported technique was for the institute director to interview guidance directors and school administrators in order to find out what they considered the needs of the area to be. Questionnaires and letters were used, and in at least one instance, a questionnaire was sent to all school counselors in the State, asking them what they would suggest as the objectives for an institute. In several instances, invitational conferences were held for the purpose of discussing guidance needs. In some situations it was possible to make use of a survey that had previously been made by some educational organization or agency.

The more one considers this problem of discovering what the guidance needs of an area are, the more complex it becomes. Who is in the best position to assess such needs? School administrators are important because they get guidance activities into the school schedule and hire the guidance personnel, but they often do not agree with one another or with guidance workers as to just what guidance is. Counselors themselves, if they are relatively untrained, are very likely to be

unaware of their own deficiencies. Guidance directors are perhaps the best sources of information, but in areas where counseling services are underdeveloped, there may be few if any guidance directors to consult. Probably the best procedure is to use a combination of several sources of information. After that, those who are formulating proposals for institutes must be responsible for the final decisions as to what needs they propose to meet.

It seems desirable that institute directors work very closely with representatives of the State departments of education who are planning the uses to be made of money they obtain under title V(A) of the NDEA. The expansion of guidance programs in specified directions creates needs for certain kinds of personnel. These special needs can often be met in part by institute training. A few reports indicate that such cooperative planning occurred in 1959. With more time available for planning in subsequent years, this kind of cooperation should become more common.

The value of delineating as precisely as possible the needs of a specified area inevitably comes into conflict with the value of obtaining stimulating differences of viewpoint by drawing enrollees from various geographic areas. The best possible job of basing objectives on needs that are well understood can only be done if all enrollees are drawn from the area the institute has been planned to serve. A few places followed this plan and accepted only applicants from the State in which the institute was held. (One limited the area much more sharply than this, and selected from only one county.) A more common procedure involved some sort of compromise, such as giving preference to residents of the State, but accepting outside applicants if they ranked high on other selection criteria. Wisely, it would appear, the Office of Education left this decision to the training institutions.

What kinds of objectives are stated in the reports of the 1959 summer Counseling and Guidance Training Institutes? They can be roughly classified as follows:

Competencies Related to the “Identification" Purpose of Title V:

Selecting, administering, scoring, and interpreting results of psychological and educational tests.

Understanding the role of testing-organizing and appraising a school testing program. Comprehension of the nature of individual intelligence, aptitudes. talents the theory of testing analyzing test profiles.

Nontesting appraisal procedures in guidance.

The use of cumulative records and the synthesis of data from a variety of

sources.

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