<P> In the 1950s the government established the Guidance and Personnel Services Section in the Division of State and Local School Systems . In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I. Out of concern that the Russians were beating the U.S. in the space race, which had military implications, and that there were not enough scientists and mathematicians, the American government passed the National Defense Education Act, which spurred a huge growth in vocational guidance through large amounts of funding . Since the 1960s, the profession of school counseling has continued to grow as new legislation and new professional developments were established to refine and further the profession and improve education . On January 1, 2006, congress officially declared February 6--10 as National School Counseling Week . </P> <P> The 1960s was also a time of great federal funding in the United States for land grant colleges and universities interested in establishing and growing what are now known as Counselor Education programs . School counseling began to shift from a focus exclusively on career development to a focus on student personal and social issues paralleling the rise of social justice and civil rights movements in the United States . It was also in the late 60s and early 1970s that Norm Gysbers began the work to shift from seeing school counselors as solitary professionals into a more strategic and systemic goal of having a comprehensive developmental school counseling program for all students K - 12 . His and his colleagues' work and research evidence showing strong correlations between fully implemented school counseling programs and student academic success was critical to beginning to show an evidence base for the profession especially at the high school level based on their work in the state of Missouri . </P> <P> But school counseling in the 1980s and early 1990s in the United States was not seen as a player in educational reform efforts buffeting the educational community . The danger was the profession becoming irrelevant as the standards - based educational movement gained strength in the 1990s with little evidence of systemic effectiveness for school counselors . In response, Campbell & Dahir (1997) consulted widely with school counselors at the elementary, middle, and high school levels and created the ASCA National Standards for School Counseling with three core domains (Academic, Career, Personal / Social), nine standards, and specific competencies and indicators for K - 12 students . </P> <P> The publication of the ASCA standards in 1997 ushered in a unique period of professionalization and strengthening of school counseling identity, roles, and programs . A year later, the first systemic meta - analysis of school counseling was published and gave the profession a wake - up call in terms of the need to focus on outcome research and the small set of methodologically accurate school counseling outcome research studies in academic, career, and personal / social domains . </P>

When did guidance counselor change to school counselor