ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, culminating with passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, the focus of the educational establishment has been on academic achievement as measured by performance on high-stakes examination. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) has aligned with this focus through the development of national standards designed to facilitate the academic accomplishment of students. As Coleman (Chapter 4, this volume) has suggested, student academic accomplishment is not achieved through a singular focus on the acquisition and mastery of academic content. Despite the fact that not all students go on to attend 2- or 4-year institutions of higher education, there is substantive evidence that student academic accomplishment is facilitated by a host of nonacademic factors (Coleman, in press). As has been suggested elsewhere in the handbook (e.g., see Hage, Schwartz, & Barnett, Chapter 25, this volume), the singular focus on academic content reduces a focus on the emotional development of children, which is a key factor in performance. The central focus of this chapter is both on the role that cultural identity plays in facilitating academic accomplishment and to provide school counselors with an approach to enhancing cultural identity, which they can integrate into their developmental guidance program.
