Excelling in a CACREP program is not the same as excelling in the field of counseling, no matter how much CACREP would like to think so. It is my belief that licensure and accreditation should be separate. The logic behind making CACREP mandatory is the same logic applied to the Standards of Learning in Virginia, and I don't know many people in education who think that's been a success.

Counseling is an ever-changing field, so let's allow some freedom for counseling educators to focus on the students and utilize their experience in the field instead of making their sole focus accreditation and losing the forest for the trees. It is my belief that rubrics profoundly hinder students' development in a field like counseling, yet CACREP is essentially a rubric for an entire program. If effective counseling was as easy as checking items off of a checklist, we wouldn't need extensive knowledge and training to do it.

I strongly oppose making CACREP mandatory.