Editorial Standards

Last Updated: October 9, 2026

School-Counselor.org exists to give people an honest, detailed picture of school counseling as a career: what the work looks like, what it pays, and what it takes to get licensed in your state. Decisions about graduate school and certification cost real money and years of your life, so we hold our content to a high standard. This page explains who writes it, how we use AI, where our facts come from, and how we check them.

Who Writes Our Content

Our articles are produced by our editorial staff, a small team of editors and researchers who cover school counseling careers, licensing and graduate programs. We use AI tools when drafting and updating articles (see How We Use AI below). Every article, including every update, is reviewed by a person on our editorial team before it’s published. You can read more about our site and team.

Why Our Bylines Say “Editorial Staff”

Our pages are researched, updated and reviewed as a team, and many updates are AI-assisted, so we credit the work to our editorial staff rather than to a single name. The standards on this page apply to every article on the site, whoever worked on it.

Where Our Facts Come From

We rely on primary sources wherever we can:

  • Salary and job outlook: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data for School and Career Counselors and Advisors. Salary and growth figures on pages we’ve updated state the period they cover, such as May 2025 for wages or 2024-2034 for state job projections, and we’re adding that period to older pages as we update them.
  • Program accreditation: The CACREP register, which we check directly. A program has to be listed by CACREP as an accredited school counseling program to appear in our program lists.
  • Tuition: Each university’s own website, never a third-party directory. For tuition figures in our program lists and rankings, we record the page it came from, the exact wording that states the rate, and the date we checked it.
  • Licensing and certification: State departments of education, state licensing boards, and state school counselor associations.
  • Professional standards: The American School Counselor Association (ASCA).

How We Fact-Check

Before an article goes live, a human reviewer checks it against the sources above. That includes every statistic, every licensing requirement, every program detail and every date. When a reviewer finds an error, it gets fixed before publication. If they can’t verify a claim, it comes out. Fact-checking is done by people on our editorial team, never by an AI tool, and we credit it to the team rather than to individuals.

We also try to be honest about what the data doesn’t say. If BLS projections show slower growth than average, we won’t call it a fast-growing field. If wages dipped, we won’t suggest they’re rising.

How We Build Program Lists and Rankings

Every ranked program list and state program table on our site comes with a short methodology paragraph. It explains what the list is based on, where the numbers came from, and what they leave out. A few rules apply to every list:

  • We only include programs that CACREP lists as accredited school counseling programs. We leave out any program in teach-out, closure or show-cause status.
  • When a program’s accreditation cycle ends soon, or CACREP has flagged a concern, we say so. We use CACREP’s own wording.
  • Tuition figures don’t include mandatory fees unless the methodology paragraph says otherwise, so programs can be compared on the same basis.
  • CACREP accreditation isn’t the same as state approval. We remind readers to confirm requirements with their own state board before enrolling.

How We Use AI

We want to be upfront about this. We use AI tools to help draft and update articles. Licensing rules, salary data and program details change often, and keeping hundreds of state pages current is a big job.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. AI helps us draft new articles, restructure older ones, apply our style and formatting standards, and work new data into a page. It works from a fixed set of approved sources, which are listed above. It isn’t allowed to pull salary figures, tuition numbers or accreditation details from memory or from general web searches. If a fact isn’t in an approved source, it doesn’t go on the page.

AI doesn’t have the final say on anything. Every AI-assisted article and update is reviewed and fact-checked by a person before it’s published. We never list an AI tool as an author.

Advertising and Independence

Some schools pay to appear in featured or sponsored placements on our site, and those placements are labeled. Some links to schools are tracked, and we may earn a fee when a reader requests information. That never affects which programs we include or what we say about them. Advertising never affects our editorial lists. A school can’t pay to be included in a ranking, to move up in one, or to change what we say about it. If a program doesn’t meet our accreditation standard, it stays off our lists, advertiser or not.

Updates and Corrections

We review and update our articles regularly, especially state licensing pages, since requirements change. Each article shows the date it was last updated.

We make mistakes sometimes. When we find one, or a reader points one out, we correct it promptly. If you spot something wrong, please email us at [email protected] and tell us the page and what needs fixing.

A Note on Using This Site

Our content is educational. It isn’t legal or financial advice, and it doesn’t replace official guidance from your state. Licensing rules and tuition change, so always confirm the current requirements with your state’s department of education or licensing board, and check costs with the university before you enroll.