Abolition in School Counseling

Reviews / Votes

"How can we build abolitionist school counseling rooted in care, relationships, and systems change?

A powerful, necessary guide for school counselors, the deep credibility of its authors shines throughout Abolition in School Counseling: Practicing Liberation and Community in PK-12 Schools. Grounded in years of experience alongside young people, educators, and communities impacted by carceral systems, the authors bring both rigorous scholarship and lived connection to their work. Their approach is unapologetically abolitionist and refreshingly practical, balancing theory with hands-on tools, real-life examples, and research to illuminate what's possible when we move beyond punishment and towards accountability, repair, and community.

This isn't just a book about what not to do, it's a roadmap for what can be done and what is already unfolding. It engages hard questions that don't have easy answers, and invites readers to grapple, imagine, and act. School counselors will find concrete strategies for building, and as critically collectively assessing, abolitionist practices into their daily work. But this book reaches far beyond one professional role. It speaks to educators, district leaders, youth organizers, and anyone invested in dismantling harmful systems and building new, life-affirming ones in their place.

Timely, grounded, and visionary, this book is not afraid to challenge the status quo and it does so with clarity, compassion, and both a care for those of us who work within punishing systems such as schools, and an unwavering recognition of the power of young people. For those ready to reimagine what kind of world we can create together, this book is an essential companion."

Erica Meiners, community organizer, author, professor, Women's and Gender Studies, Northeastern Illinois University

"This book is nothing short of revolutionary. It pushes beyond the traditional, unquestioned roles of school counseling and opens new possibilities for what the work can be. By guiding the reader from abstract concepts to concrete and practical actions, it inspires a fundamental shift in our approach to counseling. With a bold and visionary approach, this book is an invitation to think in radically new ways, and ground in clear, practical steps that make abolitionist counseling a lived practice rather than an abstract idea. Not only school counselors but anyone in education, from K-12 to higher education, will find new ways of thinking and concrete applications, tools that can be used right away to begin auditing curricula and practices in any educational setting."

Bengue Erguener-Tekinalp, PhD, professor of counseling, Drake University, Counseling Program Coordinator, co-editor of Contemplative Practices and Anti-Oppressive Pedagogies for Higher Education: Bridging the Disciplines

"This book is a vital contribution to abolitionist thought and practice. By grounding school counseling in love, community, and organizing, Riley and Alicia show us how educators can refuse policing and instead build life-affirming practices with students. This is a brave, necessary, and inspiring invitation for counselors to rethink what they do, why they do it, and how they can act in solidarity with young people and communities to build a future rooted in collective care and justice."

Alan Dettlaff, PhD, professor of social work, University of Houston, author, co-founding editor of Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work, and co-creator of the upEND movement to end family policing

"As a practicing school counselor, who has worked with students and families at all grade levels throughout both rural and urban communities, Abolition in School Counseling is our profession's welcomed reckoning. Needless to say-albeit Riley Drake & Alicia Oglesby speak to this truth so humbly and factually-school counseling grows increasingly difficult. While any given day we school counselors can point our fingers at this or that reason, our authors put their thumbs on the reality of the carceral state. Even the best intentions can be entrenched in age-old systems of oppression. But they don't have to be. Abolition encourages brave acts of reflection and revision about who we are, what systems we cling to, and how leveraging connection can reinvigorate the education we deliver our students."

Brett Steelman, MS, school counselor, Des Moines public schools

"This timely and provocative work arrives at a critical moment in the evolution of school counseling. With unflinching clarity, Dr. Riley Drake and Alicia Oglesby challenge us to confront how school counseling has too often been shaped by practices of surveillance, control, and compliance that undermine student agency and well-being. Abolition in School Counseling is a sobering call to reflection and accountability, offering compelling examples of school counselors embracing abolitionist practices rooted in care and connection. At a time when it is so easy to fall into the traps of isolation and helplessness, the authors call us instead toward community, presenting a framework for abolitionist school counseling that is both visionary and practical."

Caroline Lopez-Perry, associate professor, school counseling, co-director of The CSU Center to Close the Opportunity Gap, California State University Long Beach, co-author of Equity-Driven Leadership in School Counseling: How to Champion Justice for All Students

"This book offers a powerful framework for reflection-accessible and relevant for on-the-ground counselors navigating the realities of school life. It challenges us to examine how our daily practices can either silence or empower students. It reminds us that meaningful change happens in community, not isolation, and that belonging, care, and hope must be at the center of our work."

Ana Baez, bilingual school counselor, 2025 Wisconsin State Teacher of the Year, 2025 National Teacher of the Year Program - Wisconsin Representative, and Wisconsin Education Association Council's 2025 Excellence in Education Award Recipient

"Abolition in School Counseling invites counselors to practice abolition right where they are - with kids in school. It doesn't pretend schools are sites of liberation; it just acknowledges that many of us already live and work within oppressive institutions and that there are still things we can do to nurture microcosms of safety and care. Grounded in abolitionist theory and imagination, Riley Drake and Alicia Oglesby offer practical tools to support school counselors in leveraging their positions to build liberatory relationships with kids. What a beautiful experiment!"

zara raven, abolitionist care worker and Philly Childcare Collective organizer

"This book offers a new way of understanding the role of the professional school counselor through liberation, restoration, and mutual aid. The authors provide a foundational understanding of abolition which invites readers to engage in transformational thinking to build what is needed with students, families and communities rather than follow prescriptive methods of the past. This invitation is followed by critical examples to illustrate how real school counselors, including the authors, have engaged this work in their own school counseling practice. Ultimately, this work offers a way to resist the dehumanizing nature of sociopolitical systems in and outside of schools through hopeful, joyful practice that loves and protects the wholeness of students. This is a text our field has been longing for and we finally have it! I'm looking forward to using the text in preservice school counselor training and with inservice school counselors!"

Renae D. Mayes, professor, department of educational psychology, College of Education, University of Arizona