Rehabilitation Counseling Education Accreditation History, Empirical Standards, and Implications After the Merger of CORE and CACREP.

The Council on Rehabilitation Education (CORE) was the first accrediting body to set standards for graduate education in counseling, ensuring that programs training rehabilitation counselors addressed the essential knowledge and competencies needed to provide effective services to people who have disabilities, based on role and function studies and other relevant empirical evidence. Later, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) developed accreditation for other graduate education in counseling. A history of CORE and its merger with CACREP is provided, with details about the empirical process CORE used to revise its Rehabilitation Counseling Standards for accreditation to a format consistent with CACREP's approach. Problems with the transition (merger effective 7/1/2017) and CACREP's current approach of having two different sets of accreditation standards related to rehabilitation counseling, as well as CACREP's current prohibition against accrediting programs in dual specialty areas unless students complete two separate 600-hour internships, are discussed. Patterns in rehabilitation counseling program accreditation after the merger are examined, including the loss of 16 programs across multiple states/territories and the choice of more than 40% of the remaining accredited programs to satisfy "Clinical Rehabilitation Counseling" Standards instead of the empirically based "Rehabilitation Counseling" Standards developed by CORE. Decreased Certified Rehabilitation Counselor Exam scores are associated with the merger and proliferation of programs adhering only to the Clinical Rehabilitation Counseling Standards. Implications of these developments and recommended solutions to ensure that people with disabilities receive the qualified rehabilitation counseling services they deserve are presented.