This conceptual paper outlines the implications associated with increasing external evaluation within school counseling programs. The authors propose that enhancing external evaluation may help to both strengthen school counseling programs and enhance their legitimacy within increasingly competitive and academically focused school systems. More specifically, the authors identify school-based evaluation (SBE) as a relevant and pragmatic tool to better support internal program evaluation strengths that already exist in the field through more intentional external program evaluation strategies. Two positive cases of external program evaluation are presented and discussed from an SBE perspective. Finally, the authors offer practitioners guidelines for building external SBE school counseling program evaluation practices and structures within their own local contexts.