As school psychologists, one of our primary roles will be assessing children to determine eligibility for special education services. The question of what constitutes an appropriate evaluation is a controversial topic that school psychologists often disagree on. Traditional assessment focused on standardized test scores of intellectual ability to determine eligibility of services. Standardized norm-referenced measures are a necessary and important part of assessment, but do scores alone give you enough information to define a problem behavior, implement an intervention, and see if there is a positive outcome? Alternative assessment methods such as FBA’s have become more popular in creating successful interventions. As future school psychologists’ shouldn’t our goal be to develop recommendations that will have positive outcomes for the child? How do we break away from traditional practices and incorporate new methods of assessment that will guide us in the evaluation process?This blog was created by Melissa Picariello
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I think our goals should be to develop recommendations that will have a positive outcome. School pyschologitst should incorporate new methods that have been proven effective. However, what if the district only allows recommendations based on traditional testing. There is only so much a school psychologist can do, especially if they are pressed for time to close cases.
I think as more and more school psychologists enter the field stright from "modern day" training it will become slowly increasingly easier to break away from the traditional methods. This hopefully will be true for the school administration as well, that they will be trained differently and enter the work force with a more open frame of mind to the new techniques available for assessing students.
Although we will have many, many hours of field experience and will have come across many new methods of assessment and interventions, there will be no easy way to break away from traditional testing within our first few years as school psychologists. As school psychologists, people are going to expect us to test, test, test, and test some more. It is our responsibility to stay familiar with new methods of assessment and evaluation. In addition, we have to remain knowledgeable about any changes in laws both federal and state level. Being well-informed about changes within our field ensures that we will meet out number one goal: to develop recommendations that will have positive outcomes for the child.
I definitely agree that our goal as future school psychologists should be to develop recommendations that will have positive outcomes for our children. As such, we need to implement varying strategies and goals that will allow us to break away from traditional practices. In districts where only traditional assessment is allowed, however, we can still try to be creative and brainstorm ideas so we can make our case to our supervisors and have them see that the field is changing, and with that, we too must change our assessment measures and adapt, especially when it comes to behavioral assessment and projective measures. If these measures prove to be most beneficial and positive for our chilren, then we must develop whatever strategy we can to ensure that we are up to date with the field and new methods of assessment are implemented into our children's services. Their best interest is at heart, and the more positive outcomes that can be established for helping these children, the better for their success.
Scores alone definitely are not enough to define a problem behavior or learning disability. In order to accurately come to a classification we must try to gather as much information as possible. When we have all the information we must put all the pieces together like a puzzle. In order to find the appropriate information we must use a multi-setting, multi-source, and multi-assessment approach. A multi-setting would include observing the child in the classroom, on the playground and at home. A multi-source would include asking teachers, parents, coaches or anyone else familiar with the child that would be able to provide useful information. A multi-assessment would include not only cognitive assessments, but also achievement abilities, and personality inventories.
I believe that stepping away from the discrepancy model requires systemic change. I think that as new school psychologists in a district, the best way to start change is by developing good relationships with the teachers and encouraging schoolwide positive behavior support. This can be done by helping them develop interventions.. conducting FBA's for students in their classrooms, and encouraging them to follow through and make evidence based decisions.
Our main goal is the success of the children who we are going to be working with. In order to help these children succeed we must develop recommendations which will have the greatest positive affect on the students. We as future school psychologists will be expected to do a lot of testing, and use such assessments as our primary tool for evaluation. However, the field of school psychology is changing and we need to change along with the field, but we must also understand this change is not going to begin tomorrow. It is our job while working as a school psychologist to adapt different assessment techniques which will prove to be effective in the assessment process. We must be open minded and willing to try new strategies and techniques in order to help our students to the best of our ability.
In one of my cognitive reports, I made a recommendation that a child should have preferential seating in his class because he does not pay attention. I was told that since I found no attention issues during one-on-one testing, that this recommendation had no validity. My argument was that, who cares if he has an innate attention problem, such as ADHD, the issue still remain that he does not focus in class. Let's resolve this. I was then told, "well, maybe his teachers are boring." My response was "Well, who cares if there is a pink elephant in the room? The point is, he doesn't pay attention, so lets fix it."
Recommendations are useless unless they address the problem in the classroom. It is our job to find out what is going on in the classroom and fix the problem. And it is our job to make sure modifications are being implemented properly. It's not good practice to come up with a laundry list of impracticle modifications, throw them at the teacher and say "do it", and expect that the teacher and student will respond well.
The topic of breaking away from traditional assessment is not only controversial but may also be met with resistance. Most practicing school psychologists are clinically trained in assessment and may make clinical judgments rather than an empirically based assessment. It is important to stress that practicing and new school psychologists should take part in continued professional development activities to remain current of treatment research as new findings are integrated. FBA’s are becoming popular because it is a problem-solving model that not only involves traditional standardized testing but also teacher interviews and direct observations.
Breaking away from the traditional does not have to mean making it obsolete. We can integrate the traditional with evidenced-based practices and create IEP’s and assessments that will be more effective for the student.
Like Jamie said, I think that as new school psychologists enter the field the change from traditional methods will slowly change. In my placement it seems that my supervisor understands very clearly that there is a lot more to a child then the score they receive on a traditional assessment. In many of his reports he indicates scores but also points out when he feels that the score is not reflective of the students ability. I think that all school psychologists should be obligated to make recommendations based on more than just the test scores.
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