My problem with school psychology

I have worked most of my professional life as a clinical psychologist but when, after six months of retirement, an opportunity arose to work part time one summer doing evaluations for a school district, I seized the chance. Somehow I was already certified. The position continued year-round for the next five years, providing me with a lclose-up look at school psych from the inside. By the fifth year I was able to re-structure my position to avoid testing and concentrate for the most part on the provision of soreely needed mental helth services. My comments here admitedly are jaundiced by the bias that school psychs should be bettter trained clinically. Qualify that statement by the admission that I was a lousy school psch, at least insofar as my report writing, because I refused to follow the state -dictated format. I think my test interpretations, clinical judgement, and interactions with students and families were fine.

That said, let me clarify that it is not school psychs that I am criticizing so much as their training, the programs they graduate from, the state mandates, amd the roles they are relgated to within schools. School psychs are for the most part hard working, conscientious,
caring persons. Unfortunately, they are overloaded with testing demands and at the mercy of administrators, students, parents and their advocates and attorneys.

So what's my gripe? My most general complaint is that there is a disconect between school psycholgy and psychology as a discipline. School psychs deal with thorny issues concerning the parameters of thinking and perception-issues that have a long history of philosophical relevance and psychological background. School pychs make judgements based upon statistical and psychometric principles. They deal with significant issues of test reliability, predictive validity, constrruct validity, statistical significance and power, clinical prediction (including probabilities of Type I and Type II errors), and neuological underpinings. Yet they apply weak and hackneyed models of inference and make judgements based on relatvely unreliable tests and subtests. They make use of concepts of functional analysis of behavior without applying accepted procedures for doing functional analysis. They employ hypothetical constructs unanchored to antecedent conditions or outcomes. They fail to test the utility of their interventions. They over-test because parents demand it.

My second criticism is that school psychs run scared. They qualify any potentially meaningful conclusions with "weasel words" such as "may" or "possibly" or "test results are similar to those found in children who..." They are afraid to express opinions for fear that they will be required to testify in due process hearings and face cross examinations. They learn to behave this way in graduate schools. For the same reason they are afraid to diagnose.

In Pennsylvania, school psychs are required to use a standard ER form for a comprehensive
assessment. Periodically, Department of Education officials revise this form--usually making it longer and more cumbersome. Each paragraph requires that certain questions be answered,
e.g., "Was the testing procedure performed under typical testing conditions?" Rather than asking for a unified intergated report describing a whole person, theER elicitis a chopped up Mickey Mouse report. Nowhere does the ER form ask about personality and emotional characteristics.

School psychs have acquired an image as testers. This not by design. Many would prefer to do counseling with students or develop programs or even to do research and writing. There just isn't enough time. The State mandates that reports have to be submitted with sixty work days of referral in order for the district to remain in compliance with regulations. So school psychs test and test and test. They are considered to be little more than technicians. That is not necessarily bad. There was a time when psychometricians were more respected in schools.
But when any activity is engaged in exclusively, it becomes mechanized, dull, routine, and often boring.

Facilitation of meetings by a leader is not taught in school psychology programs. It ought to be. Business schools give it more significance. School psychs are often asked to conduct ER meetings
since their report takes up the major part of the meeting time and forms the basis for individual education plans (IEPs). A good facilitator starts a meeting on time, explains goals for the meeting, keeps the meeting moving to accomplish those goals, sets an ending time and sticks to it. I have seldom seen an ER/IEP meeting run by those standards. More typically people walk into a metting at any time, say their piece without benbefit of hearing what has already transpired, and leave when they are through. Some meetings are interminable.

Tests themselves have deficiencies and areoften not the last word in presenting a profile for the child. WISC subscale scores are not as reliable as the overall factor scores. Furthermore the constructs formulated often have little validity. The concept of specific learning disability is both fuzzy and circular. One approach is based on alleged strengths and weaknesses, using WISC profile analysis. Subtest differences are normal. A straight line profile does not occur. and it is only the extreme difference scores that may be meaningful. Another rationale for LD is a discrepancy between testing cognitive functioning and school achievement tests--usually reading ir math.The thinking is circular. A child who is not reading is labeled as having a reading diusability. How do we know he has a reading disability? Because he is not reading. The diagnosis justifies additional costs incurred by special education but the process of diagnosis is lame.

Interventions occur in the form of resource rooms, LD or ED classrooms, special accommodations during testing and perhaps motivational schemes in the form of positive reinforcement. Sophisitcated behavioral interventions are rare. Data collection and evidence-based procedures are even less frequently used.

This critique may be unfairly exaggerated to make a point. It certainly will not win me friends amomg my school psych colleagues. A similar examination of clinical psychology practice may be equally critical. Yet, if it stimlates some thinking and discussion it will have served a purpose.
Improvement in some of these areas would be a step in the direction of reclaiming professional identy of school psychologists.