Fagan, T.K. & Wise, P.S. (2007). Evaluation and accountability of school
Psychologists 157-180. School Psychology: Past, present, and future Third
Edition. National Association of School Psychologists. Bethesda, MD.
The purpose of this chapter is to describe the ways that school psychologists are held
accountable. The chapter focuses on the reason for, types of, current practices and difficulties in
evaluating school psychologists. The chapter is written from the perspective that accountability
is possibly the most important aspect of a school psychologist's job as it provides legitimacy to
the field.
Summary
-In order to keep high accountability standards school psychologists are evaluated several times
throughout the course of their career.
-In order to begin training the student must meet the standards of the institution that will be
training them.
-The institution must evaluate if a candidates deficits in the necessary characteristics are
trainable.
-Evaluation on the job can be difficult for the school psychologist who works in a smaller or
rural school district as there may not be someone staffed who is qualified in the right fields to
evaluate the school psychologist.
-Training programs as also evaluated to ensure they are up to standards.
-Accountability provides a way for school psychology to improve its self, maintain a respectable
reputation and ensure the best quality services possible.
-There are two types of accountability to look at: descriptive and evaluative.
-Descriptive is written account of activities and functions.
-Evaluative is a measurable outcome.
-Evaluation can be difficult to accurately get for school psychologists because of bias that exist
with the rater.
Culture/Integration
This chapter brings up an interesting point about how evaluations are done. When it
comes to observations for evaluation I have seen and experienced a major pitfall with the number
of people that are supposed to be evaluated within a given time frame. It was always interesting
to me to see how briefly teachers were observed in the schools I worked in. To really see how
effective the teacher is you really should watch their whole lesson. Some teachers do an amazing
job of tying everything together at the end and some teacher start strong, but get lost toward the
end. Given how many teachers the evaluators have to see there is not enough time for them to
devote and to also fulfill their other responsibilities. It was also interesting because when an
observation occurred it really felt like a different classroom because the teacher had to put on a
show to cover all these objectives within the time of the observation. In the realm of school
psychology I had not considered the difficulty of finding an observer who is knowledgeable
enough to accurately evaluate them. With teachers, most of the administration staff was qualified
to observe them as they had similar education and tend to have been teachers previously. With
school psychologists you would have to have a more senior school psychologist to evaluate them
which would mean a given school or district would have to have at least two school
psychologists. Then the problem arises that who can evaluate the more senior school
psychologist? This is yet another wrinkle that ties into the idea presented in previous readings,
the idea of school psychology tittering on the line between education and psychology.
Jacob, S., Decker, D., & Hartshorne, T.S. (2010). Indirect services II: special topics in
Systems level consultation. 205-228. Ethics and Law for school psychologists
6th Edition. John Wiley and Sons. Hoboken, New Jersey.
The purpose of this chapter is to explain the ways a school psychologist can collaborate
with other parties as a consultant. The focus of this chapter is on the ethical and legal issues that
arise when consulting. The chapter is written from the perspective that by being knowledgeable
about school policies and practices a school psychologist can affect the entire school
environment for the betterment of students.
Summary
-A school psychologist must be knowledge in a multitude of practices while doing system wide
consultation.
-School systems use assessments to filter and organize students into appropriate environment.
-This can lead to segregation and unconstitutional practices if care is not taken.
-School psychologists should help to inform school officials about effective and legal issues
regarding discipline.
-Care must be taken when considering suspension for students and extra care must be taken for
students with disabilities.
-School psychologist should work to ensure a positive school environment to limit student
violence.
-Schools are not required to provide bilingual education but federal funds exist to ensure students
with limited English speaking skills are still give proper instruction.
-Students with HIV do not qualify for special education.
Culture/integration
This chapter brings up the idea of school psychologist navigating and appeasing the
different sub-cultures that arise in a school. From my experience each group of people who have
similar duties within the school form their own culture together. When it comes to discipline for
a challenging student, generally all of the cultures want what is best for the student, but each
cultures’ idea of what is best, looks a little different. This brings up the idea from previous
readings that a school psychologist needs to be a jack of all trades when it comes to knowing the
different policies, laws, and cultural norms that exist in a particular school so that the school
psychologist can help to appease all parties as well as ensure the student has the best educational
experience.
Brown-Chidsey, R. & Steege, M.W. (2010). Evidence-based intervention. 38-55.
Response to Intervention: Principles and Strategies for Effective Practice 2nd
Edition. The Guilford Press. New York.
The purpose of this chapter is to explain the reasoning behind using evidence based
interventions. The focus of this chapter is on determining what an evidence based intervention is
and how it should be applied. The chapter is written from the perspective that school
psychologists not only have a legal, but an ethical obligation to use evidence based interventions.
Summary
-School psychologists are charged with only utilizing interventions that have been empirically
tested.
-Students have the right to have the most effective interventions possible.
-Care must be taken not to take the options and testimonials of others as sound evidence.-using
research databases school psychologists can find evidence based interventions without having to
do all the leg work.
-The school psychologist must also look at how applicable an intervention is to their student.
Culture
This chapter highlights the gullibility that comes from our "science based" culture. I
would imagine the majority of consumers look for empirically sound products, but I would also
imagine most would not know what empirical evidence actually looked like. With a few key
words and phrases any product's effect can be disguised as proven facts of pseudoscience. In
addition people tend to put a lot of stock into reviews of products without actually knowing who
the reviewer is or how exactly they came to their conclusions. This screams for a greater need of
teaching students to think empirically.
Integration
Part of my job last year was to track our data and observe my teammates as they worked
with students to ensure they were conducting our interventions properly. I came into a lot of
opposition with my some teammates who would often have a new "trick of the week" they
wanted to try with their students. I am always up for a novel approach to working with students
as there is so much variability between them, but there was a lot on tension when I would ask for
my teammates to back up their ideas with some kind of evidence. My teammates reasoning was
often than what they were supposed to be doing wasn't working, but when we would look at the
data the interventions appeared to be working. It usually came down to the students results not
looking like my teammates were expecting.
Munger, K.A., & Blachman, K.A. (2013). Taking a “simple view” of the dynamic
indicators of basic early literacy skills as a predictor of multiple measures of the
third-grade reading comprehension. Psychology in the Schools 50. 722-737.
The purpose of this article is to examine the validity of a first-grade reading ability
assessment called Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) and for its scores
to predict reading comprehension scores in the third grade. The focus of this article is on the
DIBELS subtests and their ability to predict reading comprehension as defined as word
recognition and language comprehension. The article is written from the perspective that the
DIBELS ORF subtests predicts word recognition and no other subtest predict additional
variance.
SUMMARY
-Reading comprehension is a big push in America.
-The authors had two hypotheses: Other DIBELS subtests would not explain additional variance
in reading comprehension that was not explained by DIBELS ORF, and that first-grade
vocabulary scores on the PPVT and not DIBELS WUF would explain variance in third-grade
reading comprehension that was not explained by DIBELS ORF.
-While in first grade, all participants were administered the PPVT-III, and the five subtests from
the DIBELS.
-While in the third-grade, participants were administered the NYSELA, the WIAT-II and the
GRADE to measure reading comprehension.
-The authors found that DIBELS ORF subtests predicts word recognition and no other subtest
predict additional variance.
-The authors discuss the use of a vocabulary measurement to add to the second component of
their reading comprehension definition, language comprehension.
Culture/Integration
In a world where all of these assessments compete with one another I have always
wondered what would happen if all of these test makers and researchers combined their efforts to
take the best sections of their tests to make one universal assessment. On the one hand I can see
the benefits from having a multitude of tests to measures certain area. With each test measuring
in slightly different ways we can cover the difference variances in students and ensure we
capture a wider angle of the domain. I wonder though if we had just a single assessment for one
area, with subtests covering a wide field, if we could not achieve even greater accuracy. One
problem I have seen firsthand with having all of these assessments is just the length of time
necessary to master their administration and analysis. The amount of time it has taken me to
learn the WISC-IV is substantial and that is with having a dedicated class to it. With the big push
on reading comprehension and tracking students’ progress I can imagine there being more than
one case of individuals having to give assessment that they lack training in due to low staffing or
time constraints. This could be alleviated to an extent if there was simply one test the
administrator had to learn.
Yeo, S. Fearrington, J., & Christ, T.J. (2011). An investigation of gender, income, and
special education status bias on curriculum-based measurement slope in
reading. School Psychology Quarterly 26. 119-130.
The purpose of this article is to investigate bias in reading compression assessment. The
focus of this article is on Curriculum Based Measurement of Oral Reading (CBM-R) and
Curriculum Based Measurement Maze Reading (Maze.) The article is written from the
perspective that background variances may hold bias in students' rate of growth.
Summary
-The aims of the study was to see if CBM data held biases, if they held biases for grade level and
if biases differed between CBM-R and Maze.
-The assessments were given three times during the course of a year as part of a school districts
screening process.
-The authors tested the shape of growth and the variance in slope.
-They then analyzed the data by conduction conditional linear growth modeling.
-The authors showed that there were significant variances in CBM-R slopes in Grades 3 and 7.
-There were significant variances in Maze scores for Grades 5, 6, 7, and 8.
-Group membership in gender and special education held sloe bias for CBM-R
-Group membership in gender was the only variable that held slope bias for Maze.
-The study was limited by data points, ethnic diversity, special education type, and the type of
texts used.
Culture/Integration
The elementary school I worked in tested students weekly on different domains in
reading and math. One of texts used in reading was about skiing. It asked students to draw on
prior knowledge of skiing to determine if the actions taken by one of the characters was
appropriate. This test was given in a group of third graders whose families lived below the
poverty line and in Florida. While I haven’t seen many other blatant cultural biases this article
hints at a cultural consideration that needs to be accounted for when using whole texts in reading
assessments.
Herman, M. & Sharer, N. (2013). Trying to summarize state licensure laws for
psychologists: burial by grains of salt. Training and Education in Professional
Psychology 7, 123-133.
The purpose of this article is to discuss the difficulties created by each state having
different licensing standards for psychologists. The focus of this article is on the authors failed
attempt to forge a comprehensive document with all licensing standards. The article is written
from the perspective that the issue of needs attention.
Summary
-With each state having its own requirements for licensing, the process becomes confusing.
-Other professions face similar difficulties.
-Attempts have been made to resolve the problem, but none have been universally adopted.
-The authors first attempted to gather information for ACCTA members, but found there were
many discrepancies between information sources.
-The authors made a second attempt for find information and found mixed results.
-The authors provide three levels of recommendations to solve the issue.
Culture/Integration
This article highlights the political subculture that school psychologists have to navigate.
Clearly it would be easier to have one set of standards for licensing, but with each state’s
politicking the likely hood of that happening is slim. This is important for me to know as I have a
history of not sticking to the same state for more than a few years.