They carry out psychological testing, psychoeducational assessment, intervention, prevention, counseling, and consultation in the ethical, legal, and administrative codes of their profession.
These social reforms included compulsory schooling, juvenile courts, child labor laws as well as a growth of institutions serving children.
[10] Witmer argued against the standard pencil and paper IQ and Binet type tests in order to help select children for special education.
Bridging the gap between the child study movement, clinical psychology and special education, Arnold Gesell, was the first person in the United States to officially hold the title of school psychologist.
Socioeconomic status may limit funding and materials, impact curriculum quality, increase teacher-to-student ratios, and perpetuate a negative school climate.
Thus exchanging and storing information digitally may come under scrutiny if precautions such as password protecting documents and specifically limiting access within school systems to personal files.
Concerns on where the line can be drawn on where intervention methods end and invasion of privacy begin are raised by students, parents, administrators, and faculty.
Staff members should keep the terms race, privilege, implicit bias, micro aggression, and cultural relevance in mind when thinking about social justice.
[26] School psychologists, as researchers and practitioners, can make important contributions to the development and implementation of scientifically based intervention and prevention programs to address learning and behavioral needs of students.
Newly designed interventions must be empirically tested through a series of randomized studies conducted by researchers in order to be proven effective for school environments.
Intervention and prevention research needs to address a range of questions related not only to efficacy and effectiveness, but also to feasibility given resources, acceptability, social validity, integrity, and sustainability.
The SWPBIS involves a communal effort among school staff to establish school-wide behavioral expectations, which are reinforced by reward systems in order to promote positive forms of coaching and mentorship.
Like other Evidence-based interventions, the SWPBIS has a large body of research supporting its effectiveness in promoting positive academic and interpersonal behaviors among students.
[42] Data should be collected consistently to assess implementation effectiveness, screen and monitor student behavior, and develop or modify action plans.
[43] Check and Connect C&C is a structured mentoring intervention to promote student success and engagement at school with learning through relationship building and systematic use of data.
These serve to build a strong relationship with the student based on mutual trust and open communication, nurtured through a long-term commitment focused on success at school and with learning.
These are things such as attendance, suspension, credits, grades, and behavior that are “checked” for progress regularly by mentors and used to guide their efforts to increase and maintain students’ “connection” with the school.
This means the intervention strategies must have been evaluated by research that utilized rigorous data analysis and peer review procedures to determine the effectiveness.
Historically, the main role of school psychologists has been to assess and diagnose students with behavioral or learning disabilities and determine their eligibility for exceptional needs programs.
School psychologist have completed in depth advanced preparation in selecting and administering tests as well as interpreting and evaluating information obtained from assessment.
Advanced training allows school psychologists to be extremely familiar with the central principles of measurement employing multi-method, multi-source, and multi-setting approaches that are sensitive to contextual influences.
For instance, schools in King County, Washington are using the Check Yourself digital screening tool designed by Seattle Children's Hospital[51] to measure, understand, and nurture individual students’ well-being.
Cultural diversity factors that can be addressed through social justice practice include race/ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), religion, and sexual orientation.
[62] Multicultural competence extends to race, ethnicity, social class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability, age, and geographic region.
[26] Such efforts include establishing opportunities for individuals representative of minority groups to become school psychologists and implementing a diverse array of CLD training programs within the field.
States that currently have the largest ratio between students and school psychologists (>2000 to 1, respectively) are Texas, New Mexico, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.
Pediatric school psychologists also contribute to developing and maintaining Tier 1 prevention activities and the facilitation of health promotion programs structured to address the population they are serving.
Students at Lehigh University enroll in the Pediatric School Psychology endorsement as a part of the competitive Leadership Training project supported by the U.S. Department of Education.
[85] Because of the increased enrollment of students with these complications, public schools have recognized the benefits of collaborating with behavior consultants to improve academic instruction and reduce discipline problems.
[85] This produces many referrals to professionals who provide consultation as psychologists or behavior specialists affiliated with a private practice, clinic, or human services agency.