The sheer amount of time that school psychologists spend conducting assessments, coupled with the shift in the field toward incorporating a socially just lens into practice, elicits the question: What constitutes socially just academic assessments, and what are the related best practices? Considering the complexities related to applying a social…

Every 5 years, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) conducts a national study of the field. Surveys are sent to randomly selected regular members of NASP to gather information on school psychologists' demographic characteristics, context for professional practices, and professional practices. The latest iteration of the national…

Response to intervention (RTI) remains a major issue in both the professional literature and school practice. A series of previous "snapshot" studies traced the development of RTI in state laws concerning identification of students with specific learning disability (SLD). In the last article in this series, Zirkel and Thomas (2010) reported that…

In part one of this series, the authors discussed the connections among social and emotional learning (SEL), positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS), and response to intervention (RTI). Specifically, they compared the processes and fidelity components of these approaches. They attempted to highlight the similarities in systems,…

Many schools are working toward improving their overall social and behavioral climate. This endeavor is undertaken for its own sake, and in the anticipation that it will improve academic performance for students. There appear to be at least three predominant school-wide approaches to frame improving school climate: (1) positive behavior…

The recently adopted NASP "Model for Comprehensive and Integrated School Psychological Services" consists of 10 domains of practice that describe the competencies of school psychologists to effectively support the positive educational, behavioral, and mental health outcomes of all students. Anastasia Skalski (2010), NASP Director of…

The estimated prevalence of one or more mental health disorders among children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 17 is 21% (Satcher, 2001). Similarly, research by Greenberg et al., (2003) estimated that 20% of school-age youth experience mental health problems during the course of any school year. Despite these high prevalence rates, the…

In the previous article in this series, the authors provided a rationale for integrating academic and behavior response to intervention (RTI) systems. Their rationale included: (1) research showing that challenges in academic and social behavior are linked; (2) a description of the common features that both RTI systems share; and (3) the…

In today's educational climate, where inclusion and response to intervention (RTI) are valued, the use of coteaching represents one potential way for schools to meet the diverse needs of students in their classrooms. Although school psychologists are not typically involved in delivering instruction through a coteaching paradigm, they have the…