Students with significant emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) present school personnel with complex challenges. For those students who present especially pervasive and chronic challenges, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) has recommended comprehensive assessments and interventions that empower families and involve close…

Many gifted and talented children are often misdiagnosed by psychologists and other health professionals as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Disorder (OD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), or another of the mood disorders. The misdiagnosis can stem from mistaken assumptions being made about the social and…

A survey of 216 special education administrators and school psychologists found that them to be generally supportive of the use of functional behavioral assessment for a range of problem behaviors. However, they were uncertain of whether such assessment would be acceptable for unique low-frequency problem behaviors that lead to suspension and…

This study investigated the procedures used by psychologists in a large midwestern urban area for the initial diagnosis and placement of elementary children with severe emotional disturbance (SED) in educational programs in light of the widespread criticism of the use of projective tests due to the questionable reliability of the tests and…

Two workshops for school psychologists focus on psychoeducational assessment and development of individualized education programs (IEPs) for emotionally handicapped (EH) students. Each workshop includes a rationale statement, statements of purpose, scope, and prerequisite skills, learning activities, supplementary reports or case studies, and…

Teacher ratings were obtained for 364 boys in elementary school special education classrooms using a rating scale of diagnostic criteria for disruptive behavior disorders from the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals (DSM-III-R). Implications of prevalence, factor analyses, and conditional probabilities for school psychologists' practices…

This report describes and evaluates the 1983-84 TOPS (Teaching /Outreach/Parent Involvement/Skills Development) program in the Dade County Schools, Florida. Designed for severly emotionally disturbed elementary school students, its full services approach contained the following components: (1) a highly structured academic program employing…