Social justice has recently received attention within the school psychology community. Yet, social justice is a nebulous term, as opined by Connelly (2009), who cautioned against searching for what is wrong and instead striving for the highest standards and recognizing needs of every unique child. Shriberg and colleagues (2008) have sought to…

"School Psychology: A Blueprint for Training and Practice III" ("Blueprint III"; Ysseldyke et al., 2006) represents a model for future school psychology instruction and practice. This model illustrates how, along a continuum of skill development from "novice" to "expert," school psychologists can develop professional competencies that support…

Professional organizations and federal legislation stipulate that assessments of all students must be fair and unbiased. Although these entities provide guidance, there continues to be a gap between guidelines and practice. This article examines the nature of culturally competent practice with Ebonics-speaking youth. Many school psychologists face…

Responsiveness to Intervention (RTI) is widely understood as representing a multilevel framework that integrates assessment and instruction to provide strong early intervention and valid methods of disability identification. There are currently many approaches to RTI, which are creating confusion among educators as they try to conceptualize,…

A leading introductory text, this authoritative volume comprehensively describes the school psychologist's role in promoting positive academic, behavioral, and emotional outcomes for all students. The book emphasizes a problem-solving-based, data-driven approach to practice in today's diverse schools. It grounds the reader in the concepts and…

Blended learning models of training and education are gaining in popularity and availability. While such models are appealing for variety of reasons, they are not without unique challenges and concerns. Practitioners face ethical decisions every day and blended training models create their own set of circumstances that could become problematic…

The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) is celebrating its 40th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of the Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) credential. NASP was founded on March 15, 1969 during a national planning conference in St. Louis. In this article, the author provides a brief overview of the NASP.

There has recently been a growing movement within psychology toward placing a greater emphasis on building strengths and competencies rather than merely treating deficits and disorders. This movement, known as positive psychology, focuses on the scientific study of optimal human functioning and the variables that promote positive human emotions,…

The author appreciates the invitation to comment on the article by Reinke, Lewis-Palmer, and Merrell (2008) examining the Classroom Check-Up (CCU). Their work illustrates how far school psychology has come over the past decade in developing more sophisticated intervention practices. The opening section of this commentary will highlight the…

Approximately 4.5 to 6.3 million youth experience serious emotional disturbances. Unfortunately, many of them have unmet mental health needs. Tools used in personality assessment can offer unparalleled assistance in diagnosis, and assist in designing appropriate interventions. Unfortunately, not all psychologists embrace personality assessment as…

Using an experimenter-developed system, articles from four school psychology journals for the years 2000-2005 (n = 929) were classified. Results showed that 40% of the articles were narrative, 29% correlational, 16% descriptive, 8% causal-experimental, 4% causal-comparative, and 2% were meta-analytic. Further analysis of the causal-experimental…

This study examined what elementary schools in New York State are doing to recognize lesbian gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) families in terms of curriculum, policies, and practices. One hundred and sixteen participants were recruited through the New York Association of School Psychologists email listserve and completed a brief online…

The purpose of this project was to explore the decision-making approach and types of data that school psychologists use in determining special education classification. There were three research objectives: (a) to investigate the types of conditions and measures needed to test the use of the representativeness heuristic and assessment data, (b) to…

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) has been shown to be an effective tool for screening and progress-monitoring in the general education classroom. However, CBM has been slow to gain a foothold among teachers. The purpose of this study was to identify the barriers to the implementation of comprehensive CBM training in pre-service teacher education…

A random sample of 213 school psychologists working in a school setting completed a survey on their schools' current anti-bullying practices. Talking with bullies following bullying incidents, disciplinary consequences for bullies, and increasing adult supervision were the three most frequently used strategies. Peer juries/court, an anti-bullying…