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IDEA could change
psychologists' focus
(October
2005 Issue)
By Ami Albernaz
Psychologists who work with elementary and secondary schools may
see their roles shift from assessment to intervention while working
with children with learning disabilities. The shift is a result
of changes to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or
IDEA, that went into effect July 1. And while it's too early to
know exactly how these changes will play out, psychologists may
need training in order to acquire new methods with which to do their
work.
Under IDEA, which guarantees public education to school-age and
pre-school-age children with disabilities, determining if a student
was learning disabled had rested, until now, on an IQ-achievement
discrepancy model. IQs were compared to achievement test scores,
and if the discrepancy was deemed large enough, the child qualified.
Under the updated law - signed by President Bush last December to
be more consistent with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 - school
districts no longer need to use the discrepancy model, opening the
door for new, intervention-focused approaches for helping students
who are struggling.
"People have long known that the discrepancy model is problematic,
that it's not a sound model," says Bob Lichtenstein, Ph.D., NCSP,
consultant for school psychology at the Connecticut State Department
of Education who represented the National Association of School
Psychologists at the Learning Disabilities Roundtable in making
recommendations for the revised IDEA. On a theoretical level, he
says, the discrepancy model does not work equally in all children.
"The kinds of dysfunctional processing that are the hallmark of
a child with a learning disability can affect a child at any ability
level," he says. "The discrepancy approach creates a bias such that
the pattern is readily identifiable for high-ability students, and
obscured or not documentable for low-ability students."
One of the problems with the model in practice, he adds, is that
assessments of ability measure various types of cognition - including
those that are compromised by a learning disability - so that the
discrepancy detected between ability and achievement is reduced.
Two main alternatives to the discrepancy assessment method have
arisen. One, a cognitive assessment model, calls for analyzing cognitive
strengths and weaknesses along with standardized test data and other
background information to make a determination. The other method,
which has received a good deal of attention, is known as "response
to intervention," or RTI, is a process through which research-based
interventions are tried with children before they are placed in
special education classes. One such intervention may be having the
child work in small groups, for instance. "With RTI, we're saying,
'Let's be sure we have good education practices in place, and if
kids are not making progress, then they are candidates for having
a learning disability," Lichtenstein says.
Yet there are questions about how each of these methods would work
in practice; for instance, how long to wait to determine if an intervention
is succeeding? Additionally, since the departments of education
in each state will ultimately decide on which methods schools will
use, it is uncertain how children who move from one state to another
will be affected.
In addition, it is uncertain when exactly state directives will
be in place.
"Until the states get guidelines, we're in a holding pattern. It
could be months," says Melissa Pearrow, Ph.D., president of the
Massachusetts School Psychologists Association. She adds that people
working in schools "see the changes as potentially positive, because
they will take resources from assessment and put them into intervention."
Kate Salvati, NCSP, a school psychologist in Somersworth, N.H.,
agrees. "People are really seeing this as an opportunity to intervene
at earlier levels and to branch out of special education and into
the whole education community," she says. "It's exciting, but we'll
see how it goes."
Even with the uncertainties, now is a good time for psychologists
to begin training in new methods, says Lichtenstein, who also heads
the school psychology program at the Massachusetts School of Professional
Psychology in Boston, Mass.
Some of the areas in which school psychologists will need to upgrade
their expertise in order to work with an RTI approach include curriculum-based
assessment, progress monitoring and identifying and implementing
"evidence-based practices." Psychologists will also need to be familiar
with the latest research on learning disabilities and acquisition
of early literacy skills, he adds.
To this end, workshops in RTI methods are being held around the
country and throughout New England, at schools including the Massachusetts
School of Professional Psychology and the Professional Development
Center at the University of Southern Maine.
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