A Changing Role For Psychologists

“The goal is to keep kids learning and successful,” says Steve Warner, school psychologist in De Pere. Above, he works with a 2nd-grade student.

By Joanne M. Haas

Steve Warner uses a deceptively simple description for his role as a school psychologist in De Pere.

“When people ask me what my job is, I tell them I try to make school better for kids,” Warner said.

It’s about as specific as Warner can get. Because as different as each student is, so too is Warner’s approach to making school better for that child.

“That encompasses working with kids, but it also encompasses working with their parents and teachers,” he said.

It also includes facilitating support groups, implementing character-building programs for elementary students, pairing mentors and a lot more. Warner has even created a parent resource library in his 14-year career.

Warner’s “intervention specialist” approach focuses on helping kids get the most out of school while helping teachers reach every child.

Ask school psychologists in other districts what they do and how they do it, and the answers will often be as varied as Warner’s daily methods.

“The role of the school psychologist will vary from district to district,” said Laura McCormick, psychologist with the New London School District for 11 years. “I test kids to determine if there is a need for special education. Sometimes I do counseling in small groups. It really varies from school to school, and day to day.”

In July, McCormick will take over as the president of the Wisconsin School Psychologists Association. The association has about 550 to 600 members, or about half of the school psychologists in the state.

Like Warner, McCormick thrives on helping students overcome problems and working with teachers to determine the learning barrier at hand and how to dismantle it. “I love it,” she said. “I love watching kids find how they can be successful.”

She’s also a big fan of the team process involved in each situation.

“One of the most important parts of what I do involves collaboration and consultation with teachers,” McCormick said, adding school psychologists are “part of a pupil services team that supports teachers.” That means making sure children are ready to learn, often by managing developmental and learning disabilities or emotional and mental health issues.

Linda Brewer, one of two school psychologists for West High School in Madison, describes her job as first striving to understand why the connection between learning and achievement has been severed or strained. Then she develops an intervention “that will help a student achieve and succeed independently,” Brewer said. “It takes a lot of collaboration.”

The role of a school psychologist
The National Association of School Psychologists says its members work to find the best solution for each student and situation and use different strategies to address student needs and to improve school and districtwide support systems. They work with students individually and in groups. They develop programs to train teachers and parents regarding:

• Effective teaching and learning strategies.
• Effective techniques to manage behavior at home and in the classroom.
• Strategies for students with disabilities or substance abuse problems, or with special talents.
• Strategies for preventing and managing crises.

Milt Dehn, current president of the state association, said one of the primary roles of the school psychologist is to screen for learning disabilities through an assessment process. But, he said, “that role is changing substantially.” Another role, he said, is a “consultation function,” meaning working with parents and teachers about the problems a child is exhibiting.

“That always involves helping to design interventions for a variety of problems whether or not the child has disabilities,” he said.

“We usually counsel only children with disabilities or in crisis situations,” he said. “Although in some districts, the role is more diverse. ... But we’re not psychotherapists.”

Dehn – who served as a school psychologist for Holmen High School, as well as for schools in Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota – now trains future school psychologists at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Assessment, consultation and intervention are the school psychologist’s major duties, Dehn said, adding assessment usually involves administering the IQ test for learning disabilities. For emotional and behavioral referrals, the process is more complex and involves information-gathering from parents and classroom observations for a more complex approach utilizing other professionals, such as the language therapist or the special education teacher.

“We help to design and implement strategies to deal with the problem if they are not going into special education,” Dehn said, adding the teacher and parents are involved. “If the child is older, we directly involve them, too.”

Often, teachers will refer students to the school psychologist. However, parents sometimes seek out the school psychologist’s help. And at times, students will refer themselves or friends.

Dehn said more children are needing help these days -- especially noticeable are increases in cases of attention deficit and autism.

“Kids just generally have more problems than a generation ago,” he said. “Part of it is what is going on in society. It’s a variety of factors. Children are more stressed due to high academic demands and changes in family life.”

Besides the obvious challenges of trying to craft the most effective plan to help a student overcome barriers to academic achievement, school psychologists face the challenge of being spread too thin by being paired with more than one school or working in large schools with hundreds of students, he said.

Role change coming
Dehn said the profession of school psychologist is “on the cusp of a dramatic change” as a result of the federal government’s recent reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The change in IDEA, which defines special education policies, involves identifying learning disabilities. The change puts less emphasis on testing and more on intervention.

“So the idea is we will work more with kids in the regular ed classrooms before we ever evaluate them,” Dehn said. “It means the school psychologist will become much more of a consultant in a problem-solving process. I view it as a positive change. We will be able to help more kids without labeling them. It also reduces the time spent testing.

“Any time we do more problem-solving, that is positive,” he said. “Many times you discover that with some slight modification in the classroom, many children can be successful without the special ed label.”

Already acting on that change is the Milwaukee Public Schools, where school teams develop interventions at the school level, the teacher level and individual level. The teams often involve school psychologists, special and regular education teachers, speech pathologists, and social workers.

Take, for example, a class in which a few children are not reading at their grade level. The teacher may work with a problem-solving team to make instructional changes while the students also may be assigned tutors. At the same time, an increase in reading practice time for the entire school may be implemented to help prevent future reading issues.

Marcia Staum, implementer for the MPS Optimizing Success Through Problem Solving program, said results are continuously evaluated with the goal that “all children increase their rate of learning.”

“Some will need more continuous support and other children don’t need as much support. The goal is quite individualized,” she said.

Audrey Potter, MPS coordinator of psychological, speech, language and allied health services, said the school psychologist is relying less on standardized testing, but the move to problem-solving is a change “that will require a different mindset in terms of how to use assessment and instruction.”

Traditionally, Warner said, the school psychologist has been used to evaluate and to determine special education needs. “But I think it is very important to be involved before you get to a special education referral,” he said, noting that pre-referral time may involve mentoring, tutoring and other management tools.

Warner’s methods fall in line with the federal law changes that seek to change the role of the school psychologist and to keep a child in regular education rooms utilizing various interventions before seeking a special education referral.

“The goal is to have kids be successful in the classroom, and if we could do this without special education, that’s great,” he said.

Times are tougher for kids these days, Warner said, citing especially the increased academic expectations for children in early grades. And that stress can continue through a student’s career.

“There need to be supports in place in a district for students to receive assistance through regular education without going through special education,” he said.

“The goal is to keep kids learning and successful.”

Posted June 1, 2005