World*Go*Round, Vol. 31, No. 3, June, 2004

Letter from the President 

In March and April this year I was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend the Californian Association of School Psychologists (CASP) convention in San Francisco and the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) convention in Dallas. There were several key themes that permeated many of the papers, posters and symposia. One of these that caught my attention concerned the active debate about the most appropriate method that school psychologists (SPs) should use when undertaking assessments of children with learning disabilities. This, of course, goes to the heart of all our work.
For, after all, psychological assessment is something we are supposed to be good at! Many might say that this is our core function. But yet, from reading many abstracts and attending several sessions, it appears that we still don't know how to do it! The thought struck me that our professional credibility might suffer a severe blow if our discussions were observed by a group of parents or teachers. After all they might expect us to know how to carry out psychological assessments. What would we feel if we came across a group of doctors in earnest discussion about how to take blood pressure or diagnose a broken leg?
Of course we would probably argue that the debate about how to carry out effective and appropriate psychological assessments is more complex that diagnosing a broken leg, that our profession is younger than medicine and that, perhaps, in a few years time, SPs will come to shared understanding about the "correct" way to carry out this work. I would ague that the debate about appropriate forms of psychological assessment is complex goes to heart of our professional practice in a number of ways. At the risk of oversimplifying the issue, I think the argument can be summarised as follows. On the one hand there are those of us who prefer to adopt traditional psychometric approaches to assessment. Here the focus is, to a great extent, placed on the assessment of cognitive ability and on normative attainment measures. The findings may be used to identify cognitive strengths and weakness and this can result in recommendations about educational provision and/or the development of an appropriate individualised programme of intervention. On the other hand these are SPs who have more or less rejected the traditional psychometric approach, who prefer to rely far more on curriculum or criterion referenced measures of academic achievement where the focus is on finding out what exactly the child can and cannot do in curricula and behavioural terms and in using this information to plan a programme of work in consultation with the teachers and parents. SPs adopting this approach tend to spend more time with teachers and parents and less with the child, there is a reduced reliance on a single visit to carry out the assessment and there is more emphasis on an assessment through teaching approach where the results of an intervention can be used to inform our judgements as to what should happen next.
Those of us who favour the psychometric approach tend to argue that the instruments used are all standardised, that there is an immense amount of research on their psychometric qualities and, in particular, on the relationship between IQ and achievement. This research enables us to have some degree of confidence when interpreting psychometric data and in making recommendations. Those who favour more curriculum based approaches may argue that the strength of the relationship between IQ and achievement has been overstated, that items on IQ tests are not directly related to the curriculum and that there are many other factors in the child's school and family life that, if investigated fully, will help us to understand the child's needs better and to plan effective intervention.
These debates, like many in our profession, are not new. I well remember an article written by Bob Burden in the early 1970s entitled "If we throw tests out of the window, what will there be left for us to do?" At about the same time David Leach wrote a paper in which he referred to psychologists earnestly examining WISC profiles in an attempt to devise an appropriate educational programme as being similar to the rattling of Rosary beads in search of divine inspiration! From my discussions at the NASP convention, it appears that the debate has been given particular prominence at the moment as the US government has dropped the requirement for SPs to arrive at a diagnosis of learning difficulties based on a discrepancy between the child's IQ and expected achievement. In future, diagnoses can be based on different information, for example that related to curriculum based measures and on how well the child responds to intervention.
All of this presents SPs with a new opportunity to revise their approach to assessment and to abandon some of our traditional practices. However, my impression is that many of us are very reluctant to do so. In a subsequent letter I intend to discuss some of the reasons for this reluctance and to explore some ways forward. For the moment I would like to refer to a judicial hearing that recently took place in the UK and which indicates that many of the debates that are taking place in the USA are also prominent in my country. There was a recent case in which an adult sued his local authority for not diagnosing his dyslexia (learning disabilities) as a child and hence causing lasting damage to his employment prospects and life chances. The argument centred on the SP's negligence in not undertaking appropriate psychometric assessments when he was assessed at school. The defense argued that in order to assess dyslexia, it was not necessary to administer a test battery and that a diagnosis could be arrived at by using curriculum based measures. In support of this argument the defense cited an influential report form the British Psychological Society that also took this view. In a landmark verdict the judge ruled in favour of the defense. This has profound implications for SPs who can now proceed with more confidence when using non psychometric approaches to the assessment of dyslexia. Perhaps the wheel has finally turned!!
I am sure that we will all find time to engage in these and other debates during the forthcoming colloquium in Exeter. I look forward to seeing you there! 

Peter Farrell
President of ISPA