School Psychology and Special Education Students' Placement Decisions: IQ Still Tips the Scale

Abstract

Syracuse University's Psychoeducational Teaching Laboratory attempted to evaluate how well it was transmitting the principles of multidimensional and nonbiased assessment practices to its students. School psychology and special education graduate students were asked to make program placement decisions for a child when given data about IQ, adaptive behavior higher than IQ, and academic achievement. Results indicated that the school psychology and special education programs were equally successful in training students to seek least restrictive school placements. Their decisions reflected a greater degree of integration with nonhandicapped students than might be expected from either the child's IQ or adaptive-behavior data alone. However, no matter what the order of presentation of IQ and adaptive-behavior data, IQ had a powerful paralyzing effect on further flexibility in problem solving. For these students, the mainstreaming ideology had taken hold, but the IQ information had not been demystified. If these findings are supported in replications, definite implications arise regarding the manner of presenting IQ information when making placement decisions. It has been known for a long time that IQ is not highly related to our educational system's goal of postschool adult adjustment. Therefore the recent development of adaptive-behavior measures, although imperfect in conceptualization and construction, is viewed positively. Their impact upon school placement and programming decisions, relative to other measures, will depend on future reliability and validity research. Recent developments have solidified the special educator's role alongside that of the school psychologist in placement and programming decisions. The multidimensional and least biased assessment procedures mandated by P.L. 94-142, and increasing emphasis on social competence (Zigler & Trickett, 1978) have encouraged greater collaboration between the special educator and school psychologist in selecting appropriate placements and instructional methods for exceptional children. The school psychologist has traditionally identified most retarded school children (Meyers, 1973), and has been most influential in special class placement decisions (Keogh, 1972). Special class placements were often authorized on the basis of a standardized intelligence test. In addition, prior to both P.L. 94-142 and Section 504 of P.L. 93-112, there was no mandate for selecting intelligence measures appropriate to a student's experience and skills. As a result, the practice of using IQ tests as the sole determiner of a handicapping condition and special placement has been justifiably attacked

Bias in special education decisions: The contribution of analogue research.

“…Similar results were obtained in my other studies. These findings are also consistent with the reports of other researchers using analogue methodology, which showed that test data, particularly achievement data (Hannaford et al, 1975; Kavale & Andreassen, 1984), influenced SE decisions (Burns, 1990a; Hannaford et al 1975; Knoff, 1984; Matuszek & Oakland, 1979; Smith & Knoff, 1981). Naturalistic studies, which have investigated differences between students who were referred and placed in SE vs. students who were referred and not placed in SE, have further documented the importance of test data (Huebner & Cummings, 1986b; Olson & Midgett, 1984; Sexton & Street, 1985; Sinclair & Alexson, 1986; Wilson, Cone, Bradley & Reese, 1986).…”

Psychoeducational decision making: Reason for referral versus test data.

“…It is relatively easy to enter but difficult to return to the regular class (Galvin & Elliott, 1985). It should be noted that our findings fit within a body of simulation literature that suggests that school psychologists make databased decisions (Johnson, 1980; Knoff, 1983; Matuszek & Oakland, 1979; Pfeiffer & Naglieri, 1984; Smith & Knoff, 1981). In general, these studies have focused on classification decisions for children with suspected mental retardation.…”

The Effect of Teacher Self-Efficacy on Referral Chance

“…We anticipated negative relations between likelihood to refer and teachers' parenthood (Harasymiw & Home, 1976;Smith &: Knoff, 1981), experience in mixed grade classrooms, and special education experience (DeStefano, Gesten, & Cowen, 1977;Harasymiw 8c Home, 1976). Regarding class size, we expected that teachers of larger classes would be more likely to refer than those in smaller classes (see Gerber & Semmel, 1984).…”