school psychologist's role in initial evaluation

[Anonymous]

My child is in being evaluated for an IEP. One of the specialists assessing my child is a school psychologist. I assume she will administer tests to learn IQ-ish info...is this correct?

[Anonymous]

Generally speaking, no. The psychologist may do testing but may also look at the child's emotional and behavioral issues as well. For example, if you have a child that doesn't eat, you would have a speech therapist and an OT looking at oral motor and swallowing, a psychologist looking at whether there were emotional and/or behavioral issues that may cause a child to choose not to eat, a nutritionist looking at whether the lack of eating affected his/her physical well being, and someone looking at whether the lack of eating affected the child's ability to learn. You will have to give more information about your child in order to get a better answer to this question. Why does your child need an IEP. How old is your child. Etc.

[Anonymous]

In DCPS, the school psychologist does the majority of the testing for a referral. This does mean an IQ test, as well as looking at the emotional issues a child might have. Any physical issues will be taken care of by a Speech Therapist or an OT/PT.

[Anonymous]

You don't say what jurisdiction you are in, and I don't know how similar they all are. In DCPS, there is a student evaluation plan developed with the parents, and you have to consent to any formal evaluations. So you should be able to find out what they are doing. Once you know the testing they think they need to develop an IEP, you'll know what kind of specialist will do it.

Among those tests, there are some that would be administered by a psychologist, such as psychological testing and educational testing. Those can include the Wechsler tests (cognitive/IQ tests) and the Woodcock-Johnson (which is more about academic strengths and weaknesses.) Depending on the needs they think the child has, there could be other psychological tests as well. The psychologist also might do a classroom observation, which is less formal and might get at behavioral and emotional issues.

[Anonymous]

You are correct. In most cases in a public school, the school psychologist does the cognitive testing, the special educator does the achievement testing, speech would do lang testing, etc....As part of the cognitive testing, the school psychologist will usually do parent interviews/surveys, observations, review of history, etc.....