Changes in School Psychology

The origins of school psychology as a subfield within psychology are widely believed to have begun with Lightner Witmer. This visionary is touted as the father of school psychology, which originated with the founding of the world’s first psychology clinic in 1896 at the University of Pennsylvania.Routh, D. K. (2015). Witmer, Lightner (1867–1956). In R. L. Cautin and S. O. Lilienfeld (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Clinical Psychology. John Wiley & Sons.  https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118625392.wbecp056 Witmer believed in the importance of psychological evaluations of children to determine educational interventions.D'Amato, R. C., Zafiris, C., McConnell, E., & Dean, R. S. (2011). The history of school psychology: Understanding the past to not repeat it. In M. A. Bray & T. J. Kehle (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of school psychology (pp. 9–46). Oxford University Press. However, in the final decades of the 20th century, rapid change occurred in in the field. Beginning with gender, in 1969, the majority of those in school psychology were male (58%) versus female (41%). Between 1975 and 1980, the proportion of genders had evened out and by the 1990s, 70% of the field was female.Curtis, M. J., Grier, J. E. C., & Hunley, S. A. (2004). The changing face of school psychology: Trends in data and projections for the future. School Psychology Review, 33(1), 49-66. This rapid change to female dominance, which increased approximately by 30% over a 30-year period, is known as the ‘feminization of school psychology.'Reschly, D. J. (2000). The present and future status of school psychology in the United States. School Psychology Review, 29(4), 507-522.
Unfortunately, the changes that occurred with race and ethnicity at the end of the 20th century were less progressive, with minimal change in the high Caucasian demographic in school psychology. Curtis et al. (1999) reported that, at the turn of the century, between 5.5% to 6.1% of practitioners reported not being white, with one percent identifying as African-American and 1.7% identifying as Hispanic. Furthermore, only 1 of 10 school psychologists spoke another language fluently.Curtis, M. J., Walker, K. J., Hunley, S. A., & Baker, A. C. (1999). Demographic characteristics and professional practices in school psychology. School Psychology Review, 28(1), 104-116. This became a significant issue both then and today as student populations in schools have grown more diverse and multilingual. Fortunately, greater numbers of minorities in the graduate student population have preceded the number of school psychologists in the field, which has been documented since at least the 1989-1990 school year. By the following year (1990-1991), a slight increase in the minority population of school psychologists was recorded, which was concluded to result from school psychology graduate students in minority groups who had completed their program and entered the field.
Another measurement that has been tracked over the years are the degree levels at which school psychologists practice. Despite the Thayer Conference’s proposal advocating for school psychologists to obtain a doctorate, this was not well received.Fagan, T. K. (2005). The 50th anniversary of the Thayer Conference: Historical perspectives and accomplishments. School Psychology Quarterly, 20(3), 224–251. https://doi.org/10.1521/scpq.2005.20.3.224 The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) requires that school psychologists obtain a specialist level degree, which requires more years of graduate school than a masters degree but fewer than a doctorate.National Association of School Psychologists. (n.d.). A career in school psychology: Selecting a master’s, specialist, or doctoral degree program that meets your needs. https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/graduate-students/graduate-student-fact-sheets/a-career-in-school-psychology-selecting-a-masters-specialist-or-doctoral-degree-program-that-meets-your-needs However, there was a time when only a bachelor’s degree in the subject was required, although even by the 1969-1970 school year, the number of these school psychologists were few and by the 1999-2000 school year, there were virtually no more remaining in the field.
The years between 1969 and 1990 was a time when there was also a major shift away from master’s level school psychologists toward specialist and doctoral level school psychologists. Besides there being a large influx of school psychologists in general during the 1980s, NASP also continued to rally for school psychologists to practice at least with a specialist-level degree. Therefore, those entering the field would primarily be made up of specialist-level school psychologists, with dwindling numbers of master’s level school psychologists as they left the field. Understandably, between the 1970s and 2000, specialist-level school psychologists changed from making up 5.2% of all school psychologists to comprising more than half of the population (58.2%). By the turn of the 21st century, specialist-level school psychologists make up the overwhelming majority (87%) of those working in the area. However, between the 1970s and 1990s, doctoral-level school psychologists increased from one out of twenty people to one out of three. It is believed the reason for this increase was due to the American Psychological Association’s (APA) advocacy for psychologists to be licensed at the doctoral level. Nevertheless, by the 1990s, the number of doctoral level school psychologists stopped increasing. It was projected in 2000 that over the following two decades, there would be more doctoral level school psychologists retiring compared to non-doctoral level school psychologists (which is logical because there would always be more non-doctoral level school psychologists entering the field). Indeed, based on a 2020 study conducted by NASP, the ratio of school psychologists with a specialist-level degree in fact continues to grow and the number of doctoral level school psychologists has remained steady.Goforth, A. N., Farmer, R. L., Kim, S. Y., Naser, S. C., Lockwood, A. B., & Affrunti, N. W. (2020). Status of school psychology in 2020: Part 1, demographics of the NASP Membership survey. National Association of School Psychologists.
Further Reading
1.    National Association of School Psychologists. (n.d.). Who are school psychologists. https://www.nasponline.org/about-school-psychology/who-are-school-psychologists
2.    University of Massachusetts Global. (2021, June 9). What does a school psychologist do? Breaking down this collaborative career. https://www.umassglobal.edu/news-and-events/blog/what-does-a-school-psychologist-do
3.    National Association of School psychologists. (2018). Position statement: Necessary use of the title “school psychologist.
4. Splett, J. W., Fowler, J., Weist, M. D., McDaniel, H., & Dvorsky, M. (2013). THE CRITICAL ROLE OF SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCHOOL MENTAL HEALTH MOVEMENT. Psychology in the schools, 50(3), 245–258. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.21677
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