Inside IES Research

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, NCSER is featuring an IES-funded study on student behavioral supports and interventions that best address the mental health needs of students. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and school mental health (SMH) are both evidence-based interventions that provide student mental health support independent of one another. For this blog, we interviewed Dr. Brandon Schultz, principal investigator of a current study investigating the integration of both PBIS and SMH into a comprehensive school intervention. In the interview below, he discusses the differences between PBIS and SMH, how this research contributes to equity and inclusion in the classroom, and his research journey.

Your study is comparing schools that integrate PBIS and SMH into the enhanced version of the Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF) to schools that implement these as separate, parallel systems. Can you describe PBIS and SMH, and explain the key differences between the integrated framework and parallel systems?

PBIS is a tiered prevention system that addresses student behavioral needs. It provides universal support (Tier 1) to all students, including clear schoolwide behavioral expectations and a rewards system for desired behaviors. For students who do not respond to these efforts, Tier 2 provides targeted help through classroom-level or small group interventions, such as teacher consultation or student mentoring/counseling. For students who need intensive support, Tier 3 provides specialized one-to-one behavioral services. SMH, in contrast, focuses specifically on mental illnesses (for example, anxiety, trauma, depression) and, in some cases, involves community-based therapists working contractually with schools. Typically, PBIS and SMH function separately as co-located services, but there is a growing recognition that student needs are best met when these efforts are meaningfully integrated. Integration, however, is challenging because it requires educators to rethink their teaming and progress monitoring practices and include different stakeholders in critical decision-making processes. This study tests innovations to the ISF model, designed by my co-PI, Dr. Mark Weist (University of South Carolina), to meet the challenges of integrating these systems in two diverse school districts.

How did you become interested in this area of research?

My previous research was mostly focused on school-based interventions for students with ADHD, but it became clear that without systems-level change, interventions meant to help students with ADHD are unlikely to be implemented or sustained effectively, no matter how well they are designed. So, I became interested in understanding school systems and identifying the elements, processes, and resources that are critical for student support services of all kinds. 

How does your research contribute to equity and inclusion in education?

Part of my current study is focused the degree to which innovations to the ISF model can reduce racial inequities in school disciplinary actions. Research shows that Black students receive higher rates of exclusionary punishments (for example, suspensions and expulsions) than their White counterparts, even after controlling for the type of infraction. The modified ISF model aims to reduce the overall need for exclusionary punishments, especially among students of color. By improving team functioning, ISF allows educators to identify systemic problems that lead to racial inequities in disciplinary referrals and to generate new strategies to address student needs in a fair and equitable manner. With this model, we anticipate increased support for students of color that obviates disciplinary referrals. We are working with school districts now to examine disciplinary data before, during, and after the implementation of the enhanced ISF. Our hope is to identify strategies that close race-related gaps and share the lessons learned broadly.

Have you encountered any challenges in studying this integrated framework in elementary schools?

Yes, absolutely. Systems-level change in general is difficult, as it requires change agents to overcome structural inertia rooted in local norms, routines, and expectations. Those challenges have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and preexisting trends in childhood mental illnesses. 

During the pandemic, student progress in mathematics and reading have dramatically declined. Meeting these academic needs, a priority for teachers, can divert attention away from student mental health needs. For example, all teachers in one of our states are required to take a year-long online course in reading instruction, partly to address student learning loss. Although commendable, this requirement creates a significant burden for teachers that can leave little room for other concerns. 

Preexisting mental health trends demonstrate that mental illness was increasing sharply among school-age children; by 2018, nearly 15% of all K-12 students experienced a psychiatric condition each year. Then, with the onset of the pandemic, indicators of childhood mental illness (for example, emergency room visits for suicidal behavior) spiked. Childhood anxiety and depression doubled worldwide from pre-pandemic estimates, and it is unclear whether those rates will return to baseline.

Together, these events have created real challenges, not just for our research, but for student support services in general.

What is currently the greatest area of need in studying school-based systems that support student mental health, particularly for those students with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders?

Perhaps the greatest area of need for supporting students with emotional and behavioral disorders is understaffing in critical school mental health positions. There is a significant shortage of school psychologists, counselors, social workers, and nurses nationwide. In North Carolina, the current ratio of school psychologists to students is 1:2,527, five times higher than recommended. This understaffing hinders schools’ ability to provide high-quality services and complicates efforts to test and refine innovative practices because field-based practitioners are unable to collaborate on research efforts. Researchers have had to hire individuals to fulfill critical roles, such as behavioral consultants, that might otherwise have been assigned to district-employed staff. Trained personnel then exit the school district when the research project ends and that skillset is lost. We hope that states prioritize the hiring of school mental health practitioners in the coming years to ensure optimal student support services and that university-school research collaborations can reliably lead to sustainable innovations.

NCSER looks forward to seeing the results of this efficacy trial and will continue to fund research aimed at supporting the mental health and social-emotional-behavioral needs of students with or at risk for disabilities.

This blog was authored by Isabelle Saillard, student volunteer for NCSER and undergraduate at the University of Virginia.

This year, Inside IES Research is publishing a series of blogs showcasing a diverse group of IES-funded education researchers and fellows that are making significant contributions to education research, policy, and practice. In recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, in this interview blog we asked Dr. Xin Wei, a senior quantitative researcher at Digital Promise to discuss her career journey. Dr. Wei’s current IES-funded study uses statistical and machine-learning techniques to understand the test-taking behavior of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) grade 8 learners with and without disabilities.

How did you become interested in a career in education research?

As a child, I aspired to become a teacher, and in college I decided to pursue a degree in child development. During my senior year of college, I worked as a research assistant on a project studying statistical and psychometric methods used to analyze learning differences among children. This experience sparked my interest in education research and revealed the potential for statistical analysis to inform and enhance teaching practices.

Graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University helped me gain a deeper understanding of quantitative methods in education research. Through applying and improving quantitative methods, I discovered how national and state longitudinal datasets can help us understand the learning, social, and emotional needs of students with disabilities and which policy interventions can help us achieve better outcomes. This opportunity helped me understand the challenges students with disabilities face in the education system and deepened my appreciation for secondary data analysis and its power to inform intervention research.

Currently, my research focuses on analyzing log/process data to understand how digital learning and assessments can facilitate student learning, accurately measure progress, and improve outcomes for students with disabilities. Through this work, I am committed to advancing the education research field at the intersection of special education, learning analytics, and psychometrics.

What has been the biggest challenge you have encountered, and how did you overcome the challenge?

When I came to the United States to pursue a graduate degree at the age of 23, I faced a host of challenges that forced me out of my comfort zone. Navigating a new culture and adapting to academic expectations and research demands was overwhelming. Additionally, understanding U.S. K-12 education policies and practices was no easy feat. However, I was fortunate enough to have incredible mentors, professors, peers, and colleagues who provided me with guidance, support, and patience when I needed it most. These individuals played a crucial role in helping me grow as a researcher.

The most important lesson I learned from the challenges I faced was the value of continuous learning and growth in my career. These experiences have strengthened my commitment to making a positive impact in education and helping others who may be facing similar obstacles.

How can the broader education research community better support the careers and scholarship of researchers from underrepresented groups?

The student population in the United States is diverse, and it is essential that the education research community reflects that diversity by including scholars who bring unique perspectives and experiences.

One way to do this is by actively seeking out and valuing diverse voices in research, teaching, and leadership positions. This includes promoting diversity in conference panels, as well as actively recruiting and hiring researchers from underrepresented groups. By creating a culture of inclusivity, the education research community can better support the careers and scholarship of researchers from underrepresented groups.

Another way to better support the careers and scholarship of researchers from underrepresented groups is through mentoring programs, summer internships, and postdoc positions. These opportunities can provide valuable professional development and collaboration opportunities. In addition, research grants specifically targeted toward underrepresented groups can also help support their work and advance their careers. It is essential to widely advertise these opportunities and make them accessible to ensure that all researchers have an equal chance to participate.

In your area of research, what do you see as the greatest research needs or recommendations to address diversity, equity, and inclusion and to improve the relevance of education research for diverse communities of students and families?

To address diversity, equity, and inclusion in education research, it is crucial to adopt an asset-based approach when working with neurodiverse students. By shifting the focus from deficits to strengths, we can recognize and leverage their unique abilities, promoting more equitable educational practices. Additionally, targeted support should be provided to address the specific challenges underserved students face, ensuring inclusive learning environments. For instance, my research findings indicate that students with autism exhibit strengths in visuospatial reasoning and are drawn to STEM fields. However, autistic students may benefit from extra support to develop perseverance and improve their weaker areas (such as word problems) in math.

To address this gap, I am currently analyzing the NAEP process/log, performance, and survey data to study the impact of digital tools (such as text-to-speech) on student performance. This line of research is crucial and should be expanded to gather new insights on inclusive and accessible learning possibilities as technologies continue to develop.

In addition, research efforts should extend beyond traditional methods and incorporate the analysis of multimodal data. By considering a range of data sources, including behavior log/process data, speech, facial expressions, and eye-tracking data, we can gain deeper insights into how students interact with digital learning and assessments. This comprehensive approach enables us to capture nuanced aspects of their experiences and informs the design and implementation of effective educational interventions and digital learning platforms.

What advice would you give to emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups that are pursuing a career in education research?

First and foremost, seek out a great mentor and research team. Having someone to guide and support you in the field can be tremendously beneficial to your career. Look for someone who shares your research interests, is supportive of your goals, and is committed to helping you succeed. Learning from others in your team is a great way to improve your skills and knowledge.

Second, don’t be afraid of change. The greatest opportunities often require stepping out of your comfort zone and exploring new research areas or methodologies. Be open to feedback and new perspectives that can help you grow as a researcher.

Third, be brave! It is important to recognize that your unique experiences and perspectives are valuable assets to the research community. Do not be afraid to share your ideas and contributions with others. Being proactive about your work can be a great way to build your network and collaborate with other researchers in the field.

Lastly, know that you have the potential to lead a research team yourself. Keep working hard, stay focused on your goals, and do not be afraid to take on leadership roles when the opportunities arise. Pursuing this career as an emerging scholar from an underrepresented or minoritized group can be challenging but also incredibly rewarding, and you can make a meaningful impact in the field and inspire others to follow in your footsteps.

Dr. Xin Wei is currently a senior quantitative researcher at Digital Promise. Prior to joining Digital Promise, she held the position of principal research scientist at SRI International for a duration of 15 years. She specializes in using applied experimental design, statistical and machine-learning techniques to evaluate and improve instruction, interventions, assessments, and policies. In addition to her current IES study, Dr. Wei has designed and directed statistical analysis of more than 26 grants funded by federal agencies.

Produced by NCER program officer Wai Chow (Wai-Ying.Chow@ed.gov) and Virtual Student Federal Service intern Audrey Im.

In honor of Autism Awareness Month, we’d like to highlight an IES-funded research project on autism spectrum disorder and discuss how the current framework of neurodiversity informs this research. In recent years, the neurodiversity paradigm has been an increasingly popular way of viewing autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions. Neurodiversity is a term coined in the late 1990s by Judy Singer to refer to natural human variation in neurotypes. Neurodivergent individuals diverge from the norm, usually with conditions such as autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or dyslexia. Rather than focusing on deficits, this paradigm supports a strength-based view of these conditions while still acknowledging individual challenges. For this blog, we interviewed Dr. Jan Blacher and Dr. Abbey Eisenhower, principal investigators who created a professional development (PD) program supporting general education teachers of students on the autism spectrum. In the interview below, the researchers describe how their PD program works and how it uses the neurodiversity paradigm to strengthen relationships between autistic students and their teachers.

What is Smooth Sailing and what led you to develop it?

Smooth Sailing is the nickname for our PD for general education teachers in kindergarten through second grade who have at least one student on the autism spectrum in their classrooms. The catalyst for the program was the findings from our previous project on student-teacher relationships, indicating that teachers are central to facilitating positive school experiences, especially for autistic students. Warm, positive student-teacher relationships are predictive of academic engagement and social adjustment.

The program provides coaching-based support for teachers, equips them with strategies for building strong relationships with autistic students, and enables them to expand on their students' strengths and interests in the classroom. Developed by educators, clinicians, and researchers in partnership with teachers and autistic individuals, Smooth Sailing uses an autism-affirming, neurodiversity perspective throughout the program.

What makes this program unique?                                                                                                                

Smooth Sailing recognizes the importance of relationships—especially student-teacher relationships—in making school a positive and welcoming place for students.

Our program prioritizes a neurodiversity perspective on autism: We recognize autism as a set of differences that are part of the diversity of human experience. In order to best support autistic students, we must provide an affirming context that embraces their strengths and differences. This approach contrasts with a deficit-based model, which focuses on changing children and their behaviors. The deficit model could impair relationships between students and their teachers, making academic engagement and social adjustment worse.

Finally, Smooth Sailing is unique for centering on autistic people as key contributors to shaping program content so that the program reflects the lived realities of autistic students.

What have you learned while developing and testing the Smooth Sailing intervention?

We have learned several important lessons:

(1) During the initial research for our intervention, findings indicated that only 8% of general education teachers in the study had received any professional training in autism. This provides a clear-cut mandate for more autism-focused training for these educators.

(2) After the intervention, general education teachers endorsed three key Smooth Sailing strategies for reaching out to their autistic students: (a) identifying interests, (b) celebrating talents, and (c) having one-on-one time to form stronger relationships. We learned that these simple strategies are ones every teacher can adopt to create more inclusive classrooms and cultivate stronger relationships with students, especially autistic students.

(3) Overall, teachers who received the Smooth Sailing PD experienced significant improvements in the quality of their relationships with autistic students, including higher student-teacher closeness and lower student-teacher conflict, compared to teachers who had not received the program. Thus, in addition to other positive outcomes for teachers and children, we learned that our brief program (12 hours over 4 weeks) was sufficient for moving the needle on the critical construct of student-teacher relationship quality.

How does respect for neurodiversity inform the Smooth Sailing intervention and your philosophies as researchers?

One key factor that has been transformative to the resulting Smooth Sailing program has been our close consultation with current and former autistic students. As part of developing the Smooth Sailing program for teachers, our research team interviewed many autistic adolescents and adults about their school experiences, their advice for teachers, and their opinions on making schools more affirming and inclusive. In addition, we closely engaged autistic adults as expert consultants during our program development process. These consultants advised on teacher-focused content, reviewed materials, and weighed in on program changes.

The rich information we learned from the interviews and intensive consultation substantially impacted the content of the resulting program. To offer one example, these interviews showed us the outsized power of a positive student-teacher relationship, even with just one teacher, in making school a bearable place for autistic students.

Because many autistic students describe their school experiences as ableist and marginalizing, our team's programming aims to disrupt these school problems by building strong student-teacher relationships and fostering teachers' understanding of autism through an affirming, neurodiversity-informed lens. By incorporating first-person perspectives of autistic students and adults in its creation and content, our programs affirm the lived realities of autistic students. 

What needs are still unmet for general education teachers working with autistic students?

We have heard from teachers and administrators at all K-12 levels—high school, middle school, and later elementary school—that they would like access to similar autism-focused PD programs targeted to the student age ranges they teach. We think that creating a school culture that affirms neurodiversity starts by fostering understanding between students and all school staff, not just primary classroom teachers.  

What's next for the Smooth Sailing project?

We hope to expand the Smooth Sailing PD program to the early childhood education context. Unfortunately, our research has shown that, by the time they enter elementary school, one out of every six autistic children has been expelled from a preschool or childcare program. Viewed through a social justice lens, this preschool expulsion is an educational equity issue.

Early childhood educators are key to improving these early school experiences. We believe that preschool and childcare educators can be catalysts in providing an inclusive environment by forming strong relationships with autistic and neurodivergent children. That said, most early childhood educators report having no professional training in autism, feeling underprepared to meet the needs of autistic children, and wanting more support for inclusion. We hope that programs like Smooth Sailing can be applied to support educators working with preschool-age children who are autistic or neurodivergent, many of whom are not yet diagnosed, so that their first school experiences can be enriching and inclusive.

Jan Blacher is a distinguished research professor in the School of Education and the director of the SEARCH Family Autism Research Center at the University of California, Riverside. Abbey Eisenhower is an associate professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.   

This blog was authored by Juliette Gudknecht, an intern at IES, along with Emily Weaver (Emily.Weaver@ed.gov), program officer at NCSER with oversight of the portfolio of autism grants.

Young women and men with disabilities face unique barriers in the transition from school to adulthood. In recognition of the IES 20^th anniversary, we are spotlighting Paths 2 the Future, a career development intervention for students with disabilities with gender-specific versions for boys and girls. For this blog post, virtual intern Audrey Im checks in with IES grantees Dr. Lauren Lindstrom (University of California, Davis) and Dr. John Lind (University of Oregon) about their experiences iteratively developing Paths 2 the Future. What started as an intervention to provide career guidance to high school girls with disabilities has now expanded to a package of interventions that also address the needs of high school-aged men with disabilities and underserved students of all genders.

In 2007, Lauren Lindstrom (then a senior research associate at the University of Oregon) received a grant from the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) to develop PATHS, a curriculum to improve education and career outcomes of high school girls with learning disabilities, ADD/ADHD, and emotional or behavioral disabilities. Lindstrom and her team created a curriculum advancing gender equity, disability awareness, and career readiness, which was then implemented in six high schools as an 18-week program.

According to Dr. Lindstrom, her team created PATHS just for girls after examining the disparate post-school outcomes for high school girls with disabilities enrolled in existing transition programs. “I consistently noticed that the girls were less likely to go to work, and if they went to work, they were working in really low-wage jobs,” she said. “And this was with the benefit of an intervention, right? Same kind of disabilities, same schools, but very different outcomes. So that really sparked my interest.”

In 2015, Dr. Lindstrom received a second grant to conduct a randomized controlled trial to test whether the intervention, now called Paths 2 the Future (P2F), improved career knowledge and skills among participants.

“We realized that this was probably one of the very first randomized controlled trials of a gender-specific career intervention,” Lindstrom said.

Lindstrom and her team sampled 366 girls with high-incidence disabilities in 26 Oregon high schools. The girls randomly assigned to the P2F intervention received the curriculum’s four core modules on self-awareness, disability knowledge, gender identity, and career and college readiness. They also received extensive information on career-related activities. The girls in the control group received the existing transition services of their respective schools. This study period lasted one 18-week semester and included a 6-month follow up with the students.

The P2F study found that the girls in the treatment group not only had more awareness of their identity and career possibilities after completing the curriculum, but they also had more confidence to talk about those topics. “The nature of being in a girl-only class really mattered,” Lindstrom said. “The students told us they felt safe there. They said things like ‘I’m a different person now. I feel empowered to talk, to think differently about my future.’” Lindstrom’s study also found that students in the treatment group were more likely to seek and have work experience in high school, an important observation as early work experience has proven to be a predictor for their future employment.

Lindstrom’s co-PI and research collaborator, Dr. John Lind, wondered if the P2F model would also work for boys. Lind, a research associate at the University of Oregon, received a 2019 IES grant Paths to the Future for Young Men (P2F-Young Men) to modify the P2F curriculum to take into account the specific needs of high school boys with high-incidence disabilities. These needs included (but were not limited to) building healthy relationships, breaking down gender stereotypes, and managing anger and stress.

“I think these needs are applicable to a range of genders but doing it in a classroom with just young men opens up the opportunity for potentially deeper discussions,” Lind said. “And that’s feedback that we’ve gotten anecdotally from the teachers we work with.”

After fully developing the P2F-Young Men curriculum, the researchers are currently conducting a small randomized controlled trial with eight teachers and their students at Oregon high schools. Although they are still in the process of collecting data for this study, Lind noted that teachers report that having a gender-specific curriculum helped the boys feel more comfortable in having discussions. “This is anecdotal at this point,” Lind acknowledged, “but if that stands true by the end of our study, I think that’s a really important finding.”

To Lindstrom and Lind, having separate curriculum interventions for different genders was necessary to address gender-specific issues and foster a safe learning environment. At the same time, they felt that it was important for all students across the gender spectrum to have access to these curricula to promote social-emotional development and build knowledge of career pathways.

“Teachers and schools have come to us and said, well is it just for cisgender students or people who are born as a certain gender? And our answer to that is no,” Lind affirmed. “What we’ve done with P2F-Young Men is create a transition curriculum for people who identify as young men. We start early in the curriculum of getting to know yourself, exploring yourself, your strength.”

In 2017, through funding from the National Center for Education Research (NCER), Lindstrom and Lind also developed a non-gender-specific version of the curriculum called P2F for All. This curriculum was targeted to underserved youth who face barriers to educational attainment and, due to a variety of reasons, may not be receiving transition services or college and career readiness support. Their study developed and tested the new P2F for All curriculum and found that it increased participating students’ career readiness, emotional coping skills, and interpersonal skills.

P2F for All aimed to take the findings from their gender-specific studies focused on the needs of students with disabilities and create a new, comprehensive career readiness curriculum—one that succeeded at addressing the needs of underserved students, not just those identified for special education services, regardless of gender. “What we strive to do in special education is provide services that are individualized and meet the needs of the person,” Lind said. “I think we’ve got a range of lessons to address that, and, ultimately, I think that lessons could be pulled out of a menu to meet specific needs for all students.”

Lauren Lindstrom is a professor and dean of the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. Prior to UC-Davis, Dr. Lindstrom served more than 25 years as an academic and administrator at the University of Oregon’s College of Education. Dean Lindstrom is an active researcher whose areas of interest include inclusive education, gender equity, career and college readiness and transition services for youth with disabilities. 

John Lind is a research associate at the University of Oregon’s College of Education. As a former special education teacher, Dr. Lind has extensive experience developing and implementing strength-based interventions for youth with disabilities, including adolescents with emotional and behavior disabilities. He has also worked as an educational consultant, providing training and technical assistance to international, national, and state departments of education on issues related to IDEA, effective classroom management, multi-tiered levels of support, and inclusion. Currently, he is the director of the SIGnetwork, a clearinghouse of resources for the OSEP-funded State Personnel Development Grantees.

This blog was written by Virtual Student Federal Service Intern Audrey Im and produced by Katina Stapleton (Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov). Akilah Nelson (Akilah.Nelson@ed.gov) is the program officer for the IES Transition to Postsecondary Education, Career, and/or Independent Living portfolio. The blog is part of a larger series on DEIA in Education Research.

This week, Texas celebrates Educational Diagnosticians’ Week. In recognition, NCSER highlights the important work that one Texas-based educational diagnostician, Mahnaz (Nazzie) Pater-Rov, has been doing to disseminate information from IES researchers to practitioners on improving reading outcomes.

Nazzie conducts assessments of students who have been referred for testing within multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) to determine whether they have a learning disability (LD) and makes recommendations for intervention/instruction to improve their literacy and achieve their Individualized Education Plan goals. Working in this field requires an understanding of district/school policies and research-based evidence on identifying students with disabilities. To do this, Nazzie has immersed herself in current research by reading many of the resources IES provides through the What Works Clearinghouse and IES-funded grants so that she can use valid measures and recommend evidence-based interventions. After 16 years in the profession, Nazzie has realized that she is not alone and wants to help other diagnosticians understand the latest developments in LD identification and intervention. Nazzie uses a social media audio application called Clubhouse to share what she is learning, including hosting researchers for chats to present current work on related topics. Nazzie’s chat room is called ED. DIAGNOSTICIANS and has over 900 members, mostly education diagnosticians. Some of her speakers have been IES-funded researchers.  

We asked Nazzie to share some of her top concerns and recommendations for research.

Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

What stimulated your desire to bring about changes not only in your school but across the state?

When Texas removed its cap on the number of students that could be identified as in need of special education, and districts changed procedures for identifying need, we started to experience a “tsunami” of referrals. Now we are creating a whole population of children identified with LDs without also simultaneously looking at ways to improve our system of policies, procedures, and instruction to ensure we meet the needs of all students through preventative practices.

How has the role of education diagnostician changed since the reauthorization of IDEA (2004)?

Prior to the reauthorization of IDEA, we would compare a student’s IQ with their academic performance. If there was a discrepancy, they were identified as LD. Many states now use a pattern of strengths and weaknesses (PSW) for identification, which is based on multiple measures of cognitive processes.

In Texas, there is also an increased demand for the specialized, evidence-based instruction now that we are better understanding how to identify students as LD and parents are seeing the need for identification and services for their children. However, this has led to doubling the LD identification rate in many districts. This, in turn, is increasing our caseloads and burning us out!

Some experts in the field advocate for using a tiered systems approach, such as MTSS, to identify when a student is not responding to instruction or intervention rather than relying only on the PSW approach. However, the challenge is that there are not enough evidence-based interventions in place across the tiers within MTSS for this identification process to work. In other words, can students appropriately be identified as not responding to instruction when evidence-based interventions are not being used? By not making these types of evidence-based interventions accessible at younger ages to general education students within MTSS, I worry that we are just helping kids tread water when we could have helped them learn to swim earlier.

What are your recommendations for systemic reform?

We need to find a better way to weave intervention implementation into teachers’ everyday practice so it is not viewed as “extra work.” Tiered models are general education approaches to intervention, but it is important for special education teachers and educational diagnosticians to also be involved. My worry is that diagnosticians, including myself, are helping to enable deficit thinking by reinforcing the idea that the child’s performance is more a result of their inherited traits rather than a result of instruction when, instead, we could focus our energy on finding better ways to provide instruction. Without well-developed tiered models, I worry that we end up working so hard because what we are doing is not working.

Are there specific training needs you feel exist for education diagnosticians?

Many new diagnosticians are trained on tools or methods that are outdated and no longer relevant to current evidence-based testing recommendations. This is a problem because instructional decisions can only be as good as the data on which they are based. We need training programs that enable us to guide school staff in selecting the appropriate assessments for specific needs. If diagnosticians were trained in data-based individualization or curriculum-based measures for instructional design rather than just how to dissect performance on subtests of cognitive processing (the PSW approach), they could be helping to drive instruction to improve student outcomes. The focus of an assessment for an LD should not be on a static test but be on learning, which is a moving target that cannot be measured in one day. 

What feedback do you have for education funding agencies?

Implementing a system of academic interventions is challenging, especially after COVID-19, where social-emotional concerns and teacher shortages remain a top priority in many schools. Funding agencies should consider encouraging more research on policies and processes for the adoption of evidence-based interventions. Diagnosticians can be important partners in the effort.

This blog was authored by Sarah Brasiel (Sarah.Brasiel@ed.gov), program officer at NCSER. IES encourages special education researchers to partners with practitioners to submit to our research grant funding opportunities.