The influence of children's race/ethnicity and adaptive behavior information on school psychologists' classification and placement decisions
Abstract
The present study examined the effect of information regarding a student's adaptive behavior functioning and race/ethnicity on school psychologists' educational classification and placement decisions. School psychologists were randomly assigned three psychoeducational summaries and asked to rate their agreement with three classification and five placement options for each child. Respondents were also asked to complete follow-up questionnaires and a small sample of respondents were interviewed. There were no main effects for either Adaptive Behavior Information or Race/Ethnicity. School psychologists in the present study were significantly more likely to recommend a resource room placement for either Anglo or Black children when adaptive behavior information was presented only in narrative form than when adaptive behavior scale scores were included in their psychoeducational summaries. This finding could not be readily explained. Since this was an isolated finding, it was concluded that it could possibly have occurred by chance.
Subject Area
Educational psychology
Recommended Citation
Helprin, Leslie Mark, "The influence of children's race/ethnicity and adaptive behavior information on school psychologists' classification and placement decisions" (1991). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI9136327.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI9136327
