Surveying School Psychologists about Pre-service Training in Response to Intervention

The objective of this project was to obtain detailed information regarding the pre-service training of school psychologists pertaining to Response to Intervention (RTI). RTI is a three tiered model for providing intervention that has recently been identified as an alternative method for identifying children with learning disabilities. Surveys were sent to a nationally stratified random sample of school psychology practitioners. School psychologists were asked to provide information related to their training within the area of RTI. Descriptive and correlation analyses were conducted on all returned surveys. Results from this project were synthesized to determine if school psychologists are adequately trained. In addition, relative strengths and weaknesses of current training practices were identified. The results provide information pertaining to current pre-service RTI training; reported levels of satisfaction with pre-service training, as well as actual time spent providing RTI services. The findings highlight areas that need to be addressed to improve the quality of pre-service training of school psychologists. Therefore, the results may be used to inform graduate training programs what skills school psychologists need further training in to be better prepared to work in today’s schools