LA Psychology Project Bridging Special & General Education

By Alnita Dunn, Ph.D., Psychological Services Coordinator
Special Education Division Psychological Services
Los Angeles Unified School District

Editor’s Note: This article follows up “Scientifically Supported Practices to Prevent and Teat Reading and Writing Problems” by Virginia Berninger, Ph.D., (which referred to the Three-Tiered Model, and ) “Partnership and problem solving to promote early intervention in literacy: Using the PAL,” by Alnita Dunn, Ph.D., both published in the Fall 2002 issue of CASP Today.

An important goal of the Los Angeles Unified School District is to decrease the need for special education services among large numbers of students. The Psychological Services Department spearheaded an effort to accomplish this goal by making connections with students while they are still in regular education.

This is a departure from the school psychologists’ traditional role of assessing poor readers and writers for special education services. In this case, school psychologists became proactively engaged in early intervention and were pivotal in creating a bridge between regular and special education.

LAUSD’s Psychological Services, under the auspices of the Division of Special Education and in collaboration with Dr. Virginia Berninger at the University of Washington, initiated the bridge between regular and special education. The effort proceeded on three fronts. It began with Psychological Services’ collaborations with Dr. Berninger regarding the Process Assessment of the Learner (PAL) Interventions for Reading and Writing (Berninger & Abbott, 2003) with an eye toward school psychologists taking an active role in

Purchase this article for only $2.00