A Comparison of School Psychology Training Programs’ Enrollment of Racially and Ethnically Minoritized Students by National Accreditation Status

Year: 2024

Issue: Vol. 40 Issue. 3

Title: A Comparison of School Psychology Training Programs’ Enrollment of Racially and Ethnically Minoritized Students by National Accreditation Status

Citation: Daly, B., Tanner, A. C., & Sanders, N. P. (2024) A Comparison of School Psychology Training Programs’ Enrollment of Racially and Ethnically Minoritized Students by National Accreditation Status. School Psychology Training and Pedagogy, 40 (3), 12-26.

Abstract: Efforts to improve the diversification of school psychology through recruitment of students from underrepresented minority backgrounds has been a continually stated goal of the profession; however, research indicates that school psychology training programs primarily rely upon passive recruitment strategies to increase their minoritized student enrollment. Training program accreditation bodies have responded to this need by requiring school psychology programs to engage in systematic efforts to recruit minoritized students, but there is little research that measures the effectiveness of these requirements. The present study reports an analysis of publicly available data from the National Association of School Psychologist’s School Psychology Program Database Survey (NASP, n.d.-a), which included responses from a total of 192 school psychology training programs. Results of the analyses revealed that APA accredited doctoral programs had a significantly lower percentage of enrolled students who were racially and ethnically minoritized in comparison to programs that are not accredited. Implications and recommendations for training programs’ efforts to diversify the school psychology profession are discussed in light of these results.

Keywords: school psychology, graduate training, diversification, accreditation

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