Rethinking School Psychologist Ratios through a Practice Model Lens in One Northeast State

Much conversation at the national level has focused on the importance of maintaining a 1:500 school psychologist to student ratio when school psychologists are tasked with practicing within the comprehensive school psychologist role (National Association of School Psychologists [NASP], 2020b). Data on ratios is currently reported in most of the literature in numeric form by looking at the number of school psychologists within the district or state and the number of students enrolled. What this existing research fails to capture is the wide variation in school psychological practice and the fact that school psychologists in many districts often wear multiple hats that fall outside the role of a school psychologist as described by the NASP Practice Model. In this case study, we utilized a time tracking procedure in which 84 school psychologists from 60 school districts recorded their daily activities over a two-week period. We then calculated the percentage of time school psychologists were engaged in NASP Practice Model versus non-Practice Model activities to help reconceptualize how school psychologist ratios are viewed. We found that in about half of the districts our school psychologists were from, the school psychologist to student ratio increased when reconceptualized according to the NASP Practice Model. The implications this has for practice and advocacy are discussed.