Progress will come in the balancing of needs: Professional desires, consumer demand, and why we have to specialize

Conoley, Powers, and Gutkin (2020) have provided an assessment of the progress and lack thereof of school psychology as a profession toward school reformation, especially as related to their various earlier calls for changes in training and practice. Conoley and Gutkin especially (and I have been colleagues of both) have called for decades for an emphasis on working with teachers, other adults in the school system, and the school system itself to alter the delivery of education. In some earlier work, they have characterized this as adult school psychology. In many ways this is a reconceptualization of earlier mental health consultation models of school psychology practice that were not widely adopted for reasons Conoley et al. (2020) explain. School psychology has a long history of wanting to be seen and to practice differently from in a primary role of test and place, and indeed I would characterize the primary organizations that represent the profession (the National Association of Psychologists and the American Psychological Association's Division of School Psychology) as being in many ways antagonistic toward psychological testing. Yet, it is what most school psychologists are in fact hired to do as their primary role, and training in psychological testing and assessment is one of the key skills that sets us apart and distinguishes us from others in the schools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).