Referrals to psychological services of Knox County Schools : description and outcomes

Four hundred referrals to school psychologists were described in terms of (a) demographic characteristics (age, grade, sex, repeat-in-grade status, month of birth, and school SES), (b) reasons for referral (written-in reasons and a problem checklist), (c) referrer characteristics (identity and teaching experience), and (d) outcomes (special education placements, test scores, and referrals to outside agencies). An item-by-item analysis uncovered consistent relationships among various referral characteristics as well as between referral characteristics and outcomes. Some of the more important findings were as follows: (a) although boys are referred at a higher rate, the difference became smaller over the 5 years of the study; (b) the proportion of referred children who were placed in special programs increased over the 5 years covered by the study; (c) educational problems were the most frequently given reason for referral; (d) the referral rate for children later designated as learning disabled (as an outcome of referral) was highest in the second grade, whereas the rate for children later designated as educable mentally retarded (EMR) was highest in the seventh and eighth grades; (e) referred children tend to be the youngest in their respective grades; (f) children designated EMR tended to come from lower SES schools; and (g) various discriminant analyses failed to show that any one group of referral variables (written-in reason for referral versus problem checklist versus demographics) consistently predicted all outcomes better than any other group.