School Psychology awarded $1 million to develop bilingual school psychologists

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
September 8, 2014

The School Psychology program, located in the Department of Counseling, Leadership, Adult Education and School Psychology at Texas State University, has been awarded a five-year, $1 million grant from the United States Department of Education for program development and preparation of Spanish-English bilingual school psychologists.

Awarded by the Office of Special Education Programs to Texas State’s Project SUPERB (Scholars Using Psychology and Education to Reach Bilinguals), the grant will support preparation of 24 fully-credentialed, high-quality bilingual school psychologists to improve teaching and learning by ensuring that language differences and assessment of the need for special education services are competently assessed for the purpose of appropriate educational interventions.

Serving the growing population of Spanish-speaking children in Texas, this project will add a new training and certification track in bilingual school psychology to the existing National Association of School Psychologists-approved program at Texas State. Project SUPERB will recruit, prepare and support scholars in specialized course work, supervised bilingual field experiences at partner sites, and language/cultural immersion experiences abroad to promote multicultural awareness and build professional Spanish vocabulary in the areas of education and psychology.

Scholars will graduate with a 75-hour specialist degree in school psychology (SSP) and a certificate in bilingual school psychology. Additionally, they will be eligible for national certification and state licensure to practice in public schools.

Principal investigators are Cynthia Plotts, Jon Lasser and Desireé Vega. For more information, visit the SUPERB project web site at http://projectsuperb.education.txstate.edu/.