What Will School Psychology Look Like in 2035?

Each month answers one piece of that question:

September: Why Assessment Is Entering a New Era

We know that assessment is a fundamental cornerstone in educational and school psychology. Assessment today increasingly does more ‘heavy lifting’ beyond just predicting outcomes to a focus on improving them—from determining eligibility for services to informing interventions to monitoring progress—all to improve students’ achievement and well-being.

However, despite a long history of well over 100 years, surprisingly few advancements have been made. For example, research finds gaps in ensuring assessments are conducted ethically and effectively, and there is a call to action that, to be truly evidence-based, information from assessment must be supported empirically, objectively, and result in improved outcomes for the student or client.

To do so means ushering in a new era for assessment. Key areas include more thought about why an assessment is needed. This is followed by greater care in the selection of the assessment instruments to determine appropriateness. Next is timeliness and ease in communicating the results. But one of the biggest changes needed is to sensitively reduce over-reliance on a clinician’s judgement, which contains more bias than is desired—just by the nature of humans.

A recent article in Contemporary School Psychology introducing a comprehensive special issue notes that professionals are increasingly reliant on technology, and this trend is set to continue, particularly as school and educational psychology graduate students show a strong preference for digital assessment. The ability to utilize digital assessment technology to measure, score, interpret, and apply is upon us, and new test publishers such as PsyMark are embracing this to help define this new era.

Over the next few months, we are delighted to be working with Jenny to share a series titled “What Will School Psychology Look Like in 2035?” comprised of sequenced articles to help educational and school psychologists navigate the evolving landscape of assessment.

References

Cadime, I., & Mendes, S. A. (2024). Psychological assessment in school contexts: Ethical issues and practical guidelines. Psicologia, Reflexão e Crítica: Revista Semestral do Departamento de Psicologia da UFRGS, 37, 32.

Canivez, G. L. (2019). Evidence-based assessment for school psychology: Research, training, and clinical practice. Contemporary School Psychology, 23(2), 194-200.

Shergill, G. (2025). Digitizing school psychology. Contemporary School Psychology, 29(4), 659-662.