A Comprehensive Accountability System for School Psychologist Interns and Practitioners

A quality professional field experience is critical to the preparation of school psychologists. On-going supervision by university and field supervisors is necessary if interns are to receive the kinds of experiences considered desirable. In order for this supervision to be meaningful, a system for collecting and utilizing evaluative data needs to be employed. The comprehensive accountability system described in this article is designed to collect evaluative data systematically on interns enrolled in a USA training programme. Factors that need to be considered during the development of the system are discussed and a format for implementing such a system is outlined. An illustrative example shows how procedures, an interactive process and a planning component are employed to collect evaluative data on interns' performance. This system can be easily adapted to suit the needs of practitioners.