James provides 3 to 6 hour workshops for any Districts, Special Education Local Plan Areas (SELPAs), Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), County Offices of Education, as well as for the California Association of School Psychologists (CASP), Colorado Society of School Psychology (CSSP) affiliate associations, or anyone wanting Continuing Education for NASP’s NCSP, and or LEP:

-New-

6-hour workshops

• Advanced professional development regarding IDEA’s Intellectual Disability and Autism:

  • The latest information from current OAH cases to SCOTUS. This workshop will focus on the use of various intelligence tests, assessment tools, and evaluation measures, including memory and learning tests, dynamic assessment, developmental rating scales, and assessment tools, social perception and adaptive behavior measures, as well as how to effectively and sensitively be able to communicate this often statistically dense and potentially emotionally laden information and still be legally defensible in meetings and reports.

• Advanced professional development regarding IDEA’s Specific Learning Disability:

  • The latest information from current OAH cases for School Psychologists. This workshop will focus on the use of PSW and different models (XBASS, Dhen’s Model). What do intelligence tests actually measure and its relationship to achievement? What additional assessment tools and evaluation measures, including memory and learning tests, assessing Executive Functioning, other narrow processing area tools like CTOPP-2 or TAPS-4, and information from achievement tests, are needed to help determine SLD and interventions, as well as how to effectively and sensitively be able to communicate this often statistically dense and potentially emotionally laden information and still be legally defensible in meetings and reports.

New 3-hour workshop

• Executive Function Evaluations for Schools:

  • You will leave this training with an understanding of why an Executive Function Evaluation is critical for your comprehensive evaluations. Executive Functions have a clear impact on 5 of our 13 disability categories that school psychologists are called upon to help IEP teams determine eligibility and to help develop appropriate goals. Not addressing Executive Functions impact on a student’s disability will most likely leave need(s) unaddressed, thus violating FAPE. You will leave this workshop with a better understanding of the tools you may already use and how they can help determine these needs, as well as more specific Executive Functioning assessment tools you may not be as familiar with.

Past 3-hour workshops still being offered:

• PSW and Discrepancy Models - Theory to Practical Application -Intermediate and Advanced Concepts To Consider, Including Larry P. Updates

  • For the school psychologist who wants to take a deeper dive into looking at PSW’s CHC theory, which is used by popular tools like XBASS. If you’ve gone through those trainings and you don’t feel like you understand why you are doing what you are doing; not sure you can explain it well to a parent, advocate, or an administrative law judge… you’re not alone. We will discuss why significant subtest score differences might occur within the same broad processing area and how to discuss them without pulling out another subtest that could cloud the issue further. We will discuss the relationship between overall measures of cognitive ability (IQ) and measures of academic achievement, and why it is important. This workshop will help make clearer the statistics that underpin these theoretical constructs in everyday language so you understand why there is so much research coming out of NASP against PSW (at least the way it is currently being defined) and why you should and shouldn’t be concerned. This workshop will go into the mysteries of the 8 processing areas of CCR 3030(b)(10) and how they came to be defined in the way they are (yes, there are actual definitions of what Cognitive Conceptualization, Association, and Expression are), and where might Executive Functioning fit into this. We will go through some case studies, and there will be ample time for questions and answers. Oh, and if you have questions about Larry P. those will be addressed as well, depending on how your district/SELPA would like it addressed.

• Demystifying Intellectual Disability (ID)eligibility criteria:

  • Intellectual Disabilities (ID) is the least desired of all special education eligibility categories. Parents report that they would rather their child be Autistic than ID. A great deal of weight is placed on this eligibility determination, and there is only one sentence that describes it in the federal regulations (CFR 300.8(c)(6)) that California adopted verbatim (CCR 3030(b)(6)) with the exception of the addition of one sentence “The term ‘intellectual disability’ was formerly termed ‘mental retardation.’” How does one make the case for Intellectual Disability? What are the “best practices”? What are the criteria to be used when the one-sentence definition is vague? What is the relationship between overall measures of cognitive ability (IQ) and measures of adaptive behavior, and why is it important? How does one make meaningful recommendations when a student cannot perform on a standardized test of intelligence? How does one make a convincing eligibility or recommendations to skeptical parents? All of these questions and more will be addressed in this workshop.

• Previous list of workshops provided upon request