NVASP Proposed Bill Draft to SB391 (Read by Third)

NVASP Position Statement on SB391 (Read by Third)

NVASP Position Statement on AB341 (Dyslexia Bill)

NVASP Position Statement of AB394 (CCSD Reorganization)

The NVASP Legislative Committee has had a strong, positive influence on AB447:

A major victory for the NVASP Legislative Committee was advocating to be evaluated based on the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) Practice Model, which is the national standards for school psychologists. The State Department of Education appointed a council called the Teachers and Leaders Council (TLC) with the responsibility to determine how all educational licensed personnel in Nevada would be evaluated.  The TLC originally proposed that school psychologists and all other licensed educational personnel would be evaluated on one uniform set of standards.  One major criticism that the NVASP Legislative Committee pointed out is that these standards were meant for teachers and do not accurately capture the role of a school psychologist.  At one of the initial TLC meetings, our Legislative Committee orated that we wanted the school psychologists of Nevada to be evaluated by the NASP Practice Model.  The TLC addressed our perspective during various conversations, but the consensus from the TLC was to continue with the current plan of a uniform set of standards for all Nevada licensed personnel.   However, the NVASP Legislative Committee stayed firm in their stance for wanting the NASP Practice Model. Todd Andrews, Joan Bohmann, Danielle Latronica, Mark Kenney, Tim McIvor and Pete Reynolds each spent at least 50 hours advocating for school psychologists to be evaluated by the NASP Practice Model.  In addition to the NVASP Legislative Committee, the Directors of the NVASP Board also stepped up to advocate.  The videos below show the Board of Directors advocating at various TLC meetings.  Even after all of our advocacy efforts at various TLC meetings, they did not initially grant us the flexibility to use our national standards as a basis for appraisal.  The TLC understood our perspective and did consider our point of view, but they were under both time and budget constraints.  They did not have the time or funding to take a primary role in creating an evaluation rubric for each set of professions that advocated to be evaluated on their national standards.    

On 4/30/15, the TLC recommended to the State Board of Education that all licensed personnel be evaluated on the same set of standards.  They displayed the evaluation rubric and showed how it was linked to student achievement. At this same meeting, Tim McIvor, President of NVASP, and Jasmine Mitchell, Secretary of NVASP, gave public comment to the State Board of Education.  The State Board of Education accepted the TLC's evaluation rubric for all licensed personnel except for the professions that made up Other Licensed Educational Personnel (OLEP), which consisted of school psychologists, school nurses, speech language pathologists, etc.  The State Board of Education agreed with NVASP's perspective that TLC's proposed standards lacked relevance for OLEP.  Therefore, they instead granted a one-year delay of standards for OLEP to determine how to best appraise this group.  Tim and Jasmine's speeches to the State Board of Education can be found here: Tim's Speech; Jasmine's Speech. They were too focused on delivering their speeches to take full videos, but a 1 minute video catching the tail end of Jasmine's speech was recorded and can be seen here: http://youtu.be/iK2iy3B0bPI 

On 10/28/15, the TLC met to determine a new plan of action to propose to the State Board of Education.  During public comment, many different professions of OLEP stated that they wanted their national standards to be the standards they were evaluated on.  The various professions spoke in harmony about the teacher standards lacking relevance.  Tim McIvor gave a speech emphasizing the importance of standards that reflect the NASP Practice Model.  His speech can be found here.  During the meeting, the TLC passed that school psychologists, and any profession in OLEP with strong national standards, may have the option of being evaluated based on their national standards, assuming it would be approved by the State Board of Education.  

On 11/12/15, the TLC and Nevada Department of Education made recommendations to the State Board of Education to align the Nevada Educator Performance Framework to the national standards of the various OLEP professions with well established national standards (e.g. school psychologists, school nurses, speech language pathologists).  Pete Reynolds and Tim McIvor each gave speeches to the State Board of Education.  Tim McIvor's speech can be found here.  Pete Reynold's speech can be found here.  The State Board of Education delayed their decision until 1/28/16, when they moved to allow six different Other Licensed Educational Personnel professions to be evaluated based on their national standards.  School psychologists are one of the six professions.  The State Board of Education has chosen to implement this during the school year of 2018-2019.  2017-2018 will be a pilot year.  They have given the responsibility to NVASP to create the evaluation rubric for school psychologists.  NVASP has created a Statewide Evaluation Committee to make this statewide evaluation rubric, and you can volunteer to be a member of this committee by emailing nevadaschoolpsychs@gmail.com  This committee has until January of 2017 to present their evaluation rubric to the TLC. 

This summary was written by Tim McIvor.  For questions or comments, he can be reached at timothy.mcivor@gmail.com  Below are videos of Katie Dockweiler, President-Elect, Tim McIvor, President, Joe Roberts, Past President, Michael Rube, Social Director, Sara Williams, Treasurer, Jasmine Mitchell, Secretary, and Pete Reynolds, Member of the Legislative Committee, who advocated for aligning the Nevada Educator Performance Framework to the NASP Practice Model at various meetings as seen in the videos below: