If you have a child who receives, or may qualify for, special education services, the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process can feel equal parts essential and overwhelming. The room is full of professionals, the document is dense, and the stakes feel high. But here's the truth: you are the most important person in that room. You know your child better than any teacher, specialist, or administrator.   Walking in prepared, with clear, specific questions, can shift the

I recently co-authored a chapter on progress monitoring for a newly published educational textbook—a project I'm genuinely excited about! Progress monitoring is an incredibly powerful tool that helps educators figure out if an intervention is actually working or if it needs tweaking. In my work as a school psychologist, I’ve found that while schools share this data with families, parents often have deeper questions about what it means and how to use it to advocate for their c

What the Study Found: Your research tested a simple but powerful reading strategy called "partner reading with paragraph shrinking" with eighth-grade students in their regular science and social studies classes. The intervention, which lasted just three weeks, led to significantly improved oral reading fluency and higher comprehension scores in both science and social studies content. One of the most encouraging findings is that the positive effects occurred regardless of whe

Quick Research Summary: Dr. McKinzie Duesenberg-Marshall co-authored a peer-reviewed study examining reading interventions across more than 1,500 students. The research found that students who received targeted interventions had significantly higher reading growth than those who received typical school interventions — and performed similarly to students who were already proficient readers. This is huge! It means when reading help is matched to what a child actually needs, str