What are the main duties of an Educational Psychologist?

Core duties include: evaluate students referred for academic, behavioral or developmental concerns using record reviews, observations, interviews, rating scales and standardized cognitive and achievement tests; write evaluation reports that answer the referral question in plain language and translate scores into specific recommendations teachers and families can use; and present findings at eligibility and individualized education program meetings, explaining what the data show and what they do not show.

Is an educational psychologist the same as a school psychologist?

The two overlap heavily but are not identical. Educational psychology is the academic discipline that studies how people learn, while school psychology is the practice credential that authorizes evaluations and services inside K-12 schools. In the US, district-based testing and student support falls under the school psychologist role, which BLS says typically requires a state credential, and BLS counts that work under School Psychologists.

How much does an educational psychologist earn?

For school-based practitioners, BLS reports that the middle half of School Psychologists earned between $77,470 at the 25th percentile and $120,310 at the 75th in May 2025. District salary schedules, years of experience and extended-year contracts move individual pay within that range.

How is AI changing the work of an educational psychologist?

A study by Ryan Farmer, Adam Lockwood, Randy Floyd and Alec Sisco in the APA journal School Psychology surveyed 199 school psychologists during 2024. The authors report that some practitioners have adopted AI for tasks such as report writing, data analysis and communication, while many remain hesitant because of concerns about privacy, bias and the need for clear professional guidelines. They also found that formal training and institutional policies on AI use remain limited. Test administration and clinical judgment still sit with the psychologist, and eligibility decisions with the school team.

What tests does an educational psychologist use?

A typical evaluation pairs a cognitive battery, such as one of the Wechsler scales, with achievement tests like the Woodcock-Johnson and behavior rating scales completed by teachers and parents. Good practitioners choose measures to answer the specific referral question rather than running the same battery on every student.

Where else can an educational psychologist work besides a school district?

Common alternatives include university faculty and research posts, test development and measurement work, state education agencies, pediatric and hospital-based clinics, and private assessment practices. Each setting weights the job differently: a testing company prizes psychometrics, a clinic prizes diagnostic evaluation, and a faculty post prizes publications and grants.

Education

Educational Psychologist Job Description

An educational psychologist applies the science of learning, motivation and development to real students and school systems. In schools, that means evaluating students for learning and behavioral needs, advising teachers, and serving on special education teams in public districts and charter networks. Others do research and teaching in university education and psychology departments, testing organizations and state agencies. BLS groups the practice side with school psychologists, whose May 2025 median wage was $95,990, with the 10th and 90th percentiles at $63,070 and $142,330.

Last updated September 27, 2026

At a glance

Salary (USD)$96K

$63K low$142K high

Read time: 11 min
Last updated: Sep 27, 2026

Salary methodology

Our proprietary model combines official data from sources such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and industry compensation reports, along with publicly available job postings, posting details, and other market signals, to identify what we believe is a representative range for this role.

These figures are directional and provided for informational and educational purposes only. Actual compensation varies by employer, location, experience, certifications, and negotiation, and should not be relied upon for hiring, salary-negotiation, or financial- planning decisions.

Role-specific factorsThe band is BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data for School Psychologists (SOC 19-3034), May 2025: the 10th percentile, median and 90th percentile, not an estimate. University faculty and research roles in educational psychology fall outside this occupation, so the figures describe practitioner pay.

Role at a glance

Typical education: An education specialist (Ed.S.) degree in school psychology for practice, or a Ph.D. for research and faculty roles.
Typical experience: Practitioners typically start right after a full-year supervised internship; researchers after a doctorate and, for some, a postdoc.
Key certifications: NCSP from NASP, state school psychology certification, Praxis School Psychologist exam; state psychologist license for independent practice.
Top employer types: Public school districts, charter networks, universities, state education agencies and private assessment practices.
Growth outlook: BLS projects little job growth for school psychologists through 2035, while the national student ratio remains well above NASP's recommendation.
AI impact (through 2030): Augmentation: some school psychologists use AI for report writing, data analysis and communication, but testing and clinical judgment stay with the psychologist.

Duties and responsibilities

Evaluate students referred for academic, behavioral or developmental concerns using record reviews, observations, interviews, rating scales and standardized cognitive and achievement tests.
Write evaluation reports that answer the referral question in plain language and translate scores into specific recommendations teachers and families can use.
Present findings at eligibility and individualized education program meetings, explaining what the data show and what they do not show.
Consult with teachers on classroom strategies for students who struggle with reading, attention, behavior or task completion, then check whether the strategies worked.
Conduct functional behavioral assessments and help teams write behavior intervention plans with measurable goals and a clear data collection routine.
Run universal screening and progress monitoring within a tiered support system so struggling students get targeted help before a formal referral.
Provide short-term individual and group counseling on anxiety, social skills, coping and school engagement, referring students to community providers when needs exceed school scope.
Respond to crises such as suicide concerns, threats or a death in the school community, following district protocols for risk screening and follow-up.
Train teachers and administrators on assessment literacy, behavior supports and interpreting screening data, tailoring sessions to the questions staff actually bring.
Design and evaluate interventions or district programs, choosing outcome measures, analyzing results and reporting whether the program delivered what it promised.

Overview

An educational psychologist takes what psychology knows about learning, memory, motivation and behavior and puts it to work on actual students, classrooms and school systems. In the United States the title covers two overlapping jobs. One is practice: psychologists employed by school districts, charter networks, cooperatives and state agencies who evaluate students, consult with teachers and sit on special education teams. The other is research and teaching, carried out in university education and psychology departments, testing organizations and learning-science groups. APA's Division 15, the association's educational psychology division, describes its members as psychologists with interest in research, teaching or practice in educational settings at all levels.

The practitioner's week runs on referrals. A teacher flags a fourth grader who reads slowly and avoids written work. A parent asks for an evaluation after a semester of failing grades. A student-support team wants to know why a behavior plan stalled. Each referral starts as a question, and the psychologist picks the tools that can answer it: a record review, classroom observation, interviews with the student and family, rating scales from teachers and parents, and standardized cognitive and achievement testing. The output is a written report and a meeting, where the team decides whether the student qualifies for special education and what the individualized education program should contain.

Consultation is the other core function. That can mean coaching a teacher through a classroom management plan, helping a grade-level team read screening results, or walking a principal through what a behavior intervention plan actually requires of staff. Direct services fill the rest of the calendar: short-term counseling groups, social skills instruction, and crisis response after a death, a threat or a suicide concern. School psychologists may also coordinate a tiered support system, usually called MTSS, that screens every student and routes those who struggle to targeted help before anyone files a referral.

Research-side educational psychologists work at a different altitude. They design and test interventions for reading, math and motivation, build and validate assessments, study how feedback and practice schedules affect what students retain, and evaluate whether a district's purchased program delivers what the vendor promised. Their audience is other researchers, curriculum developers and policymakers, and their products are journal articles, grant reports and technical manuals rather than individual evaluations.

Across both tracks the job rewards the same habit: treating a learning problem as a hypothesis to test, not a label to assign. Strong practitioners write reports a parent can act on and a teacher can use the next morning. Strong researchers design studies that hold up in real classrooms, where attendance is uneven, teachers adapt the materials, and the version of an intervention a district runs may differ from the one tested under controlled conditions. The shared skill is judgment about evidence: knowing what a score, a study or a trend line can and cannot support.

Qualifications

Two training routes lead into the field, and the right one depends on whether you want to practice in schools or build a research career.

The school practice route. BLS states that school psychologists typically need at least a master's degree in school psychology, and that other degrees for the role include the education specialist (Ed.S.) and doctoral (Ph.D. or Psy.D.) degrees. The Ed.S. is the usual practitioner path. Programs blend psychology and education coursework, supervised practica and a full internship year. BLS adds that school psychologists typically need a credential such as a license or certification from their state's board of education, so check your target state's rules before choosing a program.

The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) awards the Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) credential. Its eligibility rules call for an organized program officially titled "School Psychology" with at least 60 graduate semester hours, an internship of 1,200 hours in school psychology with at least 600 of them in a school setting, and successful completion of the Praxis School Psychologist exam, which ETS administers.

The doctoral route. Aspiring researchers and faculty typically pursue a Ph.D. in educational psychology, school psychology or a closely related field. Expect heavy training in research design, measurement, statistics and learning theory, plus a dissertation and possibly a postdoctoral position before a faculty search. Anyone who wants to practice outside schools, such as running a private assessment practice, should plan on a state psychologist license from the state board of psychology. That path generally means a doctorate, supervised postdoctoral hours and a passing score on the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP), developed by the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB).

Skills that separate strong candidates.

Administering and interpreting cognitive, achievement, language and social-emotional measures, and knowing each instrument's limits
Functional behavioral assessment and writing behavior intervention plans that staff can actually carry out
Consultation: giving a skeptical teacher a strategy that fits the classroom they have
Suicide risk screening, threat assessment and crisis response under district protocols
Data literacy with screening and progress-monitoring tools, from spreadsheets to district dashboards
Plain, fast report writing that a family can follow without a glossary
Bilingual assessment skills, which matter in districts with large multilingual enrollments
For researchers: R or Python, multilevel modeling, psychometrics and grant writing

A typical practitioner starts full-time work right after the internship year. Researchers typically arrive with several years of graduate lab experience and a publication record. Either way, supervised hours are the backbone of the training, so choose the internship site with care.

Career outlook

The staffing picture for school-based educational psychologists starts with one ratio. NASP's June 2026 data brief, built on National Center for Education Statistics counts, puts the national figure at 1,071 students per school psychologist for the 2024-2025 school year, against NASP's recommended ratio of 500. Only three jurisdictions met or beat that recommendation: Connecticut, Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. The brief concluded that the national ratio essentially remained the same from the previous year, even though New Mexico, Kansas, Louisiana, Arizona and Washington, DC each cut their ratios by more than 10%. Geography matters: the Northeast region had a significantly lower ratio than the Central, Western and Southeast regions. The brief also observed a significant difference between the student to school psychologist ratio and school psychologist salary.

BLS headcount projections are flat by comparison. BLS projects school psychologist employment to go from 64,000 to 64,500 between 2025 and 2035, growth of 1 percent. BLS expects the occupation to keep growing because of an increased awareness of the connection between mental health and learning, but it cautions that projected declines in the school-age demographic and student enrollment may limit demand in elementary and secondary schools. For psychologists as a whole, BLS projects 6 percent growth over the same decade and about 11,300 openings per year, and it says many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who change occupations or retire.

Setting shapes earnings. Among psychologists overall, BLS reports a May 2025 median of $130,960 in government (excluding state and local education and hospitals), compared with $95,230 in local elementary and secondary schools.

Federal money is the wildcard for district hiring. According to Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, the Department of Education notified grantees in April 2025 that their school-based mental health grants would be discontinued. In December 2025 a coalition of states secured an order declaring those discontinuations unlawful, along with a permanent injunction. On December 11, 2025, the department announced over $208 million in new mental health grant awards, which K-12 Dive reported went to 65 recipients required to limit funding to hiring school psychologists rather than also funding school counselors and social workers. The department then issued continuation awards through December 31, 2026 but only provided funding for six months, and it announced plans to terminate the protected grants altogether. On July 13, 2026, Tong filed a second lawsuit with 14 other attorneys general, and the states moved for a preliminary injunction to keep the grants from being terminated. A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order in late July, and on September 22, 2026 the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington granted the states' motion for a preliminary injunction that continues to block the department's termination plan. A preliminary injunction is not a final ruling, so the case continues.

On the research side, positions depend on university and grant funding rather than district staffing budgets.

Sample cover letter

Dear Director Alvarez,

I am applying for the school psychologist opening in the Riverbend Unified School District. I completed my Ed.S. in school psychology at Lakeshore State University, finished my internship with the Cedar Hollow district, and hold the NCSP credential along with my state certification. For the past three years I have served two elementary schools and a middle school in Pine Ridge Township.

My evaluations start with the referral question, not a standard battery. Last spring a sixth grader came to me labeled as unmotivated. Classroom observation, a teacher interview and targeted testing pointed to a working memory weakness that made multi-step math directions collapse halfway through. The report I wrote gave his teachers three concrete changes, and his math teacher told me they made a visible difference by the end of the quarter.

Consultation is where I think I add the most value. I meet with grade-level teams every two weeks to review screening data, and I helped one team move from waiting for referrals to catching reading problems in the first semester. I also co-lead a lunchtime coping skills group for anxious fifth graders and serve on my building's crisis team.

I work hard at the meeting after the evaluation. Families often walk in expecting bad news, and I want them to leave knowing exactly what their child needs and what the school will do next. I bring scores back to what a parent sees at the kitchen table.

Riverbend's investment in a tiered support model is the reason I am applying. I would welcome the chance to talk about how I could support your screening work and your special education teams.

Sincerely, Jordan Ellis

Frequently asked questions

What does an Educational Psychologist do?: An educational psychologist applies the science of learning, motivation and development to real students and school systems. In schools, that means evaluating students for learning and behavioral needs, advising teachers, and serving on special education teams in public districts and charter networks. Others do research and teaching in university education and psychology departments, testing organizations and state agencies. BLS groups the practice side with school psychologists, whose May 2025 median wage was $95,990, with the 10th and 90th percentiles at $63,070 and $142,330.
What are the main duties of an Educational Psychologist?: Core duties include: evaluate students referred for academic, behavioral or developmental concerns using record reviews, observations, interviews, rating scales and standardized cognitive and achievement tests; write evaluation reports that answer the referral question in plain language and translate scores into specific recommendations teachers and families can use; and present findings at eligibility and individualized education program meetings, explaining what the data show and what they do not show.
Is an educational psychologist the same as a school psychologist?: The two overlap heavily but are not identical. Educational psychology is the academic discipline that studies how people learn, while school psychology is the practice credential that authorizes evaluations and services inside K-12 schools. In the US, district-based testing and student support falls under the school psychologist role, which BLS says typically requires a state credential, and BLS counts that work under School Psychologists.
How much does an educational psychologist earn?: For school-based practitioners, BLS reports that the middle half of School Psychologists earned between $77,470 at the 25th percentile and $120,310 at the 75th in May 2025. District salary schedules, years of experience and extended-year contracts move individual pay within that range.
How is AI changing the work of an educational psychologist?: A study by Ryan Farmer, Adam Lockwood, Randy Floyd and Alec Sisco in the APA journal School Psychology surveyed 199 school psychologists during 2024. The authors report that some practitioners have adopted AI for tasks such as report writing, data analysis and communication, while many remain hesitant because of concerns about privacy, bias and the need for clear professional guidelines. They also found that formal training and institutional policies on AI use remain limited. Test administration and clinical judgment still sit with the psychologist, and eligibility decisions with the school team.
What tests does an educational psychologist use?: A typical evaluation pairs a cognitive battery, such as one of the Wechsler scales, with achievement tests like the Woodcock-Johnson and behavior rating scales completed by teachers and parents. Good practitioners choose measures to answer the specific referral question rather than running the same battery on every student.
Where else can an educational psychologist work besides a school district?: Common alternatives include university faculty and research posts, test development and measurement work, state education agencies, pediatric and hospital-based clinics, and private assessment practices. Each setting weights the job differently: a testing company prizes psychometrics, a clinic prizes diagnostic evaluation, and a faculty post prizes publications and grants.

Sources

Salary figures and role details on this page were checked against the following sources. Dates show when each was last reviewed.

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