When “Can Sometimes” Becomes “Should Always”: A School Psychologist’s Reflection on Inconsistent Performance

Darrick Lamar Bell, CAGS, MAEP

A child completes a task independently on Saturday and needs assistance on Monday. A student participates confidently in one class but struggles to begin work in another. An adolescent can explain a coping strategy during counseling and have difficulty using it when overwhelmed.

These situations invite a familiar conclusion: If the student has done it before, the student should be able to do it again.

As a school psychologist and former director of special education, I believe this is an assumption we must examine carefully. Previous success gives us valuable information about a student’s abilities. It does not tell us everything about the conditions necessary to use those abilities consistently.

The question is larger than whether a student possesses a skill. We also need to understand when that skill is available, what supports its use, and what interferes with it.

Looking beyond the successful moment

The World Health Organization’s framework distinguishes capacity in a standardized environment from performance in a person’s actual environment. That distinction offers an important starting point for understanding students: functioning cannot be separated entirely from context (World Health Organization, 2002).

In school, context includes the pace of instruction, the clarity of directions, the number of transitions, and the support available. A task completed with an adult nearby may place different demands on a student than the same task completed independently in a busy classroom.

Consider a student who completes an assignment during a counseling session. The adult may help identify the first step, organize the materials, clarify directions, and redirect attention. The student does the work, but the surrounding structure contributes to success.

When that student later struggles alone, we should investigate which conditions changed. The earlier success remains real. So does the later difficulty.

Inconsistency deserves examination

Research on ADHD provides evidence that variability itself can be important. Kofler et al. (2013), in a meta-analysis of 319 studies, found greater reaction-time variability among children and adolescents with ADHD compared with typically developing peers.

This finding does not explain every unfinished assignment or difficult school day. It does challenge the assumption that inconsistent performance necessarily reflects inconsistent effort.

As professionals, we need to distinguish among several possibilities. A skill may still be developing. A student may know how to perform it but struggle to initiate or sustain it. The task may have changed. The student may be avoiding an experience that feels difficult or threatening. Several factors may operate together.

A confident explanation offered too quickly can close the door on a more useful assessment.

Knowing a strategy and using it are different demands

In counseling, we often teach students to recognize emotions, ask for help, take a break, or consider another perspective. A student may explain these strategies accurately. Using them during frustration requires additional work: noticing the need, remembering the strategy, inhibiting an immediate response, and applying the strategy in time.

Diamond’s (2013) review describes executive functions such as working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility, while emphasizing their sensitivity to emotional and physical conditions.

This helps explain why verbal knowledge should not be mistaken for consistent application. Teaching a strategy is an essential beginning. Practice across situations, accessible reminders, and opportunities to seek support may also be necessary.

Our task is to help students carry learning into the moments when they need it most.

Assessment must include everyday functioning

School psychologists also need to consider what our assessments capture.

Toplak et al. (2013) found only a modest relationship between performance-based executive-function measures and everyday executive-function ratings. Their findings suggest that these approaches provide different information about functioning.

A structured assessment may show how efficiently a student performs when the task and expectations are clearly defined. Reports from home and school may reveal difficulties managing goals across daily demands.

When these sources differ, I believe we should approach the discrepancy with curiosity. We can examine the setting, available assistance, task demands, and consistency of the pattern.

A student’s functioning is better understood through converging information than through a single successful performance or a single difficult day.

The child arrives with more than a skill set

Sleep and stress also deserve attention.

Gruber et al. (2012) experimentally changed sleep opportunities in children and found corresponding changes in teacher-rated emotional regulation and restless-impulsive behavior. Shields et al. (2016) found that acute stress impaired working memory and cognitive flexibility across the studies included in their meta-analysis, although effects differed across executive functions and conditions.

These findings remind us that performance can change even when learned knowledge remains.

For an individual student, we still need evidence. We should ask about patterns, listen to the student and family, and examine what happens before and during difficulty. We should avoid explaining every challenge through stress, fatigue, or disability without investigation.

Compassion becomes more useful when it is paired with careful observation.

Support should build reliable participation

Recognizing variability does not require abandoning expectations. It requires making expectations teachable and achievable.

I would begin by identifying the task precisely and documenting the conditions under which the student succeeds. How much prompting is needed? Does performance change across classes or times of day? Can the student recognize difficulty and request assistance? Does a particular support improve participation?

From there, the team can teach missing skills, adjust barriers, and gradually reduce assistance when the evidence supports doing so.

Independence should include knowing when help is needed and how to obtain it. Self-advocacy is itself a meaningful outcome.

A student who appropriately asks for clarification or a brief break may be demonstrating progress, even while continuing to need support.

What this asks of school leadership

This perspective also has implications for school systems.

I believe teams should consider consistency across settings, the level of assistance required, and the effort involved before concluding that support is no longer necessary. Successful performance under supported conditions should prompt us to identify what worked.

Progress monitoring can capture more than task completion. It can document initiation, sustained participation, prompting, recovery after frustration, and appropriate help-seeking.

Staff development can help educators examine the difference between an emerging skill, difficulty applying a skill, and avoidance. These distinctions guide different responses.

As a former special education director, I see this as a leadership responsibility: creating conditions in which staff have the time, tools, and shared language to understand students accurately.

The responsibility to remain curious

School psychology asks us to look beyond what is immediately visible while remaining accountable to evidence.

A successful day matters. A difficult day matters. Neither should become the whole story.

When a student’s performance changes, I want our first response to open an inquiry. What changed? What did the task require? What support was available? What does the student tell us? What would help us understand the pattern?

The child who succeeds sometimes is showing us something worth studying.

Our responsibility is to turn that information into teaching, support, and increasingly reliable participation, while preserving the student’s dignity along the way.

References

Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750

Gruber, R., Cassoff, J., Frenette, S., Wiebe, S., & Carrier, J. (2012). Impact of sleep extension and restriction on children’s emotional lability and impulsivity. Pediatrics, 130(5), e1155–e1161. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2012-0564

Kofler, M. J., Rapport, M. D., Sarver, D. E., Raiker, J. S., Orban, S. A., Friedman, L. M., & Kolomeyer, E. G. (2013). Reaction time variability in ADHD: A meta-analytic review of 319 studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 33(6), 795–811. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2013.06.001

Shields, G. S., Sazma, M. A., & Yonelinas, A. P. (2016). The effects of acute stress on core executive functions: A meta-analysis and comparison with cortisol. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 68, 651–668. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.06.038

Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2013). Practitioner review: Do performance-based measures and ratings of executive function assess the same construct? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(2), 131–143. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12001

World Health Organization. (2002). Towards a common language for functioning, disability and health: ICF. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/classification/icf/icfbeginnersguide.pdf