Evaluation

Big picture, whole view of child

Includes screening, assessment, diagnosis, and recommendations

Conducted by multidisciplinary teams of professionals, not just one person

Assessment (testing) is one piece of the process

  • Diagnostic – information concerning the nature of a child’s learning difficulties
  • Eligibility – information on whether a child is eligible for special education services
  • Placement – decisions about the child’s educational placement
  • Instructional Planning – what and how to teach

Gain information for instructional planning without formal testing by:

    • analysis of previous work, observations of the child while working,
    • online screening,
    • standards-based grading,
    • portfolio analysis, and
    • conversations and interviews with students to determine comprehension.

  • Your child is not meeting basic developmental milestones.
  • Your child is struggling to learn in one or more areas and not achieving at the rate of her peers.
  • Your child is frustrated, knows he is not keeping up, and wants to know why. He may ask you to have him tested to figure it out.
  • You have tried several different reading programs (or math, writing, spelling) and none of them seem to be working.
  • You need a diagnosis for placement, accommodations, and/or related services.
  • You want a baseline of your child’s achievement in order to plan instruction.

Choose a professional that is:

  • Experienced in working with the suspected disability
  • Credentialed in the disability area by professional organizations, indicating current research in their field of practice
    • i.e., speech therapist that is affiliated with ASHA
  • Licensed to administer the tests, indicating extensive training
    • i.e., master’s degree in speech therapy with state license
  • Collaborative with other professionals to develop a full profile of abilities and disabilities
    • i.e., speech therapist recommends an educational psychologist to administer an intelligence test to determine intellectual ability

Request a referral from a professional organization

1. For Speech, Language or Hearing

2. For Emotional and Behavior Challenges

3. For ADHD, Autism, Dysgraphia, and Sensory Disorders

4. For Tourette’s, Down Syndrome and other syndromes; Traumatic Brain Injury; physical and orthopedic disabilities

  • Locate a pediatrician, pediatric neurologist, or other medical specialist

  1. Parents contact the appropriate professionals and make a referral.
  2. Team of professionals complete a screening with a checklist, interviews with parent and/or child, and observations of the child’s behaviors.
  3. Team selects tests to administer and dates for testing are scheduled. Thorough evaluations contain several different types of tests and thus, must be scheduled on multiple days. If they are all administered in the same day, the child will be tired and less focused resulting in possibly invalid scores.
  4. Team writes a psychoeducational/assessment team report.
  5. Evaluator meets with parents to explain the results and make recommendations.
  6. Parents should receive:
  • A typed, dated, and signed report (could be titled Psychoeducation Report, Assessment Team Report, or Evaluation Report) of which you retain a copy
  • Thorough recommendations as to the next steps (therapies, behavioral strategies to implement, educational programs, software or curriculum to use).

They may. It depends on the local school district’s interpretation of federal law and the resources that are available to them. However, the federal law seems clear on this point.

Resources for further research on laws, parent referrals, and processes for evaluations:

TIP:

Locate someone specialized in the area of concern. Get recommendations, if possible, and check them out online. Do your research, know the language, talk with others to gain information. Start with a medical evaluation and then move to psychoeducational. Medical evaluations help to rule out all possible causes of learning difficulties (allergies, vision or hearing problems, TBI, hypoglycemia, diabetes, hypothyroidism, etc.). Psychoeducational evaluations will identify learning disabilities. If you’re not satisfied, keep seeking. Second opinions can be very helpful.


Assessment (Testing)

Administration of a single instrument

Given by different professionals depending on the skill assessed

Determines a student’s present level of functioning in one or more areas

Curriculum Based Assessment measures a student’s progress based on the curriculum used for instruction and is also referred to in schools as progress monitoring.

  • Links curriculum and instruction
  • Helps teacher determine what to teach
  • Can be administered frequently
  • Is sensitive to short-term academic gains
  • Example: Saxon Math end of the chapter test

Criterion Referenced Assessment measures how well a student is doing according to some predetermined goals or set of outcomes (i.e. state standards).

  • Scored by percentage of correct answers
  • Looks at what the student can do or cannot do
  • Helps to determine placement in subject areas
  • Example: spelling tests, timed math facts test, driving exam

Portfolio Assessment is a method for keeping up with a student’s progress in selected areas by collecting data over a long period of time to demonstrate a pattern of improvement.

  • Written work such as math sheets, essays, journals, writing samples
  • Photos of projects, art, designs, construction
  • Video of child completing tasks, academic presentations, play and performances

Standardized Assessment compares a student’s scores against the scores of other students who have taken the same exam. Options are available for parents to give standardized achievement tests in the comfort of their own home.

Facts about Standardized Tests

  • The validity of the scores depends on many outliers such as time of day, distractions during testing, comfort of environment, attention span, and health of child.
  • Children with learning difficulties perform better in one-on-one testing than in groups.
  • Children under 3rd grade do not need standardized testing unless they are experiencing learning difficulties. HLA Testing Policy
  • Scores assist in determining achievement gaps.
  • Scores are recognized by other institutions such as public schools and colleges.

Commonly used Achievement Tests

Commonly used Intelligence Tests

  • Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC-V)
  • Reynolds Intelligence Assessment Scales (RIAS-2)
  • Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI-4)
  • Wechsler Nonverbal Scale of Ability (WNV)

College Entrance Exams

  • ACT – American College Testing
  • SAT – Scholastic Aptitude Test (original title)
  • CLEP – College Level Examination Program

Clarification of Misconceptions about Intelligence, Testing, & IQ scores

IQ and intelligence are not synonymous.

  • IQ is merely a score indicating the relative position of the individual tested to others in the norm group whereas intelligence is a theoretical construct defined and measured in many different ways. It is strictly a score indicating how well someone took the tests on that given day.
    • Example: A person takes an intelligence test while sick and running a fever, thus scoring below average. Yet the same person is dual enrolled in high school and college and very successful.

Intelligence tests do not measure all aspects of an individual’s abilities.

  • Tests are only a sampling of an individual’s skills and not all skills are sampled by one test. Some tests measure more verbal skills, while others may measure analytical thinking or performance tasks.
    • Example: A person takes a traditional IQ test, scores below average, and yet wins many awards for creativity in performing arts.

Intelligence tests do not predict outcome in life.

  • However, they are fairly successful at suggesting how well an individual will achieve in school. They are better at predicting success at the elementary level than the high school level. In school as well as in life, success depends on other factors such as effort, motivation, persistence, and common sense. People may score high on intelligence tests but may not behave very intelligently, whereas people scoring low on IQ tests may be quite successful in life by having strong emotional intelligence.
    • Example: A person scores in the low average range, teachers’ predictions are less than positive, yet he becomes a general in the military.

IQ scores are not necessarily fixed or permanent.

  • They may change in the course of development due to environmental, medical, educational, and other factors. IQ scores may decrease as disease or disability increases; likewise, IQ scores may increase with education and an improved stimulating environment.
    • Example: A child who lived in an orphanage from birth, is adopted into a stimulus- and language-rich environment. After 5 years, she scores 20 points higher on the same IQ test.

IQ scores are not perfectly reliable.

  • All tests have some measure of error. If a student achieves a score of 100 on an IQ test and the standard error of measurement is 10, the child’s score will fall between 90 and 110 if he is tested again using the same instrument. When IQ scores are used for placement in special education programs, this may be problematic.
    • Example: A child scores 129 on an IQ test, missing the cutoff score for the gifted program by one point. Is the child still gifted…absolutely!

Intelligence tests are less dependent on formal learning.

  • Intelligence tests measure fluid (innate) abilities, although crystallized (learned) abilities are also measured in many of the instruments. Often IQ scores reflect learned information, rather than natural born ability.
    • Example: A child with a language disorder, who can’t speak in complete sentences due to excessive absences for her first three years of school, takes a nonverbal IQ test and lands in the gifted program. Innately, she has very strong fluid abilities, but poor academic performance.

TIP:

Minimize factors that negatively affect test scores, such as:

  1. Noisy or distracting testing environment
  2. Poor health of person taking the test
  3. High stress level of examinee
  4. Lack of rapport developed between examiner and student
  5. Timed subtests for a student that has test anxiety or ADHD
  6. Language based test used with students with language disorders, dyslexia, deprived environmental experiences, or English language learners
  7. Excessively long testing sessions for children with short attention spans, ADHD, or autism
  8. Administration of tests that are culturally biased