| Assessment 101 | ||||||||||
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There is an important rule you need to know about assessment: the results are only as good as the test, and the examiner. A good examiner, administering a good instrument, should give you valid, usable results. But the opposite is also true: a bad examiner, or a bad instrument, will give you invalid, confusing, even misleading results. The first experience most people have with assessment is through their local school district. Even if your child goes to a private school, s/he has a right to a free assessment by the public school in the area where you live. You should make a formal, written request for assessment in a letter to the principal and/or special education administrator, preferably both. The district is required by law to comply, and the assessment should be completed and a meeting held within 50 calendar days (not counting school vacations). Within two weeks of your formal request, you should receive an assessment plan that lists the tests to be given and by whom. This is your chance to do some research, to find out as much as you can about the tests and the examiners who will be giving them. Test information can be requested from the test manufacturers, but you can also get a lot of information by posting a question on one of the special ed. bulletin boards, such as those on LDOnline . If you find a problem with a specific test, you can always request a different test be substituted, and the district should respect your request if they feel it is a reasonable substitution and they have access to the requested test. Ask the examiners what kind of training and experience they have had with testing in general, and with these tests in particular. Most special education teachers have had at least two or three classes in test administration and interpretation, but experience is even more valuable. A good question to ask is how many of the students tested last year ended up qualifying for special education services. Obviously, you would prefer the result be better than 50%, and the higher the better. If they are lower than 65% I would be wondering if they have a vested interest in not qualifying students, or else their prereferral process is in need of overhaul. Psychologists should have had even more assessment training and experience, and are usually responsible for supervising the teachers testing as well as administering their own. Keep in mind that the assessment done by the district will be limited to determining if your child will qualify for special education services based on the old system of finding a significant discrepancy and processing problem. Though most states mandate the use of at least two instruments to verify results, exactly which instruments are used is up to the individual district, sometimes the individual school or examiner. Many times a test is chosen not because it gives the most reliable or useful results, but because it is the easiest to administer and score, i.e. for the convenience of the examiner. Thus, if you have any questions AT ALL about the results of the testing at this level, if it doesnt jive with what you know about your child, what teachers are telling you, etc. you should exercise your right to outside testing, it will be well worth the expense. The most complete testing is that done by a neuropsychologist, it is usually ten to twenty hours of testing and should yield a written report ten to twenty pages or longer, giving a detailed description of the student's strengths and weaknesses in all areas of learning and processing. Specific recommendations for remediation and/or further evaluation by other professionals are an important feature, and thus it can be used to obtain important concessions and adaptations in both the school setting and additional support services a student can receive from the district. Many kinds of learning disabilities missed by the usual testing given by a district have been picked up in more detailed neuropsychological testing, e.g. Non-verbal Learning Disabilities. treatment | referrals | consultation | contact me |
