This document discusses the assessment process for students in special education. It covers the following key points: 1. Assessment involves collecting information from various sources like observations, interviews, tests to make decisions about a student's eligibility, needs, and program. 2. A multidisciplinary team collects data on the student's abilities, strengths, weaknesses from different perspectives. 3. Common assessment methods include observations, interviews, portfolios, standardized tests, and criterion-referenced tests. Validity, reliability, and standardization are important for tests. 4. The assessment process involves data collection, analysis, and using the information to determine if a student qualifies for special education and what their needs and program should

1. Assessment process
Chapter 2

2. Decision Making in the Assessment
Process
• Assessment in special education is a process
that involves collecting information about a
student for the purpose of making decisions
about an individual.
• Assessment plays an critical role in the
determination of SIX important decisions

3. Decision Making in the
Assessment Process
• 1. Evaluation Decisions: Information
collected in the assessment process can
provide detailed information of a
student’s strengths, weaknesses, and
overall progress.
• 2. Diagnostic Decisions: Information
collected in the assessment process can
provide detailed information of the
specific nature of the student’s
problems or disability.

4. Decision Making in the
Assessment Process
• 3. Eligibility Decisions: Information collected in the
assessment process can provide detailed information of
whether a child is eligible for special education services.
• 4. IEP (IEP Development) Decisions: Information collected in
the assessment process can provide detailed information so
that an Individualized Education Program (IEP) may be
developed

5. Decision Making in the Assessment
Process
• 5. Educational Placement Decisions Information collected in
the assessment process can provide detailed information so
that appropriate decisions may be made about the child’s
educational placement
• 6. Instructional Planning Decisions Information collected in
the assessment process is critical in planning instruction
appropriate to the child’s special social, academic, physical,
and management needs

6. HOW STUDENTS ARE
IDENTIFIED FOR ASSESSMENT
• There are normally three ways in which a student may be
identified for assessment of a suspected disability:
• 1. The student’s classroom teacher may identify that certain
symptoms exist within the classroom that seem to indicate the
presence of some problem:
• For example, the student’s work is below expectations for his
or her grade or age, or the student’s behavior is so disruptive
that he or she is unable to learn.

7. HOW STUDENTS ARE
IDENTIFIED FOR ASSESSMENT
• 2. The student’s parents may call or write to the
school or to the director of special education and
request that their child be evaluated:
• They may feel that the child is not progressing as he
or she should or may notice particular problems in
how their child learns. When parents note a problem
and request an evaluation, the school must follow
through on the assessment process. This is the
parents’ legal right.

8. HOW STUDENTS ARE IDENTIFIED FOR ASSESSMENT
3. Other school personnel may suspect the presence
of a learning or behavior problem and ask the
student’s parents for permission to evaluate the
student individually:
• This may have resulted from a student scoring far
below his or her peers on some type of screening
measure and thereby alerting the school to the
possibility of a potential problem.

9. INDIVIDUALS INVOLVED IN THE ASSESSMENT PROCESS-
THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAM (MDT)
• Under IDEA, an evaluation of a child with a suspected
disability must be made by a multidisciplinary team.
• These professionals must use a variety of assessment
tools and strategies to gather relevant functional and
developmental information, including information
provided by the parent, that will assist in determining
whether a child has a disability as defined under
federal law.

10. Members of the Multidisciplinary
Team
• Regular education teacher
• School psychologist
• Educational evaluator
• Special education teacher
• Speech and language clinician
• Medical personnel (when appropriate)
• Social worker
• School/guidance counselor
• Parents
• School nurse
• Occupational and physical therapists (when appropriate)

11. COMPONENTS
OF A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT
An evaluation for special education should always be conducted
on an individual basis.
• When completed, it is a comprehensive assessment of the
child’s abilities.
• Under IDEA 2004, no single procedure is used as the sole
criterion for determining an appropriate educational program
for a child.
• Further, the child must be assessed in all areas related to the
suspected disability
• A comprehensive assessment should normally include many of
the following:

12. COMPONENTS
OF A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT
• An individual psychological evaluation including general
intelligence, instructional needs, learning strengths and
weaknesses, and social emotional dynamics
• A thorough developmental, social, and academic history based
on interviews with parents and student
• A physical examination including specific assessments that
relate to vision, hearing, and health
• A classroom observation of the student in his or her current
educational setting

13. COMPONENTS
OF A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT
• An appropriate educational evaluation
• A behavioral assessment
• Speech and language evaluations, when appropriate
• Physical and/or occupational evaluations, when
indicated
• Interviews with the student/parents and significant
others in his or her life

14. METHODS OF ASSESSMENT USED IN SPECIAL EDUCATION
• OBSERVATIONS
• Observation: An assessment technique whereby one
observes the student in his or her natural
environments.
• Observing the student and his or her environment is
an important part of any assessment process.

15. Observations
• Observations in the classroom and in other settings
where the student operates can provide valuable
information about:
• Academic skills
• Motor skills
• Communication skills
• Social skills

16. Two Types of Observations
• 1. Nonsystematic observation: Observer simply watches the
observer in his or environment and notes the behaviors,
characteristics, and personal interactions that seem
significant.
• 2. Systematic Observation: Here, the observer sets out to
observe one or more precisely defined behaviors. The observer
specifies observable events that define the behavior and then
measures the behavior in a certain way.

17. Observations
• Advantages-Get to see spontaneous behavior
• Disadvantages-
• (1) No control over the situations
• (2) Observer Bias

18. Observation Bias
• One source of error may come from the observer -- he or she must record
accurately, systematically, and without bias.
• If his or her general impression of the student influences how he or she
rates that student in regards to specific characteristics, the data will be
misleading and inaccurate.
• This can be especially true if the student comes from a background that is
different from the majority culture.
• In such cases, it is important that the observer have an understanding of,
and a lack of bias regarding, the student's cultural or language group.

19. Common
Observational Techniques
• 1. Anecdotal Recording: The observer
describes incidents or behaviors
observed in a particular setting in
concrete, narrative terms (as opposed
to drawing inferences about feelings or
motives).
• This type of record allows insight into
cause and effect by detailing what
occurred before a behavior took place,
the behavior itself, and consequences
or events that occurred after the
behavior.
•

20. Common
Observational Techniques
• 2. Event Recording: The observer is interested in recording the number of
times a specific behavioral event occurred (such as how many times the
student hits or gets out of his or her seat).
• A tally sheet listing the behaviors to be observed and counted is useful;
when the observer sees the behavior of interest, he or she can simply make
a tick mark on the sheet.
• 3. Duration Recording: This method usually requires a watch or clock, so
that a precise measurement of how much time a student spends doing
something of concern to the teacher or assessment team (e.g., talking to
others, tapping, rocking) can be recorded.

21. ECOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT
• When observing the child in many different environments, you
are conducting an Ecological Assessment
• Ecological assessment involves directly observing and
assessing the child in the many environments in which he or
she routinely operates.
• The purpose of conducting such an assessment is to probe how
the different environments influence the student and his or
her school performance.

22. INTERVIEWS
• Interview: An assessment technique
conducted face to face (or by telephone)
between an interviewer and an
interviewee where recorded responses to
questions are obtained.

23. Two Types of Interviews
• Structured Interview: Interview whereby a
predetermined set of questions is asked
• Unstructured Interview: Interview where
predetermined questions are asked
• Most interviews combine both structured and
unstructured interview questions

24. Advantages of an Interview
• Personal
• Emotional
• Flexible

25. Disadvantages of an Interview
• Time consuming
• “Costly”
• Rapport between interviewer and interviewee
• Concerns with student’s language ability

26. INTERVIEWS
• Interviewing the student in question, his or her
parents, teachers, and other adults or peers can
provide a great deal of useful information about the
student.
• Ultimately, an interview should be a conversation
with a purpose with questions designed to collect
information that relates to the observed or suspected
disability of the child

27. PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENTS
• Often, an initial part of the assessment process
includes examining a student's work, either by
selecting work samples that can be analyzed to
identify academic skills and deficits, or by conducting
a portfolio assessment, where folders of the student's
work are examined.

28. PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENTS
• Perhaps the most important type of assessment for
the classroom teacher is the portfolio assessment.
• A portfolio is “a purposeful collection of student
works that exhibits the student’s efforts, progress,
and achievement in one or more areas.”

29. Three General
Types of Portfolios
• 1. Working portfolio-Teacher, student, and parents
all contribute to the portfolio. Both works-in-progress
and final product pieces are included.

30. Three General
Types of Portfolios
• 2. Showcase portfolio-The portfolio houses only the student’s
best work and generally does not include works-in-progress.
The student manages the portfolio and decides what to place
in it.
• 3. Record keeping or Teacher portfolio-The portfolio houses
student test papers and work samples maintained by the
teacher. It contains work not selected by the student for
inclusion in the showcase portfolio.

31. TEST
•Test: A set of questions or tasks
administered to an individual to
determine knowledge or skills. The
results are reported in one or more
types of scores.

32. VALIDITY
• Validity is the most essential quality needed in a
measuring instrument.
• Validity denotes the extent to which an instrument is
measuring what it is supposed to measure.
• Obviously, if an instrument is not producing the
information that it is supposed to, it is essentially
worthless.

33. VALIDITY
• The greater the validity of a test, the greater our
confidence that it measures what it is designed to
measure.
• Questions about validity are of ultimate importance
for special educators because it addresses whether an
instrument fulfills the function for which it was
created.

34. Reliability
• Reliability refers to the consistency of
measurements.
• In assessment, reliability relates to the confidence in
an instrument to give the same score for a student if
the test were given more than once.
• A reliable test produces similar scores across various
conditions and situations, including different
evaluators and testing environments.

35. Norm-Referenced Tests
• A norm-referenced test, also known as an NRT,
is designed to compare student performance to
that of other students.
• In special education, almost every norm-
referenced test compares an individual
student’s score against national averages.

36. Norm-Referenced Tests
• Scores on norm-referenced tests are not interpreted
according to an absolute standard or criterion (i.e., 8
out of 10 correct) but, rather, according to how the
student's performance compares with that of a
particular group of individuals.

37. Standardization
• All norm-referenced tests include standardized
procedures.
• Standardization: Refers to structuring test materials,
administration procedures, scoring methods, and
techniques for interpreting results.
• By standardizing the test it means that all children
are receiving the same questions and procedures, no
matter where it is being administered.

38. Standardization
• Standardized tests are very much a
part of the education scene. Most of us
have taken many such tests in our
lifetime.
• There is a wide variety of standardized
tests available to assess different skill
areas.
• In the field of special education, these
include intelligence tests, math,
reading, spelling and writing tests,
perceptual tests and many others.

39. Criterion-Referenced Tests
• Criterion referenced tests (CRTs) are scored according
to a standard, or criterion, that the teacher, school,
or test publisher decides represents an acceptable
level of mastery.
• The test giver is interested what the student can and
cannot do, rather than how his or her performance
compares with those of other people.

40. Criterion-Referenced Tests
• Mastery-a level of performance on a criterion-
referenced test that shows that a student has
demonstrated the knowledge, skills, and abilities for a
unit of instruction or subject area as defined by a
predetermined standard.
• CRT are more concerned with “describing what a
student can do” rather than “comparing” her
performance to others.

41. Examples of Criterion-Referenced
Tests
• Examples of criterion-referenced questions would be:
• Does Jane do 8th grade math computation problems
with 85% accuracy?
• Did Joe get 90% of the questions correct on the social
studies exam?
• In criterion-referenced assessment, the emphasis is
on passing one or a series of questions.

42. Steps in the assessment process of a special
child
• Step 1: Data Collection
During the collection stage, background information on a child is traced and
gathered from sources such as observation, school records, teacher reports,
and parent intakes.
Multiple sources of information are required because IDEA doesn’t consider
a single procedure or group-administered instruments, such as large-scale
tests, enough to:
• Diagnose a disability
• Plan an appropriate educational program for the child
• Determine what, if any, special education or related services the child
might need

43. Instead, a full and individual evaluation conducted on the child will
collect data related to his or her:
• Health
• Motor abilities
• Vision and hearing
• General intelligence
• Communicative status
• Academic performance
• Social and emotional status

44. • Step 2: Analysis and Evaluation
Once data from various sources have been collected, an analysis is
conducted to process and understand the patterns present in the
child’s social, educational, developmental, medical, environmental, and
emotional history.
In addition to the variety of approaches used to collect data for analysis
and evaluation (such as interviews, observations, curriculum-based
assessment, and tests), IDEA also requires that schools use technically
sound instruments and processes.

45. Technically sound instruments are those assessments that have been shown
to be valid and reliable through research. For assessments and other
evaluation materials to qualify as technically sound processes, they must be:
• Administered by knowledgeable and trained professionals
• Administered according to the instructions given by the producer of the
assessments
• Used for the purposes for which the assessment measures are both valid
and reliable
A review of the existing evaluation data on the child is then carried out to
determine the child’s educational needs, as well as to determine if there’s
enough information to support his or her eligibility for special education.
This review may conclude that additional information is needed before any
determination can be made.

46. • Step 3: Determination and Recommendation
Once a child’s academic, cognitive, emotional, intellectual, perceptual,
psychological, language and medical development are evaluated, a
determination about the presence of a suspected disability can be
made.
Such a determination is followed by recommendations related to the
educational placement and program that need to be made out to the
parents, teachers, and the school.

47. If, however, additional data is needed before a determination is made,
the public agency charged with the evaluation will identify what’s
needed to determine:
• Whether the child has a particular category of disability
• The child’s present levels of performance at school and his or her
academic and developmental needs
• Whether the child requires special education and related services
• What additions or modifications, if any, may be needed in the special
education and related services (provided the child qualifies) to enable
the child to meet the goals set out in his or her IEP