Psychoeducational Assessment Practices

In making decisions about the existence of mild disabilities, most states require assessment information about three areas of functioning:

(1) general intellectual performance, (2) educational performance, and (3) performance related to specific disabilities. (index of Disability)

in the 1997 Amendments to IDEA to include:

(1) informed parental consent prior to assessment or reevaluation; (2) right to seek an independent educational evaluation; and (3) inclusion of parent input in determining eligibility for special education.

Schools and agencies providing special education programs and services must:

(a) notify parents of a referral for assessment, (b) obtain parental permission for assessment, (c) provide information to parents concerning assessment results, (d) request and actively seek parental participation in IEP development, (e) obtain parental permission for a child to be placed in special education programs or receive special education services, (f) review the IEP at least annually with opportunity for parental input, and (g) give parents the right to an appeal process regarding the decisions made.

In mental retardation, intellectual performance that is at least two standard deviations below the mean of either*

(a) one of the following three types of adaptive behavior: conceptual, social, or practical, or (b) an overall score on a standardized measure of conceptual, social, and practical skills.

three factors to consider during Ecological (environmental) assessments are

(a) the student's deviant or nondeviant behavior, (b) the student's functional competence, and (c) the tolerance of the microecology (i.e., the classroom) for deviant and/or incompetent student behaviors. Environments with a high tolerance for differences accept greater ranges of student behaviors.

Informal inventories

-An informal assessment device that samples the student's ability to perform selected skills within a curricular sequence.

The Analytical Reading Inventory has four unique features:

1. provides a complete description of the procedures used in development and validation. 2. contains both narrative and expository passages carefully prepared to be "motivational and nonsexist in nature" 3. provides several types of comprehension questions ranging from those that require literal thinking about the passage to those in which the reader must make interpretations about the text. 4. it encourages both quantitative and qualitative analysis of decoding errors.

Put the steps in assessment in order:*

1.Identification and referral 2.determination of eligibility 3.program planning 4.program implementation and monitoring 5. Determination of eligability

five primary outcomes of the functional assessment process are**

1.description of problem behaviors, 2.Identification of the factors, times, events and situations that influence or predict when behaviors will and will not occur, 3.development of hypotheses of why the behavior occurs. 4.program planning and 5. replacement behaviors

Every __ years, or more often if necessary, the student's eligibility for special education services must be reevaluated.***

3

A common practice is to observe daily for a minimum of**

5 days.

The minimum acceptable rate of agreement between observers is

80%

Specific Learning Disabilities

A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.

Balanced literacy*

An approach to teaching reading in which both decoding and comprehension skills are stressed. This approach includes both reading and writing and focuses on the acquisition of both decoding and comprehension skills.

Informal Reading Inventory (IRI)

An informal assessment device that measures both word recognition and comprehension skills; scores include Instructional, Independent, and Frustration reading levels. These measures are grade-referenced, not norm-referenced. The standard of comparison is the grade level of the material the student is reading, not the performance of other students. (ex DRA)

Work sample analysis-*

An informal assessment technique in which samples of student work are studied.

Task Analysis*

An unobtrusive informal assessment technique in which a task is broken into its essential components or subtasks.

Sequence analysis*

As with continuous recording, the teacher observes and records all the behaviors of the student within a specified time period. In addition, an attempt is made to record the events or actions preceding and following each behavior. Identification of the antecedents and consequences of a student's behaviors provides information about how events in the environment may influence the student's actions.

Phonological processing-**

Awareness of the sounds that make up words and the ability to recognize likenesses and differences among sounds. (discrimination among phonemes, rhyming, sequencing, and recall.)

________________ are a special type of assessment procedure in which the student acts as informant and questions are designed to identify the strategies the student uses when attempting to perform a task.**

Clinical interviews. These are usually conducted as a student is completing a task.

Duration recording**

Here the observer records the time a behavior begins and the time it ends to determine its length.

structural analysis.

In this method, words are broken into syllables to analyze prefixes, suffixes, root words, and endings.

Four Blocks framework

In this model, each day students engage in four types of literacy activities: working with words (i.e., word study), guided reading, self-selected reading, and writing.

Latency recording

In this system, the observer determines the amount of time it takes a student to begin doing something.

Written language:

Includes the receptive skill, reading, and the expressive skill, writing. written language is often one of the areas of focus in special education assessment.

No Child Left Behind." According to Bush (2001), this initiative has four major goals:**

Increase accountability for student performance, focus on what works, reduce bureaucracy and increase flexibility, and empower parents

_______________ is one of the most important components of communicating.**

Listening

miscue analysis.*

Miscues are analyzed to determine whether they represent a change in meaning from the original text.

Prereferral strategies*

Modifications of the general education program to promote student success and prevent referral to special education.

Reliability

Refers to a test's consistency; types of reliability include test-retest, alternate form, split-half, and interrater.

Learning aptitude

The capacity for altering one's behavior when presented with new information; the ability to learn; generally measured by tests of intellectual performance and adaptive behavior. General learning aptitude is assessed to gain a better understanding of the student's (Intelligence) ability to cope with the demands of the instructional and other environments that require changes in behavior.

validity*

The degree to which a test measures what it purports to measure;

Event recording

The frequency of the behavior is noted in event recording. The observer simply makes a notation each time the behavior of interest occurs.

criterion-related validity*

The instrument is validated in terms of some outside criterion.For example, a new test of academic achievement might be validated against an existing achievement test, school grades, or teacher ratings of academic performance

scorer reliability, also called interrater or interobserver reliability.**

This type is concerned with the consistency among persons who evaluate the performance of the individual being assessed; it is most important when scoring standards are subject to interpretation. If two different professionals rate a student's responses to test items, their ratings should be consistent.

Four major intelligence tests that are used frequently are

WISC -Wechsler intelligent scale for children, WISC -Wechsler intelligent scale for children, The KABC-II (Kaufman & Kaufman)-has a non-verbal scale, and the The KABC-II (Kaufman & Kaufman, Stanford-Binet Intelligent Scale , and The Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ-III) Test of Cognitive Abilities

Language is

a communication system characterized by the use of symbols for the transmission of information.

Curriculum-based assessment is*

a direct approach of any informal assessment technique or procedure that evaluates the student's performance in relation to the standard school curriculum.

The Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III)

a norm-referenced measure made up of 42 subtests arranged in two main parts: the Tests of Cognitive Abilities and theTests of Achievement. One of the features of theWJ III is its capacity to assess both learning aptitude and academic performance within one assessment system. The WJ III Tests of Achievement are designed to provide information about five areas of the curriculum: reading, oral language, mathematics, written language, and academic knowledge.

Functional assessment (also called functional behavioral assessment) is

an informal assessment technique that includes direct observation. However, it goes beyond observation because it is designed to gather the information needed to plan positive behavioral interventions for students with challenging behaviors.

Decoding skills*

are word recognition skills; decoding occurs when a student looks at a word, or the letters that make up the word, and then pronounces the word.

Anaphoric terms **

are words that are used as substitutes for words or phrases that have already appeared in a text."The dog and cat ate their supper. They liked it." there are three anaphoric terms: their and they, referring to the dog and cat, and it, referring to the supper.

Direct measures

attempt to answer an assessment question about a particular student or classroom condition by assessing that characteristic or condition.

Nondiscrete behaviors are also measurable,*

because during any given time period an observer can determine whether a student is displaying the behavior.

In mental retardation, intellectual performance must be*

below average, and there must be deficits in adaptive behavior.

Six themes or dimensions of collaborative partnerships including:

communication, commitment, equality, skills, trust, and respect.

criterion-referenced tests (CRTs)**

compare a student's performance to the goals of the curriculum rather than to the performance of a norm group.

Split-half reliability

concerns a measure's internal consistency and is studied with one form of a measure and one group.

response analysis

considers both the correct and incorrect responses of the student. Like other types of observation, it involves the steps of describing the behavior, selecting a measurement system, and deciding upon a data-reporting system. In response analysis, the teacher is usually interested in these dimensions of human behavior: frequency, duration, rate, and percentage.

types of validity include

content, criterion-referenced (predictive and concurrent), and construct.

Discrete behaviors are measured by

counting their frequency or timing their duration.

Among the most commonly used informal assessment tools are:

criterion-referenced tests of specific reading objectives, error analysis of students' oral reading performance, teacher checklists, diagnostic teaching, and clinical reading interviews.

The primary purpose of functional assessment is*

determination of the reason(s) for a student's inappropriate behaviors so that a successful behavior change program can be implemented. Put simply, the goal is to understand the function of the inappropriate behavior for the student.

A student's adaptive behavior can be assessed by

direct observation

One of the most frequently used techniques in the informal assessment of reading is

error analysis.

In the __________ mode, the speaker or writer attempts to communicate ideas;**

expressive

The first phase in the assessment process is the _____________ of students with possible disabilities. This phase involves the_______________ number of students.*

identification, largest

The Peabody Individual Achievement Test - Revised/Normative Update (PIAT-R/NU)

is a norm-referenced measure commonly used in special education for identifying academic deficiencies. The PIAT -R/NU is made up of six subtests: General Information, Reading Recognition, Reading Comprehension, Mathematics, Spelling, and Written Expression.

Error analysis*

is a type of work sample analysis in which the incorrect responses of the student are described and categorized. The key to a successful analysis is identification of one or more patterns

The cloze procedure*

is an informal technique for determining whether a particular textbook or other reading material is within a student's instructional reading level and, every fifth word is deleted and replaced with a blank

Concurrent validity

is concerned with a measure's relationship to some current criterion.

The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test - Second Edition (WIAT-II)

is unusual because it assesses all of the achievement areas included in the federal definition of learning disabilities: oral expression, listening comprehension, basic reading skills, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation, mathematics reasoning, and written expression. In addition, achievement results can be compared with results of one of its companion tests of intellectual performance;

The readability of a passage is influenced by*

its content, vocabulary, and organization, and by the structure of its sentences.

Before test administration begins, each of the following factors should be explained by the tester in language appropriate to the student's age and ability level.*

length of test, test activities, test difficulty, confirmation of responses, and timed tests

The disability most directly related to learning aptitude is

mental retardation.

Students with ______________ comprise the largest group of all students with disabilities, approximately _% to _% of the total school-age population and about ___% of the population of those identified as disabled*

mild disabilities, 6,7, 70

Curriculum-Based Assessment (CBA) refers to**

models of assessment that emphasize a direct relationship to the student's curriculum.

.An observation technique where the observer simply describes events in writing. The description may be of one type of event or incident (anecdotal record) or of a sequence of events (ethnographic record).

narrative report

In assessing problem classroom behaviors, it is important to consider **

not only the behavior itself, but also the instructional events and conditions that precede it.

The different types of informal assessment are

observation, informal inventories, classroom tests and quizzes, and criterion-referenced tests, diagnostic probes and diagnostic teaching and the technique of curriculum-based measurement (CBM).

Equivalent-forms reliability is

of interest when there is more than one form of the same measure and these forms are designed to be used interchangeably.

Poor _______________ can inhibit the development of written language, just as lack of proficiency in _________ can interfere with the acquisition of writing skills.

oral language, reading

in the __________ mode, the listener or reader attempts to comprehend the ideas expressed by the speaker or writer.**

receptive

Predictive validity*

refers to a measure's ability to predict future performance.

The greatest limitation of informal assessment tools is the lack of information about

reliability and validity.

Correlational techniques are the most usual methods for studying

reliability.

three qualities that professionals can bring to their interactions with parents that lay the groundwork for effective communication:

respect, nonjudgmental attitude, and empathy.

_________ is the language skill emphasized on the traditional individual tests of achievement used in special education.**

spelling

The maze is essentially the same as the standard cloze except that**

students are presented with choices for each omitted word; this changes the task from completion to multiple choice.

the constructivist view is when

students construct their own knowledge by building upon the prior knowledge they bring with them to the learning situation.

Diagnostic teaching

takes place over an extended time period to investigate fully the differential effects of various instructional interventions.

Phonemic awareness-*

the ability to recognize that the words we hear are composed of individual sounds within the word. Those individual sounds are called phonemes.

Test-retest reliability refers to

the consistency of a measure from one administration to another

The major Instructional concerns are

the content of the student's curriculum (i.e., what to teach), the instructional methods used to implement the curriculum (i.e., how to teach), and the overall effectiveness of the instructional program.

contextual analyses

the context of the sentence or paragraph in which the unfamiliar word appears is the subject of analysis.

construct validity

the degree to which an instrument measures the theoretical construct it intends to measure.

Adaptive behavior has been defined as

the effectiveness or degree with which individuals meet the standards of personal independence and social responsibility expected for age and cultural group" and, more recently, as "the collection of conceptual, social, and practical skills that have been learned by people in order to function in their everyday lives

Content validity is defined as

the extent to which the sample of items on a test are representative of some defined universe, or domain of content".

Ecological (environmental) assessment studies

the match (or mismatch) between the behaviors of the student and the constraints imposed by the environment.

Sequence analysis is*

the observer records the student's behavior and the events that precede and follow that behavior.

Intelligence is

the overall capacity of an individual to understand and cope with the world around him" and the "general mental capacity" that includes "reasoning, planning, solving problems, thinking abstractly, comprehending complex ideas, learning quickly, and learning from experience

Composition can be defined as

the process by which a writer creates a written product.

the focus in assessment is*

the study of the individual student, his or her strengths and weaknesses, and the ways in which the instructional environment can be adapted to address the student's educational needs.

Assessment in Special Education is

the systematic process of gathering educationally relevant information to make legal and instructional decisions about the provision of special services.

Systematic observation such as continuous recording (or narrative recording)

the teacher is concerned with specific student behaviors and provides preliminary information to help the teacher determine if there is a problem that requires further study.

Diagnostic probes are

typically brief, one-time measures of a single instructional option and are used to discover whether changing some aspect of a classroom task will have a positive effect upon student performance

Communication skills are both __________ and ___________, and often the ______________skills are the most valuable and most difficult to learn.*

verbal, non-verbal, non-verbal

Emotional Disturbance

• (A) An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors. • (B) An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers. • (C) Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances. • (D) A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression. • (E) A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.

components of evidence-based instruction in the area of reading:*

• Phonemic awareness instruction • Phonics instruction • Fluency and guided oral reading • Vocabulary instruction • Text comprehension instruction

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) focuses on

• increased accountability for States, school districts, and schools; greater choice for parents and students, particularly those attending low-performing schools; more flexibility for States and local educational agencies (LEAs) in the use of Federal education dollars; and a stronger emphasis on reading, especially for our youngest children.