Special Education Assessments: What Schools Need to Know

Types of Special Education Assessments

Special education assessments have several options with each method involving a couple of tests to determine the student's level in specific areas, such as intelligence, mobility, and understanding. Here are the different types of assessments for students with special needs.

Academic Achievement

These tests will aid the school in evaluating how the student performs in various school subjects.

Tests: Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery

Developmental Assessments

Developmental assessments are often the first option in determining if small children will need additional help. While these tests do not apply to older students, they are still relevant in terms of diagnosis.

Tests: Development Indicators for the Assessment of Learning (DIAL-3), Denver Developmental Screening Test II

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

An IQ test will help determine if there is an intellectual component to a student’s learning disabilities or behavioral issues. This can help schools determine the best manner to help the student.

Tests: Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities, Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

Curriculum-Based Assessments

These checks are more specific, looking at where a student’s skill level lies within a certain curriculum at a certain point in time. It’s mainly used to ensure the student is progressing properly.

Tests: AIMSweb, Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills

End-of-Grade Assessments

While this method is used on all students to ensure they progress satisfactorily, special education students usually have accommodations or a separate assessment.

Tests: State Standardized Tests

Screening Tests

These tests help determine which students are below the norm in specific areas. Once the initial assessment is complete, more in-depth tests may be carried out to ensure the student has the best possible aid in overcoming the problems.

Tests: Pre-Kindergarten Screen, Revised Behavior Problem Checklist, the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test, Iowa Test of Basic Skills

Adaptive Behavioral Assessment

Students with intellectual disabilities will likely show a deficit in their regular living skills and adaptive behavior. This screening looks at how the student manages daily living skills, social abilities, motor abilities, communication, and community participation.

Tests: AAMR Adaptive Behavior Scales, Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales

Behavior Rating Scales

This method has a teacher or even a parent fill in worksheets that rate the various student behaviors. This will help show which behaviors are more challenging to manage than other students.

Tests: Social Skills Rating System, Devereux Behavior Rating Scale

Who Administers the Special Education Assessments

In most cases, teachers are unable to administer the assessments required to determine if a child requires special education. The actual test will decide who is responsible for the assessment. These may include:

• Special education teachers
• Occupational therapists
• School psychologist
• Speech and language therapist

The school will need to get written permission from the parents in order to conduct the assessments, but frequent communication with the student’s family helps. They will be more willing to cooperate when they feel like partners rather than being told after the fact of any changes made to their child’s education.

How the Results Are Used

Once the school has a clear idea of a student’s limitations, they can determine the best way to help them. This may require a 504 plan or an IEP. Read more about 504 plans here.

The assessment will help determine a child’s:

• Health Level
• General Intelligence
• Communication abilities
• Academic performance
• Emotional and behavioral status
• Vision and hearing abilities
• Motor abilities

With all this information, the student’s current levels should be marked and goals created. This process may be done with the student’s aid in many cases. They can help determine what a realistic goal is and make a plan to get there.

The necessary modifications will be determined according to the individual student. This individualization means some students may need extra tutoring while others may require regular blood sugar testing. Whatever the issue, the school should work with both teachers and parents to find the best solution.

At this point, it is also noted whether a few educational changes are enough or if the student needs to receive special education. Again, this should be discussed with all parties to ensure the student's best possible outcome.

Remember, having a disability doesn’t mean a student automatically requires special education. Their disability must fall under a specific category, according to IDEA, and will also require special education and services specifically due to the disability.

The disability categories include:

• Autism
• Deafness
• Deaf-blindness
• Developmental delay
• Emotional disturbance
• Hearing impairment
• Intellectual disability
• Orthopedic impairment
• Specific Learning disabilities
• Speech and Language impairment
• Traumatic brain injury
• Other impairments

The student must be diagnosed with one of these before the other assessments are carried out. The student often won’t need any extra educational assistance or specialized educational programming. For this reason, it’s important to evaluate each student individually.

Conclusion

To learn more about how schools can adjust to their students' needs during testing, schedule a risk-free demonstration.

If your school is interested in new ways to improve the learning experience for children, you may also be interested in automating tasks and streamlining processes so that your teachers have more time to teach. Education Advanced offers a large suite of tools that may be able to help:

• Embarc, our curriculum mapping software, helps teachers quickly analyze whether or not their curriculum is aligned with state and national standards as well as share best practice curriculum plans with other teachers to reduce duplication and with parents to keep everyone up to date.
• Evaluation allows school administrators to efficiently document every step of the staff evaluation process, including walk-throughs, self-evaluations, supporting evidence, reporting and performance analytics.
• TestHound, our test coordination software, helps schools coordinate thousands of students across all state and local K-12 school assessments while reflecting dozens of accommodations (reading disabilities, physical disabilities, translations, etc.) for students.
• Pathways is a graduation tracking tool that allows administrators and counselors to create, track and analyze student graduation pathways to ensure secondary students are on track to graduate and build an educated, talented workforce for the future.