KINDS OF ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES:

Many types of assessment procedures are available, requiring varying degrees of expertise. Several of these strategies will be employed in any complete educational assessment. Some combination may be used in the initial assessment, or they can be used individually to monitor program success.

FORMAL STRATEGIES:
Formal tests are structured assessment procedures with specific guidelines for administration, scoring, and interpretation of results. Norm-referenced tests compare a students performance to that of a normative group. These tests may be group or individually administered and are available for most academic subjects as well as other areas of learning. Their use is limited to students who resemble the group used as a norm in compiling the test scores. The direction for administration, scoring, and interpretation of the tests are usually very explicit. The results may be expressed with a variety of quantitative scores, such as grade equivalents, standard scores, and percentile ranks. Information about the tests statistical validity and reliability is usually presented in the manual. The results from norm-referenced tests ar e used in a number of ways, including documentation of eligibility for special education and related services and identification of general strengths and weaknesses in school learning.

An assessment may be administered to a group of individuals or to one person. Group procedures usually penalize exceptional students. Such procedures are generally not

recommended for this population because they require skills in reading, following directions, and so forth, that the handicapped student may not have. Thus, the tests may serve merely to screen, that is, to identify those students who may be handicapped. However, group tests do take much less time to administer than most individual tests.

Some are easy to administer, but are difficult to design; furthermore, interpretation is often difficult because of a lack of guidelines.

INFORMAL STRATEGIES
A variety of informal procedures are used in educational assessment to determine present levels of performance, document student progress, and/or direct instructional changes. A distinction is often made between the formal procedures just described and these less formal techniques.

Formal procedures usually are standardized, normative tests. Administration, scoring, and interpretation procedures are clearly delineated. Formal tests yield many different kinds of scores, the majority of which provide information about a students standing in relation to other students.

KINDS OF ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES FOR SPECIAL STUDENTS:

Special educational assessment involves students referred to as handicapped by P.L.94-142, that is,

Those children evaluated as being mentally retarded, hard of hearing, deaf, speech impaired, visually handicapped, seriously emotionally disturbed, orthopedically impaired, other health impaired, deaf-blind, multi-handicapped, or as having specific learning disabilities, who because of those impairments need special education and related services. (P.L.94-142, & 121a.5)

The mildly or educable mentally retarded, mildly emotionally disturbed or behavior disordered, and learning disabled students comprise the largest group of all handicapped students, about 7% of the total school-age population, and are frequently found in regular classrooms. From an educational perspective, these students share many common psychological, academic, and social problems requiring assessment. In educational terms, they are more alike than different. Hallahan, Kauffman, and Lloyd (1985) consider the major distinction among the mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, and learning disabled to be the frequency of particular problems. The area of primary concern for retarded students is general intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior; for the emotionally disturbed, emotional and social development; and for the learning disabled, academic and language disorders. While mildly handicapped students may have problems in any of these areas, each handicap is characterized by its own set of frequently occurring problems.

TABLE 2-2 Steps in educational assessment:

1. Screening-The student is identified as having a possible handicapping condition related to school performance problems. 2. Referral-The student is referred to special education for assessment and his/her parents informed. 3. Design of the Individualized Assessment Plan-Stated assessment questions are used to guide the assessment. The procedures, personnel, and timeline are designated. 4. Parental permission for assessment-Parents agree, in writing, to the assessment. 5. Administration, scoring, and interpretation-The appropriate formal and informal diagnostic instruments a re used by the assessment team. 6. Reporting results-The assessment data are interpreted and discussed with the students parents and other team members. 7. Deciding eligibility for special education-The team examines the students needs and assessment data in relationship to eligibility criteria. 8. Design of the Individualized Education Plan-The team establishes goals and objectives of the students program, including the amount of time in the least restrictive environment and a timeline for program evaluation. 9. Parental agreement to the IEP-The students parents indicate their agreement with all elements of the IEP, including placement in special education.

CRITERIA FOR THE SELECTION OF ASSESSMENT TOOLS:

One purpose of P.L. 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, was the establishment of a set of procedures to guard against inappropriate assessment and placement practices. As Table 3-1 suggests, this law provides safeguards to prevent reoccurrence of past abuses. Although appropriate assessment procedures are mandated by P.L.94-142, its regulations, and the state laws resulting from it, actual practice may fall short of intended goals. However, special education laws do attempt to describe an exemplary system for assessment of handicapped students.

LEGAL GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSMENT:

The regulations for P.L. 94-142 provide specific guidelines for the evaluation and placement of handicapped individuals in special education programs. This law focuses on the use of assessment information for legal decisions, that is, decisions about identification and determination of eligibility for special education services. This type of information has implications for long-range instructional decisions such as those associated with design of the Individualized Education Program (IEP). However, laws such as P.L.94-142 do not attempt to regulate classroom assessment and the day-to-day instructional decisions faced by practitioners.

P.L.94-142 includes several guidelines for the selection of assessment tools and the conduct of the assessment process. They are described in the following section.

ASSESSMENT IS NONDISCRIMINATORY:
P.L.94-142 expressly forbids three types of discrimination. First, assessment tools must be free of racial and cultural bias. Tests and other procedures must be selected on this basis, and care must be taken to prevent the intrusion of bias into test administration. Second, if a students native language is not English, every effort must be made to provide assessment tools in the students language. This mandate extends not only to individuals who speak languages other than English but also to those whose mode of communication is not spoken language.

ASSESSMENT FOCUSES ON EDUCATIONAL NEEDS:

The major purpose of assessment is to determine educational needs. Although the presence of a handicapping condition must be established to support eligibility for special education services, simply identifying a student as mentally retarded or learning disabled is insufficient. Attention must also be directed to the specific educational needs resulting from the disability.

ASSESSMENT IS COMPREHENSIVE AND MULTIDISCIPLINARY:

All important areas of student performance must be studied. Although intelligence tests may be used, they must be accompanied by other measures that assess

educational needs. The results of a single measure must never be the sole basis for placement in special education. The assessment must be so comprehensive that no important area of performance is neglected; several sources should be consulted for information about the student. Health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities may be considered, if these are areas of potential need for the student under assessment. The assessment must also be multidisciplinary. The team must consist of professionals representing several disciplines, including at least one person knowledgeable about the students suspected disability.

ASSESSMENT TOOLS ARE TECHNICALLY ADEQUATE AND ADMINISTERED BY TRAINED PROFESSIONALS:

Assessment devices must be good measurement tools that have been validated for the specific purpose for which they will be used. They must display adequate technical quality to insure accurate results. If the goal is study of reading achievement, the instrument chosen must be a valid measure of reading achievement. Assessment must also be conducted by trained professionals. The administration, scoring, and interpretation rules set forth in the measures manual must be scrupulously followed.

RIGHTS OF HANDICAPPED STUDENTS AND THEIR PARENTS ARE PROTECTED DURING ASSESSMENT:
Throughout the assessment process, safeguards protect the rights of handicapped individuals and their parents or guardians. Parents must be notified when a student is referred for assessment; they must receive information about their rights; and their informed consent is necessary before assessment begins. No student may be placed in special education without a comprehensive assessment that includes evaluation of his or her educational needs.

In answering the assessment questions about the eligibility of mildly handicapped students, generally assessed areas include school achievement, intellectual performance and adaptive behavior, specific learning abilities and strategies, and classroom behavior. In Part II we suggest skills to be tested, mention the major issues and trends involved in such assessments, and provide a current perspective of practices. Of particular interest should be a description of the sources of information (for example, school records, the student, teachers and parents) and how to gather the data.

Several widely used tests are described fully: parts of the test, the appropriate student population, types of scores obtained, known quality of the test, and how to interpret the results to answer assessment questions are all covered. Suggestions from practical

experience will prepare you for potential difficulties, and examples will show you how to score and interpret the test.

SPECIFIC LEARNING ABILITIES AND STRATEGIES:

Specific learning abilities and strategies are one of the assessment teams major concerns in considering a students eligibility for special education services. Students may show school performance problems despite average intellectual performance; one reason for this may be deficits in specific learning abilities. Such students are usually identified as learning disabled. Individuals with other handicaps may also experience difficulty in certain learning abilities and strategies. For example, attentional problems re often associated with students identified as behavior disordered.

In planning a students assessment, the special education team poses several questions about handicapping conditions. The major concern is this: Is the school performance problem related to a handicapping condition? Usually assessment begins with study of the students current school performance and general aptitude for learning. Then the team continues by investigating other domains, including specific learning abilities.

Vision and hearing are important considerations for all students, including those with possible deficits in specific learning abilities. Screening for vision and hearing problems is routinely conducted in schools. The results of screening procedures

should be reviewed when students are referred for special education assessment. Although vision and hearing are not considered specific learning abilities, they are closely related.

CONSIDERATIONS IN ASSESSMENT OF SPECIFIC LEARNING ABILITIES:

Specific learning abilities refer to an individuals capacity to successfully participate in certain aspects of the learning task or in certain types of learning. Among the specific abilities that interest educators are attention, perception, memory, and the processes of receiving, associating, and expressing information. Specific abilities are more circumscribed than general learning aptitude; they usually do not affect all areas of learning. In young children, the development of specific abilities is often viewed as a precursor to the acquisition of academic skills. In this context, specific abilities may be regarded as readiness skills; this type of assessment is described in Chapter 17 on evaluation in the preschool years. Specific abilities are also concern for older students who fail to acquire basic academic skills at the expected rate.

PURPOSES:
Learning abilities and strategies are assessed to determine the students strengths and weaknesses in various types and methods of learning. This information may aid in planning instructional interventions for any student, and is also important in determining whether school performance problems are related to the handicapping condition of learning disabilities.

1. A severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability must be documented. The discrepancy must occur between expected and actual achievement in at least one of the following skill areas: oral expression, listening comprehension, written expression, basic reading skill, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation, or mathematics reasoning. 2. The discrepancy must exist despite the provision of appropriate learning experiences. Underachievement cannot be simply due to lack of instruction. 3. The discrepancy cannot be the result of other handicaps or conditions. Excluded from consideration are learning problems due primarily to visual, hearing, or motor handicaps; mental retardation; emotional disturbance; and environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION ABOUT SPECIFIC LEARNING ABILITIES:

There are several sources of information about students specific learning abilities, learning strategies, and study skills. School records, teachers, parents, and the students themselves are all able to make important contributions.

SCHOOL RECORDS:
School records may provide some clues to a students past or current levels of functioning. Of particular importance are records of results of periodic vision and hearing screenings.

READINESS TEST RESULTS:

Results of group tests of school readiness may be available for some students. Readiness measures are usually administered at the end of kindergarten or at the beginning of first grade, so results are most meaningful for first and second graders.

RESULTS OF VISION AND HEARING SCREENING:

The team should review the students health record to determine the dates and results of vision and hearing screenings. If possible problems were indicated, the team should check to see if the student was referred for further assessment and what the results were. Were recommended treatments carried out? For example, if corrective lenses were prescribed, were eyeglasses or contact lenses purchased and does the student wear them as directed? If there is no record of recent vision and hearing checks, the team should arrange for these as soon as possible.

INFORMATION ABOUT APTITUDEACHIEVEMENT DISCREPANCIES:

There may be some information in the school records that points to discrepancies between the students aptitude for learning and actual achievement. For example, past teachers may have commented about the students failure to achieve to capacity. Or the school record may contain results of group achievement and intelligence tests

administered earlier in the students school career. Although these types of data are historical rather than current, they may indicate a continuing pattern of performance.

THE STUDENT:
The student is an important participant both in the formal assessment of specific abilities and strategies and in informal assessment. Older students in particular can assist the team by describing their strategies for learning.

INDIVIDUAL MEASURES OF SPECIFIC LEARNING ABILITIES:

Students may participate in the administration of individual tests of specific abilities when technically adequate measures are available. Specific ability tests are usually designed for elementary grade students. With older students, the team may administer pertinent subtests of individual tests of intellectual performance. During test administration, the student is carefully observed to determine the strategies he or she uses for task completion.

CURRENT LEARNING STRATEGIES AND STUDY SKILLS:

Informal techniques are typically used to evaluate these. Students can be observed in the classroom to determine what methods they use to learn new material. For example, an observer can record a students behaviors during lectures, class

discussions, or independent work periods. Interviewing is another technique. Students can be asked to describe the study methods they use in school and at home. They can also be interviewed while engaged in a learning task. In addition, samples of the students work may provide clues about poor work habits or inefficient study strategies.

TEACHERS:
Teachers have many opportunities to observe the specific learning abilities, strategies, and study skills of students in their classroom.

CURRENT ABILITIES AND STRATEGIES FOR LEARNING:

Teachers can describe how students go about learning new skills and information. In particular, teachers should be asked to discuss any learning problems the student exhibits. For example, does the student have difficulty paying attention to relevant aspects of the task at hand? Is he or she unable to remember previously learned material? Teachers can also report about students current study skills. Does the student listen to directions and ask questions when necessary? Is he or she able to follow directions?

CURRENT APTITUDE-ACHIEVEMENT DISCREPANCIES:

Teachers may be able to comment about the match between the achievement expected of a particular student and that students current performance. For instance, a teacher may observe that a student appears to understand the course material in class discussions but performs poorly on written examinations, Such observations are important indicators of aptitude-achievement discrepancies.

PARENTS:
Like teachers, parents have many opportunities to observe their child in learning situations. Parents also have information about their childs current health status and medical history in relation to vision and hearing problems.

HISTORY OF TREATMENT FOR VISION AND HEARING PROBLEMS:

If school records do not contain information about the students vision and hearing, parents may be able to supply this. If routine vision or hearing checks at school or by the family physician indicated possible problems, the students parents can describe what treatments, if any, were recommended and carried out. If necessary parents can refer school personnel to the appropriate medical professional for more information.

HOME OBSERVATIONS OF CURRENT LEARNING ABILITIES AND STRATEGIES:

Based upon their observations of their child in many learning situations, parents can describe typical strategies for learning and recurrent problems. They may comment, for example, on their childs attention span, perseverance in problem solving, or ways of remembering things. Parents can also describe the Study strategies used at home to complete class ass

SCREENING FOR SENSORY IMPAIRMENTS:

A first priority in the assessment of any student referred for school performance problems is determine current status in vision and hearing. Undetected and untreated sensory impairments can interfere with school learning. Sensory acuity in hearing and vision is the concern in screening. Acuity refers to the ability of the sense organ to register stimuli. Sensory screening programs identity students in need of in-depth assessment. These persons are then referred to appropriate health professionals for a comprehensive examination.

VISION:
Vision can be impaired in many ways. Students may have difficulty seeing objects at a distance In this condition, known as nearsightedness or myopia, near vision is clearer than far vision. Far sightedness or hyperopia is the opposite; vision is clearer for far distance objects. A third type of disorder, astigmatism, is a condition in which

vision is blurred or distorted. Myopia, hyperopia, and ac astigmatism are considered refractive disorder. They are very common among school-aged children but are usually correctable with eyeglasses or contact lenses (Caton, 1985). When a vision problem can be corrected, it is not considered a disability. Other types of vision problems are muscle disorders, restricted peripheral vision, and impairments in color vision. Muscle disorders involve the external muscles that control the eye movement An example is strabismus or crossed eyes in which a muscle imbalance prevents the eyes from focusing simultaneously on the same object. Peripheral or side vision refers to the wideness of the visual field. If peripheral vision is severely impaired, the visual field is limited so the individual only sees objects directly in front of him or her; this condition is known as tunnel vision. Tunre vision, if uncorrected, is considered a severe enough handicap to be included as a type of legal blindness. Disorders can also occur in color vision reducing the ability to distinguish between colors. Although color blindness is not considered a disability, it can have a deleterious effect upon some aspects of school performance. Teachers must know when they have color-blind students so colorcued materials and other educational uses of color can be minimized.

HEARING:
The two primary types of hearing loss are conductive and sensorineural. With conductive losses, some obstruction or interference in the outer or middle ear blocks the transmission of sound. The inner ear is intact, but sound does not reach it. Among school-aged children, conductive losses are the most common type of hearing impairments (Frank, 1985). They may be caused by excessive buildup of wax in the

auditory canal or collection of fluid in the middle ear (serous otitis media). Many conductive losses can be corrected by medcal or surgical treatment (Heward & Orlansky, 1984). For example, fluid in the middle ear can be treated with a surgical procedure called a myringotomy in which small tubes are placed in the ear drum to allow drainage (Frank, 1985). Hearing aids usually benefit individuals with conductive losses.

Sensorineural losses are caused by damage to the inner ear. Sound travels to the inner ear but is not transmitted to the brain. Sensorineural hearing losses are not as responsive to medical and surgical treatment as conductive hearing losses (Heward & Orlanski 1984), although hearing aids that amplify sounds may prove beneficial. Individuals can also show a mixed hearing loss, both a conductive and a sensorineural hearing loss.

Hearing screening, like vision screening, is routine in most schools today. However, teachers and parents should also be aware of some hearing loss symptoms, so that they ca initiate hearing checks for students with possible problems.

ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING STRATEGIES:

Within the last few years, the emphasis in assessment has shifted from the study of isolated specific abilities to consideration of learning strategies. Learning strategies are the methods students employ when faced with a learning task. This change is due in part to the criticism leveled against traditional specific ability assessments and

treatment programs. It is also due to current research findings about the nature of learning disabilities.

RESEARCH FINDINGS:
Results of recent research indicate that many students with learning disabilities are characterized by inefficient and ineffective strategies for learning (Lewis, 1983). This finding has been reported in relation to the specific learning abilities of both attention and memory. Hallahan and Reeve (1980). in their summary of research on selective attention, conclude:

At this time, it appears that the most parsimonious explanation for the learning disabled childs tendency to have problems in attending to relevant cues and ignoring irrelevant cues is his inability to bring to the task a specific learning strategy. (p. 156)

Research on memory supports this (Torgesen, 1980). Learning disabled students tend to recall less information than nonhandicapped students. They approach the learning task differently and are less likely to engage in active rehearsal during the study period.

APPROACHES TO ASSESSMENT:
Although progress has been made in the development of instructional models, the assessment of learning strategies has received little attention. At present, professionals must rely upon informal measures. Specific ability tests do not provide sufficient

information because they measure abilities in isolation rather than in the context of actual learning tasks. More pertinent data are produced by observations, work sample analyses, student questionnaires and interviews, and teacher interviews.

Suggestions for the design of informal tools for the assessment of learning strategies are available in the study skills literature. However, study skills are not the same as learning strategies. The term learning strategy is usually reserved for the general cognitive strategies that students apply to tasks where learning is expected: strategies for the deployment of attention, for the rehearsal of skills and information to be learned, for generating and evaluating solutions to problems, and so forth. In contrast, study skills are more closely tied to specific school tasks and often require at least rudimentary proficiency in reading and writing. Despite these differences, both learning strategies and study skills are concerned with the students use of specific abilities. Evaluation of study habits can provide some insight into the ways the student interacts with the learning task.

STRATEGIES FOR ASSESSING ARTICULATION:

Articulation refers to the production of speech sounds or phonemes. There are 44 speech sounds in the English language (Polloway Smith, 1982). Twenty-five are consonantal sounds such as the initial phonemes in mother and baby. Consonantal sounds are produced by movements of the articulators (tongue, lips, teeth, palate and so forth). There are also 19 vocalic sounds (e.g., the initial phonemes in at and open); when these are produced, the air passes through the mouth without obstruction. Table

13-2 presents the phonemes in the English language and examples of words containing these sounds.

Some experts separate vocalic sounds into two categories: vowels and diphthongs. Diphthongs are made up of a combination of two vowel sounds. Examples are the medial phonemes in each of these words: paid, time, couch, and boil (Culatta & Culatta, 1981).