IE - Assessing Student Needs

Inclusive Education
Assessing Student Needs

Contents
 Assessing Student Needs
– Learning Objectives
– How Do Your Student Assessments Contribute to

Special Education Decisions?
– What Information Sources Are Used in Programming

for Students with Special Needs?
How Do Your Student Assessments
Contribute to Special Education Decisions?
 Learning Objectives
1. Explain how general education teachers can contribute
significantly to the assessment process.
2. Describe the uses of high-stakes, standardized
achievement, and psychological tests in making
educational decisions for students with special needs.
3. Describe how alternate assessments for students with
significant intellectual disabilities can be developed and
scored.
4. Define curriculum-based assessment and explain how it
can help general education teachers.
5. Construct and use probes of basic academic skills,
prerequisite skills and knowledge in content areas, and
independent learning skills.
6. Use curriculum-based assessment to make special
education decisions.
MS. LYONS is concerned that Rob, a student in her second-grade class, is not
keeping up with the rest of the class in math. She knows that he will be
taking the state math test in third grade, and she is afraid that if he continues
to fall behind, he won’t meet state standards. Mr. Blair, the special education
teacher, suggests that Ms. Lyons do some informal assessment herself before
referring Rob for special education or other services.
–What kinds of assessments can Ms. Lyons use to clarify Rob’s problems
in math?
–How might these assessments help her make changes in Rob’s math
instruction?
–Under what circumstances should she refer Rob for special education or
other services?
MR. BLOUNT teaches a high school U.S. history class. He has learned that
three students with disabilities will be in his class this fall. Mr. Blount was told
that these students have some reading problems and may have trouble
reading the textbook. He decides to make up a test to give at the beginning
of the year to see how well all of his students are able to use the textbook.
Using a section of a chapter from the text, he writes questions to test how
well students can figure out the meanings of key vocabulary words, use parts
of the book (for example, the table of contents, glossary, and index), read
maps, and read for information (for example, note main ideas and draw
conclusions). When Mr. Blount gives the test, he finds that the three identified
students have trouble reading the text, but many other students also have
difficulty.
–How might Mr. Blount use the information from this assessment to
differentiate instruction for his students?
ROBERTO is a student with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities who is
in Ms. Benis’s sixth-grade social studies class. As a result of Roberto’s cerebral
palsy, he has significant cognitive, language, and motor deficits. Roberto can
read his name, as well as some high-frequency sight words. He uses a
wheelchair, and he has trouble with fine motor movements such as cutting
and handwriting. Roberto speaks with the aid of a communication board.
–How can Roberto meet state standards for sixth grade in social studies?
– What kinds of assessments can Ms. Benis use to determine whether
Roberto is meeting standards in social studies?
 A major part of the contribution that general education teacher
makes involves assessing student needs.
 Assessment has been defined as the process of gathering
information to monitor progress and to make educational
decisions when necessary (Overton, 2009).
 The most common ways of collecting information are through
 Standardized tests,
 Commercially produced tests,
 High-stakes state accountability tests, and
 Informal tests
 General education teachers contribute assessment information in
six important decision-making areas for students with special
needs:
 screening,
 diagnosis,
 program placement,
 curriculum placement,
 instructional evaluation, and
 program evaluation.
Assessment
Purpose of Assessments
 Screening
 Screening involves the decision about whether a student’s
performance differs enough from that of his or her peers to merit
further, more in-depth assessments to determine the presence of a
disability.
 Screening assessments are at the heart of prevention-based systems
such as RtI where they are referred to as universal screening
measures.
 Diagnosis
 The major decision related to diagnosis concerns revolve around
whether or not the student with disability is eligible for special
education services.
 It is a process that involves the identification of the nature of
disability or other problem by examination of the symptoms.
 General education teacher has the responsibility to determine
student’s disability through a series of tasks and considers the
following questions before reaching a conclusion.
 Does a student meet established federal guidelines for being
classified as having a disability?
 If so, what are the nature and extent of the student’s disability?
Eligibility and Diagnosis
 Program Placement
 The major program placement decision involves the setting in which a
student’s special education services take place (for example, in a general
education classroom, resource room, or separate special education
classroom).
 The individualized education program (IEP) team must make this decision
carefully.
 In today’s schools, the emphasis is on doing all that can be done within the
general education class first.
 This approach is consistent with guidelines for accessing the general
education curriculum outlined in IDEA and RtI.
 Curriculum Placement
 Curriculum placement involves deciding at what level to begin instruction for
students.
 For an elementary school teacher, such a decision may mean choosing
which reading or math book a student should use.
 At the secondary level, curriculum placement decisions are likely to
determine which class in a sequence of classes a student should take.
 Truly, information about curriculum placement also provides teachers with a
good measure of the extent to which students with disabilities are accessing
the general education curriculum, an explicit goal of IDEA.
Special Education Curriculum
 Instructional Evaluation
 Decisions in instructional evaluation involve whether to continue or
change instructional procedures that have been initiated with
students.
 These decisions are made by carefully monitoring student progress.
 For example, Ms. Bridgewater is starting a peer tutoring program to
help Cecily, a student with severe intellectual disabilities, read her
name and the names of her family members. Each week, Ms.
Bridgewater tests Cecily to see how many of the names she has
learned.
 Schools implementing RtI use information collected from progress
monitoring assessments to assign students to instructional tiers.
 Program Evaluation
 Such decisions involve whether a student’s special education
program should be terminated, continued as is, or modified.
 One consideration is whether or not the student is accessing the
general education curriculum by meeting standards, as evidenced by
reaching goals or attaining benchmark levels on assessments.
 Another way to evaluate the success of special education
programming is by monitoring the attainment of IEP goals.
What Information Sources Are Used in
Programming for Students with Special Needs?
 A number of information sources are used in programming for students
with special needs.
 The measures described in this section include
 high-stakes achievement tests,
 standardized achievement tests,
 psychological tests,
 alternate assessments, and
 curriculum-based assessments.
 High-Stakes Achievement Tests
 High-stakes tests are assessments designed to measure whether students
have attained learning standards.
 These tests are a type of assessment referred to as criterion referenced
because they involve comparing student performance to a specific level of
performance, or benchmark, rather than to a norm, or average, as with
traditional standardized achievement tests.
 Most states have created their own high-stakes tests based on an agreed-
on set of learning outcomes.
 IDEA requires that most students with disabilities take their states’ high-
stakes tests.
 This is how districts can show the degree of access to the general
education curriculum attained by students with disabilities.
 Standardized Achievement Tests
 Standardized achievement tests are designed to measure academic
progress, or what students have retained from the curriculum.
 Unlike the high-stakes tests, these tests are norm referenced.
 In a norm-referenced test, the performance of one student is compared to
the average performance of other students in the country who are the
same age or grade level.
 Student performance is often summarized using grade equivalents and/or
percentile ranks.
 Two major types of standardized achievement tests are
 group-administered and
 individually administered diagnostic tests
 Group-Administered Tests
 This kind of tests completed by large groups of students at one time; this
usually means that the general education teacher gives the test to the
entire class.
 These tests assess skills across many areas of the curriculum, and
therefore they are intended to be used solely as screening measures.
 As with any test, the general education teacher should be sure that
students with disabilities receive appropriate accommodations when taking
the test.
Standardized Testing
 Individually Administered Tests
 A special education teacher or the school psychologist usually gives
individually administered diagnostic tests as part of a student’s case study
evaluation.
 Although these tests may screen student performance in several curricular
areas, they tend to be more diagnostic in nature.
 Because individually administered diagnostic tests provide information on a
range of specific skills, they can be useful as an information source in
making educational decisions.
 Psychological Tests
 Psychological tests are used as part of the process of evaluating students
with special needs, particularly to determine whether a student has
intellectual or learning disabilities.
 Reports of the results of these tests are often written by school
psychologists and consist of a summary of the findings and the implications
for instruction.
 Psychological tests can include intelligence tests and tests related to learning
disabilities (Overton, 2009; Salvia, Ysseldyke, & Bolt 2010).
 The overall purpose of psychological tests is to measure abilities that affect
how efficiently students learn in an instructional situation.
 Psychological tests can be helpful if they clarify why students may not be
learning in class and lead to effective changes in instruction.
 Psychological Tests
 There are five general guidelines that you can follow while interpreting the
results of psychological reports:
1. Do not be intimidated by the sometimes generous quantity of
technical terms and jargon.
2. In the event of discrepancies between psychological reports and your
experience, do not automatically discount your experience.
3. Be sure to check the technical adequacy of the psychological tests
included in your report.
4. Be sure to check for possible cultural bias. Psychological tests may
discriminate against students from culturally diverse or disadvantaged
backgrounds.
5. Keep in mind that the primary purpose of psychological tests is to
establish possible explanations for particular learning, behavioral, or
social and emotional problems.
 Alternate Assessments
 This kind of assessments are taken only 1% of all students with disabilities
who typically work on a more individualized curriculum and do not have to
meet the same requirements as those students graduating with a standard
diploma.
 In other words, they are required to meet the same broad standards as
your other students, but they meet them in different, more basic ways.
 Alternate Assessments
 Alternate assessment information can be collected in a number of ways
including:
1. a portfolio or collection of student work gathered to demonstrate
student performance on specific skills and knowledge;
2. an IEP-linked body of evidence or collection of work, similar to a
portfolio, demonstrating student performance on standards-based IEP
goals and objectives;
3. a performance assessment or direct measures of a student’s skill,
usually in a one-on-one assessment;
4. A checklist of skills reviewed by persons familiar with the student; and
5. a traditional test requiring student responses, typically with a correct
and incorrect forced-choice answer format.
 Here are three questions considered when using alternate assessments
with students with severe disabilities:
1. What are the district’s eligibility requirements for alternate
assessments?
2. Is the focus of the assessment on authentic skills and on assessing
experiences in community or real-life environments?
3. Is the assessment aligned with state standards?
 Curriculum-Based Assessments
 Curriculum-based assessment (CBA) is an effective option that in many
instances can be an alternative to standardized tests.
 CBA has been defined as a method of measuring students’ level of
achievement in terms of what they are taught in the classroom (for
example, Deno, 2003; Hosp, 2008; Tucker, 1985).
 In CBA, student performance also is measured repeatedly over time, and
the results are used to guide instruction (Hosp & Hosp, 2003; Tucker,
1985).
 CBA has a number of attractive features.
1. When using CBA, you select the skills that are assessed based on what
you teach in class, thus ensuring a match between what is taught and
what is tested.
2. Curriculum-based measurement
3. (CBM) is a particular kind of curriculum-based assessment. CBM is
characterized by a research base establishing its technical adequacy,
as well as standardized measurement tasks and scoring procedures
that are fluency based (Deno, 2003).
4. Research shows that when teachers use CBA to evaluate student
progress and adjust their instruction accordingly, student achievement
increases significantly (Deno, 2003; Fuchs, Fuchs, Hamlett, & Stecker,
1991; Shinn, Collins, & Gallagher, 1998).
Assessment and Curriculum
Links to Videos
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEHhrAu3ShY
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHZsz_j_z7A
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A4WxH_wu-0
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-wPGrDJGvc

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Inclusive Education

Assessing Student Needs

– How Do Your Student Assessments Contribute to

– What Information Sources Are Used in Programming

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