Tests:
Developmental screenings(early childhood-see if a children is developing appropriately, including hearing and vision)
Rating scales (for adaptive behaviors) for children, teachers and parents - such as ADHD, to see behaviors and self-awareness.
Intelligence Measures: for learning disabilities, measure cognitive.
Achievement measures: measure the achievement, WIAT (listening comprehension and oral expression, ability to read, fluency to read, decoding skills; Maths)(pre K-12)
Student examples:
Case study 1: Ryan is a 14-year-old boy who is hard to focus during lessons. Most of the time, he’s been looking at and playing with his fingers. Sometimes he would focus on the topics that he’s interested in and share them with others without permission from teachers. Only when the teacher reminds him what to do would he realize what he should do. He easily forgets about the deadline and requirements of homework. These caused his grades to be below average. Parents denied that Ryan has been diagnosed with ADHD. In this case, Ryan would be recommended for rating scales, because it shows extent and frequency of Ryan's behaviors, skills and strategies from Ryan, his parents and teachers perspective. With the data collected, teachers could build a team to establish IEP for him. Thus monitoring his progress in attention and self-regulation skills. -
Case study 2: Tyler is a 10-year-old boy who was diagnosed with ASD. He cannot understand facial expressions, which causes difficulties in relationships with peers. He would laugh at inappropriate times during lessons and bring lots of misunderstandings. He shows great talent and high achievement in Maths, but he struggles a lot in language learning. He’s going to middle school soon after this semester. In this case, Tyler would be recommended for a intelligence measures, including verbal Intelligence Quotient (VIQ) test for spoken language capabilities and limitations, Performance Intelligence Quotient (PIQ) test, or the Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient (FSIQ) test to measure his mental capacities for middle school. Through VIQ, teachers would know better how to support Tyler in his language learning in his IEP.
Case study 3: Terrance is a 12-year-old boy who struggles in subjects that need to be studied in English, including Maths, Global Scholars and Science. As a Chinese student, he also struggles a lot in Chinese. His performance in reading and writing is as average as a grade 2 student. He can’t remember Chinese characters even after lots of practice, which affects his confidence in learning Chinese. In this case, Terrance would be recommended for an achievement measure, to see his performance in ability to read, fluency to read, decoding skills, as well as Maths, and find out the reasons behind his performance in subjects mentioned above. Meanwhile, he will also be recommended for an intelligence measure to see if his working memory is average as peers, since working memory is essential in learning.
Test student behaviors:
Rating scales: according to the video, rating scales are mainly for assessing adaptive behaviors. There are ten areas of adaptive skills: self-care, communication skills, self-direction, social skills, leisure skills, home or school living, functional academics, community use, work, and health and safety. If a student shows difficulties in these skills, and these affect his performance at school, he/she could be recommended for rating scales. In the case of Ryan, he shows a lack of self-direction, and cannot function in academics well because he forgets about the requirements and deadlines for homework. At home, his mom spends lots of time guiding him on his homework, but this doesn’t help. These have highly affected his performance in all the subjects. Thus, a rating scales that could describe Ryan’s adaptive skills from different perspectives is really important to find out how difficult some areas are for him and adapt his IEP according to the rating scales.
Intelligence Measures: It can be used to identify gifted children and children with developmental delay; or highlight areas a child excels in and point out areas where they might require extra support. For example, in case study 2, Tyler has high math skills but struggles in language learning. We can use intelligence measures to see what’s the reason behind his struggles. Is it related to verbal intelligence (including comprehension and problem-solving), or non-verbal intelligence (including solving sequential and spatial problems), or none of them? What about his working memory? As a student with ASD, intelligence is also helpful to know about if his mental capacities are suitable for learning in middle school, including his relationship with peers.
Achievement Measures: focus on current achievement level at the time of testing. If a student shows scores below average, and through support in Tier 1 and 2 still cannot meet the standard, he/she would be recommended for achievement measures. For example, in case study 3, Terrance is provided with support of Tier 1 and 2, yet his performance in most of the subjects is still below average, and has a great gap with his peers (such as his performance in Chinese reading and writing), he needs achievement measures to find the reasons behind all of these.
Role of Special Education teachers:
Teachers, students, family and psychologists collaborate to find the best way to support the student. As a special ed teacher, I should collect information from teachers and parents:
General ed teachers could provide documents such as a written log of observation, samples of assignments, a written log that details examples of student behavioral issues, and copies of student daily schedules.
Special ed teachers could ask questions to parents to get more information, including students’ interest and learning styles, observations on social skills, attentiveness, behaviors at home, etc. Then a special ed teacher could collaborate with a psychologist, to see which evaluation should be carried out, and collect documentation of student evaluation results (IQ test, achievement measures, rating scales, etc.)