How Do You Assess Exceptional Students? (Day 22)

I walked into Rosemary Kennedy School with ideas in my mind.  It was my first job out of school, I was blessed that my supervisor agreed to be my CFY mentor.  I had a caseload of 11 children and was ready to stand on my head to get the job done.  Floortime/DIR approaches were going to be used, AAC technologies were going to be expanded, and I was going to help all of my students.

Then I realized I was going to have to test some of my students.

The days of a clinical evaluation in grad school went dancing through my head.  Articulation, voice, fluency, hearing, multi-faceted language evaluation, conversational speech sample, language sample...you get the idea.

I quickly learned through observation that a school triennial evaluation for CSE and a clinical evaluation are 2 different animals.  Completely.

Clinical evaluations require time you don't have in school.

Clinical evaluations look at the whole picture while a school evaluation is really looking at academic impact.

Clinical evaluations are like 8 pages.  A school one doesn't get close to that (unless you are better at your job than me!)

Please don't get me wrong.  Clinical evaluations are necessary.  They provide a ton of information to a client and/or their family.  

Also, school evaluations don't sell a student short.  It's a scapel whereas a clinical evaluation is a broad sword.  Pardon the analogy, but the school evaluation in the right hands can give a lot of information and tell a story about a student that is pertinent to their time in school and how they are learning.

What do I need a school evaluation to do when I'm assessing exceptional children?

• look at understanding of basic vocabulary
• The ROWPVT and EOWPVT can get the job done here.  I've never used the Peabody, but have had school mentors recommend staying away from it.  The MAVA is good and the response analyzer online can be helpful with exceptional and more typical kids.  Getting Tier 1, 2, and 3 numbers is very Beck and McKeown.
• following verbal directions
• We need our students to follow verbal directions.  I will give portions of the Following Directions and/or Linguistic Concepts on CELF-5 and informally look at following directions when giving subtests of the TOLD P:4, TAPS-III, or Goldman-Fristoe.  
• When our students need multiple presentations, extra examples, or simplified directions, it can speak volumes about the way work should look in the classroom.  
• speech clarity
• the clarity of speech for some of our students can make or break their day, both academically and behaviorally.  The Goldman-Fristoe or DEAP serve me well here.  
• I like to look at multi-syllabic word presentations as well- this TPT resource has served me well in getting information I can report qualtitatively. 
• This app also allows me to get multiple presentations of words that I can look at qualitatively
• reading between the lines
• This checklist has been invaluable when trying to present the total picture about a student.  Whereas some tests don't provide all of the information that we need, this checklist can be helpful in fleshing things out.

This list may seem simplistic, but it has served me well in the years I have been doing these kinds of evaluations.  There are a few other considerations that must be considered.

• Talking with families: One difficulty is communicating results.  Many of my exceptional students provide me with qualitative information that is helpful in getting a better picture of students, however, percentiles and standard scores can be low.  It is not easy to speak with a parent about a 1st or 5th percentile score and also talk about progress.  I like to equate the process of evaluation as being a snapshot in time- we are spending a few hours with a student testing them whereas the rest of their day gives us opportunities to see change.
• an additional consideration is the norming of standardized tests.  It's hard to find one that reports norms on students with significant disabilities, so sometimes we are using the "wrong" measure to learn more about a student 
• use of AAC: Some of my students are minimally verbal or non-verbal at the time in which we test.  Voice output AAC is usually my default fall back, while some students of course use PECS.  With the exception of some receptive language tests, it's hard to get a read on expressive skills.  I like to report qualitative use of any AAC system.  For example, wants/needs that are communicated, use of sentence stems, asking questions, and length of AAC utterance are all helpful.

Evaluating exceptional children can seem like an overwhelming task.  What tests to pick, how to communicate information, and reliably getting the information that you need about a student are critical to a solid evaluation.  Use these recommendations to get yourself started, and leave me any ideas or questions in the comments!