Special Education Academy: Special Education Evaluations: Why and How We Evaluate Students with Disabilities

ANGELA: Thank you for joining us again at the Special Education Academy Part 4. Today, we will talk about evaluation reports and how to use them when developing your IEP. My name is Angela Haynes. I am one of the Education Advocates here at DREDF’s Parent Training Information Center.

DREDF is a unique alliance of people with disabilities and parents with children with disabilities. We envision a just world where people live full and independent lives free of discrimination.

As part of the Parent Training Information Center here at DREDF, we are available to help you understand your special the special education process. It is a free program, and there’s a PTI (Parent Training Information Center) in every state at least one. California does have several. We are just one of the many in California, and if you are would like to know the Parent Training Information Center for your area or your county, you… this is a link in a website that will help you find the Parent Training Information Center for in your area. We support parents by helping them understand special education rights, the policies and procedures. We help you review your IEP and help you prepare for IEP meeting and we can also help you debrief afterwards and make and make a a plan for your next step.

We are not attorneys, so we do not advise you as an attorney. What we do is help you learn advocacy strategies. We work with families of infants, toddlers, children, youth, with disabilities – birth to 26.

I’d like to take the time to talk about some of the some of the tests that are, where they frequently test with the abilities and skills on a psycho educational evaluation.

So some of the things in a psycho educational evaluation they look at some things such as reasoning, your ability to focus and pay attention, the memory… the working memory and long-term memory, your language and not… and language is also about how you’re able to use that language, how you’re able to understand what’s being spoken to. And your ability to learn with the information that you’re given that you’re able to not only maintain that information for this, but also being able to use it across different areas in your life and being able to apply the information that’s being that’s being taught.

So, as we talked about some crystallized knowledge, verbal reasoning, these are some areas if you look in your IEP, I mean, excuse me, when you look at your evaluations, these are some things that you may find that has been looked at.

You have that conversation with the evaluator…. really talk about what does this mean for your child? Will this… how will this this information impact the ability to learn? When we talk about the ability to generalize knowledge and verbal reasoning, how is… where does your child score in that, and how is that going to affect their ability to learn?

And in addition to that is what type of supports will you need to allow your child to make meaningful progress? When we’re looking at fluid reasoning, the ability to solve problems. Once again, once you receive the information now, how are you going to take that information and do problem-solving?

So, these are skills that if your child is struggling, that you can build different instructions and techniques to help develop and strengthen these skills when possible. The evaluator could help you determine where your child lies in these areas. There’s visual spatial processing, a short-term memory, the ability to hold information for a short time and manipulate it. long-term me retrieval. If you’ve got that information and you’re trying to recall it, this is really important.

And sometimes it will require a student to learn the same thing in the same way over and over for them to really be able to get that information in that long-term memory and be able to retrieve it. So these are things that once again speaking with that evaluator how does your where is your child with this and what type of goals and how do we need to establish these goals and build these goals and we’ll talk about that more in in the in the Part 5.

Auditory processing when information is provided when they listening to information. Are they able to understand and how do they process that? What about the different sounds around it? Do they have that ability to distinguish between the outside sounds and noise and the information that they need to receive.

So and then a processing speed. How quick are they or how are they ability to perform simple and repetitive cognitive task and quickly and efficiently? And this is really important because sometimes when we’re asking something of a of a child and we are expecting them to respond quickly, sometimes we may end up giving them several demands in a short period of time and can cause frustration for that child especially if they have a slower than expected processing speed.

So, these are just some areas that they can provide an assessment. That they can review when your child is having an evaluation. And these skills are measured by standardized tests administrated in a one-on-one setting with a school psychologist.

Additional skills to evaluate is sensor motor skills, the ability to use one’s eyes and hands in a coordinated and efficient way, visual and motor integration. And this is a very important skill, and this also can… having the right evaluator such as OT, occupational therapist, to evaluate these areas can make a difference of really identifying where your child’s areas of needs are.

The ability to attention and executive functioning. The ability to direct attention, keep it sustained over time, beginning tasks, switching from one mental task to another with efficiency, and remembering instructions and juggling mental tasks successfully.

This is a skill that is important throughout an individual’s life and you could really see someone who may be able to make it through in the younger elementary school, or kindergarten, or preschool because there’s a lot of structure around them. But once when someone is really struggling with this area, once they hit middle school and high school, you can really see some big struggles because there’s more classes that they have to attend to. Being able to start the lessons, there’s more project based lessons. So they’re starting the lessons at a certain time for they to have to have efficient time management to complete it at a certain deadline.

So although, yes, this can be noted at a younger age as well, I just wanted to acknowledge that you can often see someone in middle school or high school really struggle, and having being able to note this in evaluation… really discuss with evaluator: how do we support your child through this? And what and how do we what type of techniques and accommodations do we need to offer and techniques do we need to provide for your child? Because this may be something a skill that they may need to be able to adapt for life.

So these are some some areas of evaluation I want to mention about the Larry P v. Riles. This is this was held that school district in California only are not allowed to conduct any tests on African-American students that would give a FSIQ score.

So, we did not provide for African-American students. This what occurred was… this was they were testing they were testing students and putting them in a separate classroom, and not providing them the academic information instructions as required. They were being they found that the IQ test was not was based off of… it was not culturally appropriate. it. The test was really just evaluated your exposure to certain situations and not truly tested your knowledge, your ability or your level of intelligence. And so because, so this greatly affected many students of color, and they they ended up not being able to they… because they were being taken out of the classrooms and not being taught the same level of instructions, this had become banned. There are many tests that assess a student’s cognitive abilities and do not result in an FSIQ score. So there are still some tests that can be done.

However, you want to look at tests that are testing specific specific skills and not not judged based based off their exposure to certain culture cultural norms. Larry P does not prevent schools from doing cognitive tests only from the test that would conclude the students FSIQ scores. Evaluations should includes include academ academic achievement assessments that measure your child’s mastery of core academic skills reading, writing, math, and spelling.

So remember your child should always be exposed to grade-level curriculum. The things that are happening in their that grade if you that grade has science and it’s learning about specific animals, you know birds, your child should always be able to be exposed to that even to and it could be modified for the level of your child.

So, when they do the academic achievement assessment, it can look at where is your child at in this? Where’s your child at for the reading and writing and math? There’s a standardized test, work samples, and more.

One of the things that you’d consider, too, is that understanding how far or how close your child is to what is expected in their grade level. Usually part of the psychoeducational evaluation, post secondary transition for students 14 years and older assessments related to students future needs for education, career planning and independent living skills. This is really important.

Part of the IDEA is to help your child be prepared for when they when they graduate to be able to live in a community and maintain employment. So what is your child’s goals for employment or when they graduate? Are they planning on going to higher education? What would that look like? What supports do they need? What are the current plans for when they graduate? What supports they need?

And this transition assessment helps identify their skills, their ability to work in some of those areas, but also their interest, and what else they need so that you can create a goal to help them get there. This is helping your child plan for success when they graduate, if they choose to attend college.

One of the big things is if you have a disability and you attend college, the students responsibility to advocate for themselves. If they need a certain accommodations, they have to ask for that. Being aware of what’s your disability, what type of accommodations, the things that you need, this is something that the student can prepare for and you can start to make goals in that area.

But even more so, what is the future plan and how do you support the student getting there? You can have also a vocational department of rehabilitation can have vocational assessments to help determine how to support them.

Questionnaires and career interest surveys and interviews with the students are all part of the transition evaluation process, and the student can also provide a video or provide a poster to bring to the meeting and this allows everyone to really stay focused on the student, and decide is this future plan something that’s attainable? And if not, how do we provide something that is obtainable? And how do we support the student in understanding and realizing that that goal or creating an obtainable goal as well.

So I just want to spend a few minutes understanding the assessment reports. this is one of the bell curves. When you receive the report the scores if it’s the the 100s just keep in mind the 100 here that is average. If your student is is scoring on the right side, then that’s of course be above average and then further to the left would be more below average.

In the test, there are specific categories and then there’s subtests in that category. Sometimes a score will average out for the whole category and the student may range average or may above average on the whole entire category.

One of the things that you may consider is to look at the subcategories (if they have them) and are all of the scores above average on those subcategories or would you find one or two that’s significant below?

Those are where you can notice that this is an area area that is an area of need and that your child may need more additional supports for that. That is really important to take a look at because as I mentioned sometimes they might average it all and it may look that everything is average or above with the scores, and but looking closer at this, you know, subcategories, taking a look at if you notice it being below average or significantly below average, you might want just start really talking about how do we how do we how do we support this student and how is this and as we mentioned there’s different categories different areas.

You really have to talk with the evaluator with those. How is this going to show up in the classroom? If your students memory is significantly below average however they’re able to read above average how how is this going to show up in the classroom, right? Are they going to be able to maintain any of that information that they’re reading? And maybe that’s why it’s reflecting on the test, but it sounds like they’re reading very well.

I just threw out some different examples, but speak with the evaluator as you look through it. You can definitely take time before the IEP meeting to schedule time to really go over it and talk about what you’re seeing and what that impact really means.

These are just some different scores. There’s the standard scores and then there’s the T-scores and then you’ll have the percentiles as well. This is something that you may want to refer to.

And once again, where will it show? Where does your child’s show up on here, right? Is it on the below average side, right? And the subtest will may often have some of these t-scores or is it is it above average scores? And these are just really important to understand. Not just information of a pass and fail, but how does this impact your child? Right? If you’ve given your child, you know, three-step instructions and they’re struggling with executive functioning skills, are they going to remember those instructions, depending on their age? And, you know, are they going to be able to follow through?

Maybe you might need to write this information down. So these are things that you taking the evaluations going to the evaluator and really having that conversation will help you when you go to the IEP meeting and you start to develop those goals and what type of accommodations and supports are needed.

So components of a strong assessment report all federal and statemandated timelines are met. So there are from when you request an assessment once you make that request they have 15 days to respond after they’ve you’ve signed that that assessment plan they now have 60 days to complete it and so are all those timelines met? Does it include the student’s history? You know, are they looking at the history of the students in the classes? What are some patterns that’s noted? Are they considering those things?

The parents and family and outside provider interviews. So, reports from your doctors that can be shown and considered with the, you know, in these evaluations. They should be speaking with the parents and having a discussion with the parents. Sometimes there are forms for the parents to complete.

But this is a really good time to share some concerns that you have that you notice. When your child is brings the homework home, they take a long time to complete the homework and the teacher says it should only take 10 minutes.

You know, when your child is reading, they are having a difficult time reading out loud. Or maybe your child knows the words, but somehow they’re having a diffult difficult time understanding what’s being read either when they hear it or when they read it themselves.

These are things whatever you’re noticing, these are things that you can share with the evaluator. And observations in multiple settings, what is happening in the classroom? The evaluator can watch the student in the classroom, watch this student at recess or or in at the playground. Are what kind of decisions are they making at the playground interacting with their peers?

Are they being able to form social groups or are they staying withdrawn by themselves? Are they taking huge risk on the jungle gym? I don’t know. so part of the the observation is the playground, part of the observation is lunchtime and then their ability to transition from classroom to classroom.

Sometimes for some students it takes them a while to they might need to be prepped that is time to transition and they may need time to to get readjusted to the new environment. So these are things that in an evaluation they can they should be obser observing and there should be a variety of assessments and variety of tools.

We talked a little bit about some of the things that could be in a psych educational assessment. We talked a little bit about there also should be some OT assessments. There is physical therapy assessments. There’s nursing assessments.

There’s a… there is several different types of assessments and the thing is that they will do an assessment where they note that there is something a possible concern. So that goes to when you share what you notice the child is having a difficulty time writing or holding a pencil.

Do they need OT assessment? If that’s not observed, then they may choose not to do an OT assessment. But just, you know, as you do, as you meet with the evaluator, when you look at that assessment plan, this is where you get a chance to see, you know, what assessments they’re choosing to use.

One last thing is that accommodations on how to support in the classroom. So this is really important. At the end of the the evaluation, there should be some recommendations of how to support the child in the classroom.

what if the child is not found eligible? Continue with coordinated care team. So, the coordinated care team provides supports and interventions to support your child in school.

So, it really should be doing what’s needed to to help them really connect to that the education, right? So the coordinated care team do they do they need sometimes they might put people in small groups who’s having some of the same issues. This consult with the school assessor of assessments findings can inform next steps and then parents may consider requesting an independent educational evaluation. So, you know, the school had just completed their evaluation and they found that, you know, if you did not agree with the evaluation, which some of the things that we talked about prior, you know, they did not evaluate in all the areas. Maybe they didn’t give recommendations on how to support your child at the at the end. If if you if you don’t agree with the assessment then you do have you can request an independent evaluation and an independent evaluation IEE the parent has a right to an independent educational evaluation at public expense.

if you disagree with the evaluation. So if you disagree you can just merely share that you don’t agree with the evaluation and the the district will either choose to fund it and they they’ll say okay here we will fund this and this is the criteria that you of the evaluation evaluator that you would need, or they could they could either funded or they can file for due process and say no we did a great evaluation we stand by our evaluation and they can go to a due process hearing and defend their evaluation.

So, just as we talked about the two two options, they could fund the IEE and they’ll provide a list. Okay, this is they’ll give you a list of assessors, right?

You can choose one of their assessors or you can choose somebody who’s not part of the district. It’s really up to you, but it will in their in the criteria, they’ll let you know, you know, what the costs that they’re willing to pay, the credentials of the evaluator. Uh, sometimes they might even say how far away that that evaluator must practice from the from the school.

So, be aware of what what those those are and you can find your own evaluator. So list of assessors for what for that type of valuation that the district already has a contract with.

that’s that’s reference to what they they’ll give you. But then as I mentioned before, you can also get have somebody else that you choose.

And then of course if they and one thing that’s important too is that if your evaluator if their evaluator did it when they did the evaluation. So if they were able to observe the student in the hallway or if they were observe the student at the in the at lunchtime or observe the student in the classroom then when you get the your the your evaluator they can do it in those same places as well, and some advocacy strategies. We talked a lot about that throughout the time and really keep keep a copy of the organization chart for the district. Know the chain of command the who’s over the person you’ve been working with. Hopefully you’re the person you’re working with everything works out great. you have a really positive relationship, but sometimes things don’t you don’t get the results in a timely manner or something.

Kou know who you need to follow up on, know who’s next in line, and contact them. Especially if you’re considering an IEE. Well the IEE you can contact the special education director requesting that IEE. But that is one thing I didn’t mention with that IEE is that there is not the same type of timeline as just requesting a regular evaluation. So it’s with no undue delay, I believe.

So, one of the things that you may consider an advocacy strategy is to when you make your request, request a response in a specific amount of time. Put in your calendar, follow up because just to see that this gets addressed and it doesn’t get left behind.

So, you know, three weeks within I would like a response. “Please respond within 14 days. Please respond within 30 days”. Whatever you find to be a reasonable time and then follow up.

See, there are additional resources in the district you can access such as ADR collaborative conferences or facilitate IEP meetings.

That is something that you if you are stuck and you are not getting making progress is not happening. Stuck meaning you’re requesting some support in order for your child to have FAPE and you are not they’re not making progress after three or four IEP meetings around the same topic. You know, you can ask for facilitated IEP meetings with the SELPA or you can ask for alternative dispute resolution. There are options.

Having an IEP journal is really important. Not only are you documenting some things that occur, but it’s something that you can go back to, right? And you’ve got all the documentations, all the IEP, all the information in one place. what what could you show with data if you couldn’t verbally explain?

So, this is, you know, having if you’re call you’re you’re called to pick up your student four or five times within a month, having that documented, you know, on the on the calendar, you know, in your journal or having that documented is now has now become data, right?

Maybe you’re called, you know, every Tuesday at 12:00. And so, not only have you established a pattern of saying, “Wait a minute, what is happening on Tuesdays at 12:00 that every, you know, my child gets disregulated and, you know, they are having problems calm down.

Well, maybe it’s the recess and the groups of kids and it’s over stimulated. maybe they might need extra time transitioning into the classroom. You’ve now just established this doc this reports documentation, but even and that you can bring to the IEP team and say I’m noticing this pattern but also if you are asking for maybe we should have give him my child u an extra 30 minutes to calm down in before they enter the classroom. You’ve now established this do this this data that you can bring to the IEP meeting to show why you’re asking for what you’re asking for.

So keeping notes in a journal or making an entry on a calendar helps you with that pattern and you start building that data that you can bring to the meeting and then now you have this if you go to due process you have this data as well.

You can request students records in five business days which include incident reports. If you ask for students records, they have 5 days to provide you with the those records, and you know, once again, putting them in writing, going in documenting who you’re giving it to, getting a timestamp or if you’re emailing it, ask for them to send a response that they received it. just having that documentation showing the date, the time of when you’ve sent it and when you that five days followup you should have received those records before an IEP meeting.

24 hours notice in writing that you could ask to record the IEP meeting. So, you record, you know, if you request to record it, take your own recording device. and if you request, they’re more than likely to let they’ll record it as well, but have your own recording a device. So, now you have the the recording. Uh, keep a hard copy of the IEPs, assessment forms, and a labor binder. We just talked about that.

How to ask questions so school staff can answer. really asking questions it to bring it to the team and the IEP team where everybody starts to think if you’re asking for a specific support and it’s maybe being denied you can ask please help me understand why it’s being denied but also if they’re asking for something asking them please help me understand.

Please help me understand. Allows them to verbally share what they’ve been thinking about, why, you know, what they’ve considered and why. And it also may give you some more information that will may support what you’re what you’re asking. As an example, maybe they’re they’re asking for your child to leave the general education classroom and go into a special day class. you know, please like help me understand, you know, what are the needs that requires them to to change classrooms, right? Classroom settings.

And so, uh, they may say, well, you know, in that setting, they’ll be able to receive 101 specialized instructions, you know, for two hours. I don’t. Well, that information is good because now you know, well, maybe they can still receive specialized instructions in the general education classroom and they can just be pulled out, you know, for some time or same scenario. They may share that, you know, the the classroom is over stimulating and it it’s very difficult for your child. and this classroom is smaller setting that is a quieter and they’re able to focus and less distraction. Then you can really start to problem solve. Can they produce the same support in that general education classroom or is this special day class really what’s going to be what will allow them to focus and that is the most appropriate setting.

So this allows them to really give you more details and then you can really have that conversation. Have we considered blank as an area of need or service? One of the things that we talked about in the evaluation or reviewing the evaluation, if you know, if you notice the these the area of need and you’re creating these goals or you’re noticing these services to meet the goals, these are things that you can bring up.

And how does this help my child meet their goals? This is really important because a focus after there’s a service or what they’re offering, you really want to be able to show progress through those goals.

Sometimes is… I’m looking at this one. Can you please show me a copy of that policy? So, you do have the right to ask for the school policy if they are saying, well, we don’t do this because it’s our policy.

And yes, you know, you can ask to see that copy of the policy. Also keep in mind that as you’re developing the IEP, it’s an end of in July education plan. So if the policy affects your your child’s right to have an individual plan to support them that is really something that you could discuss and look at, because the plan should be able to you should should be able to have the right accommodations and assessments. should be able to have the right accommodations and and supports for the individual the unique needs of your child.

And when there’s a concern and you’re asking for support, you know, what are you doing to address this? Right? You’re my child’s u picky eater. My child seems to go the whole day without eating.

What are we doing to address this concern? Right? This once again brings this issue to the table. Have that conversation. Do we need to have a goal? What kind of supports do we need for this in this goal? Then we start to watch and monitor what are plans we have in place. Is it effective? Is it working? Is it helpful? And then you can also ask please send me that writing after the meeting. Okay. Any questions?

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