Students with Learning Disabilities

1
Students with Learning Disabilities

• Assessment

2
Purposes of Assessment

• Screening
• Determining eligibility
• Planning a program
• Monitoring student progress
• Evaluating a program

3
Types of Assessment

• Formal evaluation
• - Standardized testing
• - Norm-referenced
• Tests of Intelligence
• - Used to ascertain students general ability
  level and to rule out mental retardation

4
Informal Evaluation and Assessment

• - Criterion tests
• - Probes
• - Placement tests
• - Checklists
• - Direct observation
• - Miscellaneous techniques
• - Curriculum-based assessment
• - Alternative assessment

5
Testing Guidelines

• Assessing Culturally Diverse Students
• Over-representation of students from culturally
  and linguistically diverse backgrounds in
  programs for learning disabilities
• Testing Accommodations
• i.e., extended time and tests read aloud
• Teachers should make decisions on what
  accommodations to use based on data-based
  decisions

6
Assessment Process in Learning Disabilities

• Prereferral
• Analyze individual cases and find strategies
  before referring to special education
• Referral
• Involves determining if a student is a candidate
  for special ed services, contacting and
  discussing it with the parents, beginning a
  screening study, and meeting with parents and
  appropriate professionals to decide if formal
  evaluation is needed

7
Assessment Process Continued

• Assessment for Identification
• Examining the parameters that define a learning
  disability
• Looking for severe discrepancy between
  achievement and intellectual ability

8
Assessing Specific Components of a Learning
Disability

• Exclusion looking at other factors such as
  hearing problems or emotional disturbance
• Academic Achievement discrepancy between ability
  and achievement
• Language Achievement listening comprehension and
  oral expression
• Process visual, auditory, haptic,
  sensory-integration, and motor
• Discrepancy failure to achieve in one of seven
  areas, the gap between achievement and and
  intellectual ability must be extensive enough to
  result in severe discrepancy

9
Determining Discrepancy

• -Standard Score Comparisons
• -Deviation from Grade Level
• -Expectancy Formulas
• -Regression Analysis

10
Assessment Model

• Determine scope and sequence
• Decide what behavior to assess
• Select an evaluation activity
• Administer the evaluation
• Record students performance
• Determine short- and long-range instructional
  objectives

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Assessment for Instruction

• Assessment for How to Teach
• Identify major areas of assessment expectation
  factors, stimulus events, response factors, and
  subsequent events
• Weigh the major areas in relation to each other
  after they have been assessed and viewed as a
  whole, a profile may be written
• Individualized Education Program (IEP)
• Once student is determined as having a learning
  disability, assessment focuses on instruction
  process is guided by an IEP