Dr. Richard Reid, psychologist, returns to guide viewers through Part 2 of his series on how to choose and apply evaluation tools for students with complex support needs. He walks you through a number of different commonly used evaluations and discusses the pros and cons of each, illustrating them with real-world examples from his long and storied career in Vermont schools.
Transcript
good morning and welcome back I just want to spend a minute to remind us of what we did last time basically we were looking at the underlining or under pendings or the fundamentals of assessment things kind of gnarly things like reliability and validity and assessment tools and all that just to kind of get everyone on the same page in terms of our Baseline knowledge of assessment and so what we’re going to do today is going to review the questions that were left in the the chat box following the last uh last session we’re going to look at the domains of assessment what are some of the areas that we that we test and what are some of the tests that do those assess those domains we’re going to look at the types of Assessments because um particularly this the students we’re interested in um we’re going to be we when we talk about the cross battery assessment process where we’re going to find out that where a lot of times we’re developing a hypothesis about what we think is is going on and then we we go down the road and started providing our instruction or interventions or whatever it might be and we want to make sure we’re on track so there’s some other assessments that we need to continue using as part of the comprehensive availability make sure that that the the the the answers that we came up with following that evaluation were on track um next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to actually look at the cross battery assessment process it’s a process that’s been around for for a long time that’s been in use for for the population now we’re talking about low incidence population kids who are typically not included in the norming sample of a lot of gnome reference assessments um I do want to mention that even though it’s been unused for quite a while for for our population this is going to be extremely important for for what’s coming down the road in terms of the change and learning disabilities identification so if you’re a special educator who supports children with learning disabilities as well this cross battery assessment is essential because that’s how we’re going to be responding in the future um so for example the the question is going to be very different in in the New World Order that I’m referring to is in starting in next school year when we no longer have the discrepancy model that model whereby you might assess the youngster’s cognitive abilities assess their achievement and if there’s a big enough difference between the two a discrepancy we suggest that is indicative of a learning disability that’s no longer going to be available to us and so questions are going to be different in an RTI model the question is going to be has Elwood been provided with evidence-based instruction in the five areas of so for example if we’re looking at reading the five degrees of reading within the General Ed setting if the answer is yes then our next question is is held them to write it with evidence-based supplemental services so this is kind of simplifying the model that have resulted in growth if the answers know that then the question is why not and that’s when we have to start figuring out what tests we’re going to use to find out what’s going on here so for example in this if we keep going with this this reading example the special or the person who’s providing supplemental Services shares during the team meeting that you know that what seems to happen on Monday but not on Tuesday the question becomes why doesn’t L would remember the skills or why can’t Elwood perform the skills that he had on Monday on Tuesday and that’s where your psychologist your other assessment people come in and say okay here’s some things and now we’re going to look at save so now we’re looking at say short-term memory long-term retrieval things like that we’re not necessarily doing a huge evaluation we’re trying to pinpoint so they’re more targeted we’re trying to pinpoint what’s going on with the youngster um similar questions are going to happen if you go with the strengths and weaknesses model or pattern of strengths and weaknesses model we’re going to be asking um you know out of there any cognitive skills that are challenging for this youngster that are related to one of the basic skill areas and again we’re going to need to know what tests are there so this cross battery assessment is going to be pervasive across education starting next year I’ve pulled together some resources that we’re going to get to you during today’s and took a look at some of the tests that commonly come across that you’re currently exposed to um thousands of tests out there so so what I did was I looked at some of the most common ones that you’re going to see and have developed some some forms that worksheets that tell what they test and how they test it and we’re gonna we’re gonna ask you folks to take a peek at those and we have some scenarios for you what youngsters who might present a challenge to to value and praise the evaluation process what what kind of the modifications are I’m sorry adaptations might we make to the testing situation and which test might fit so we’ll kind of give you a um a chance to do that and then come back and tell us what you found um the other last time we during this the end of the day if we have time we’re going to talk about reporting out how do we share these results with parents so the biggest thing is is when we’re done with one of our evaluations is to be able to um ensure parents that hey we have a pretty good idea what’s going on with their child and we know what to do that’s that’s how we have happy families and and uh good relationships when we can we can feel confident in indicating we’ve got this and we’re gonna we’re gonna do our best to to instill growth there and then um lastly and the other subsequent sessions we’re going to have case studies and support them um one of the things I wanted to mention before I forget it when we go into this uh activity where you’re doing looking at the test analysis and thinking about a scenario if you get a scenario and you’re in a group but you’re about to evaluate or go into an evaluation of a youngster who might be challenging to if your group agrees you can jettison the scenario and work on your real youngster and see what you come out with with that okay so that’s not gonna like sound like a reasonable way to spend the morning the afternoon all right here we go so um
there we go
so here are the some of the the questions I’m going to respond to the questions that came up and so one of the questions or statement was the number of areas to be assessed seems overwhelming any tips and I’m going to call that that’s that’s my bad I I thought about how I had labeled this slide so I created a new slide and it used to say what do we assess and this is now says what should we consider in an evaluation plan so I may have um presented this in a way that suggested that we had to assess all these areas and that’s not the case these we have to consider these these areas and so for for you folks who you for example on physical character exists you have a lot of folks who who are who who might have some challenges in these areas so we have to look at these but even other situations so just this this week I was in a an educational planning team meeting and in those meetings as a psychologist I tend to sit back and listen I want to hear what everyone has to say and I take notes and and all of that and and this was a young gal third grader who’s struggling with with with basic reading skills so um otherwise things are going pretty good it seems however during the conversation mom shared that she’s coming home every night with headaches is that it said for me that threw up a red flag so we we started asking a question and anyway so we have we have scheduled a vision exam and they’re also going to do a hearing exam so that may not be the case so for example um the answer is that that you’re talking about well we don’t have it not just well behaved we don’t have any issues with self-control we don’t have to look at that so these are just here because the feds want to remind us that we have to take a holistic view that that our youngsters don’t come through the door and leave issues behind um you know one of the the whole the the thing is um we talked about it is relevant life circumstances it’s very common for me to to to get an evaluation for a youngster who for an attentional disorder and start doing a record review and there’s there’s really kids in the fifth grade nothing was said by the elementary school teachers kindergarteners no little red flags when I do the record reviews and look and then I find out that dad moved out six months ago and that that’s when this problem arose so that’s a huge piece of information to have that suggests that this youngster is responding probably to that and not necessarily the potential to sort but anyway just keeping in mind just to clarify this we need to consider these but we do not need to assess each one of them it’s only if someone on the team thinks that this is an area of concern okay right um next question that came up was what does an accommodation make a test invalid well the simple answer is is when the accommodation changes what is being assessed so for example uh if if you have a reading comprehension test and you have a youngster who um and it has difficulty reading and you have someone read the read it to the person and then they respond to say for multiple choice comprehension questions that that are there so what’s happened now that accommodation has changed that from a reading comprehension test to a listening comprehension test and that might be a good thing because if he does well we know that the she actually has good listening comprehension skills a way to accommodate that might be is that we do ask the student to read it but suppose that they have some some articulation issues or some um from some communication issues we might allow them to point to which answer is appropriate we might Xerox the page cut out the answers and let him pick up or select the answer that he thinks is appropriate and that would not change the test um so the the short answer is if if the mod if the the accommodation does not change what’s in measured then we’re in a good place and we’re going to talk about this a little later we’re going to there were four General types of accommodations and and they’re it’s they are how we present the information how we expect these students to respond the setting in which the assessments are administered and also timing issues related to that so we’ll look at all those four to see what accommodations might be appropriate alrighty the next question was there was a time frame required by Adult Services regarding how recent the intelligence testing needs to have occurred um this is a great question because I’ve seen this in my practice is I think I I talked to the last time about regulatory myth I’ve heard I’ve been told by people special Educators that they’ve been told by Representatives without services that the the assessments uh particularly a cognitive assessment needs to be within a year role um within a year um so when we look at the the actual rules and regulations it’s fairly interesting what they say they say it’s the responsibility of the psychologist to decide whether new cognitive testing is needed so that’s really important um I think it’s we have to keep in mind that um every one of us when we go to bed tonight our brains are going to be different from when we woke up this morning we’re creating new synapses and new connections and we’re also pruning ones we don’t use well the same is true of every student that we work with so if we have a student who who hasn’t had a cognitive test in three four five years we really behooves us to do that because their brain has changed as a result of being on the planet and experiencing the world around them so there’s a good chance we’re going to see some differences however on the other side if if a youngster has been a youth or a young person has has been evaluated say in the 10th grade and you’ve got a pretty good handle it’s consistent with all prior evaluations the youngster wouldn’t need an evaluation until they graduated or supposed to assume they’re leaving it to 12th grade or um okay moving on to Adult Services uh it may not be necessary to to do that um if that’s if that’s quiet and it the rules tell us here that in general if the school-aged children current means conducted within the past three years that’s consistent with special ed rates but for adults which we’re talking about high school students Uh current means cognitive testing conducting late in adolescence or adulthood and so there’s no one-hour time frame here it’s just it’s just whether or not um it it happened while they were they were in high school and lastly it says that the society if the psychologist determines that this a lot of this lays on the psychologist so the like one of in part that the psychologist is part of your team the psychologist is not in charge of the team is not the team leader it’s a he’s a he or she is an equal member of the educational planning team so what this is really saying is it’s the responsibility of the educational planning team to decide whether new and so with the input from the psychologists so so if the psychologist determines that the standardizing to election test is inappropriate and that can happen I’ve read reviews I’ve read reports where during the prior evaluation the youngster was was hostile and aggressive and and things didn’t go well and we didn’t get really good results we might be in a place now where the youngster is more of the youth is more open to to assessment and the psychologist might say it’s probably a good idea to see if we can get some more current behavior um the current measures of their whatever it is we’re measuring that cognitive behavior their academic skills their adaptive functioning whatever so just to recap there is not a as has been said to me on numerous occasions a one-year requirements to these tests so that it has to if you’re working in high schools transitioning through Adult Services if you have had one while the youngster was in high school that will suffice if the team decides we’re happy with that data if the teams decide that’s not really representative of this Channel or boy this essentially has made significant growth over the past couple years we think we should do this so we send them off to their his next environment with some more accurate data again it’s all it’s a team decision thanks all right another question was will the agency Vermont agency of Education monitor team be looking to see if we’re reporting the standard error measurement well I I contacted the special ed hotline where you leave a message and someone gets back to you and and no one got back to me so I don’t have the official answer to that I will say that for my special education regulations indicate that the educational planning team must consider the standard error measurement when reporting scores and to me that suggests that if you’re reporting scores in a report a written report then you need to to include that that’s my opinion it might be the standard error measurements um I think I mentioned too um that our sonosia who is an attorney that someone who may be familiar with this incredible advocate for kids with special education needs this indicated that case law has proven this to be the case too that you have to consider the standard error measurement all right other so I think those are all the questions that were posted and hopefully we’ve got them I’ll cover it uh just to kind of remind us where the folks we’re talking about today are students with complex profiles and also known as low incidents when I was in graduate schools low incidence populations um and again another reminder that with the changing legs of learning disability identification this the stuff we’re going to be talking about last last session and today applies to all special ed situations it’s really important for kids with fluids in his populations because they’re not included in most known samples so we have to be creative in assessing their strengths and challenges but um starting next year the educational planning team is going to need to consider a different way about asking questions and and assessing kids and and I just want to you should be relying on your psychologists and your recession people to do that but I’m going to provide you with some resources so that you can support and help them and be part of the conversation as well and you’ll have those to take with you at the end of the day all right so there was a question uh that I wasn’t quite sure what they were getting at was there was they wanted to know if I could say more about developmental scores and I wasn’t quite sure what more to say except that um developmental scores and what we’re talking about is aging rate equivalence scores um their their yucky scores that’s a really technical term because what what it does it just represents the raw score that the number you write you got on a particular test and then they compare that okay how old was the average person who got database right and that becomes a rage equivalent well what grade was the student the average student at the same night have Redemption right I became some great equivalent like if you recall I showed you some charts that came from the real manuals that showed that by getting one more item right you frequently can jump up in an age equivalence or to to a whole grade level and vice versa you had one one more wrong and you can drop down a hold so they’re not really reflective I also showed an example whereby you had two people with the same age equivalent I mean great equivalence scores but one of them had significantly better and more advanced math skills than the other but they both still ended up with the same great equivalent story and then lastly and I think the most important based relative to the population we’re talking about today is is I’ve seen reports that come back from folks that say that this 12 year old individual is functioning on a uh five-year-old level of XYZ skill which is which is ridiculous because the youngster have been on this planet a long period of time and there are other things that are going on but besides that one score that score tells us nothing it’s it’s not helpful at all what’s more helpful is if the person does an item analysis and says Elwood was able to do x y z on this assessment and then makes a recommendation in order to progress in this domain it would be essential for Elwood to be able to do ABC we make some recommendations about how do we how do we get this developmental trajectory going in the right direction that score does nothing to to help the educational planning team because remember we said you know it’s the different reasons why we do these evaluations one is for eligibility well we these youngsters are often eligible without any challenge there but also to inform instruction and to program development and being told that a 12 year old is functioning at a five-year-old level does nothing to help us with that and I would suggest that if you get a report that says that you send it back and say no well that’s not helpful you need to tell us what this youngster can do and what your recommendations are in terms of where do we go next and you might even want to say that from the outset say we’re not interested in these types of sports if you’re working with someone who has additionally provided those scores and tell them what exactly you’re looking for as I mentioned in the first session the reports you get back from contracted evaluators are only as good as the questions that you that you post
Wilcox posted a um an article entitled why age and grade scores should never be used um and she put that in the chat for forever was that written by the National Association of teachers of readers Joy I’m just wondering
the National Association of reading teachers or no I don’t I don’t think so because they put out a position paper against it as well well thank you Joy and hope people download that and hope it supports what I’m saying because it does so it’s it’s written by Jim Persinger um and as part of a newsletter of the Kansas Association of school psychologists is what it says at the bottom of the article the um the National Association is an organization I don’t know the exact Nick acronym but it’s the National Association of reading teachers they came up with a position paper a long time ago saying never use these Asian grade equipment at least these developmental scores so people are on the same page and we don’t want these things and it’s okay uh thank you Joy for for the support and for the reference as well um I’m going to download that as well alrighty my good Mary Ellen any other questions that I might have missed or not so far okay um so just want to start talking about the domains of that we’re going to uh be looking at and one of them is cognitive skills uh the it’s an essential part for currently for learning disabilities however we now know that our Congress we’ve known it all along but now we have detailed information that our cognitive skills influence our academic performance and that’s what what this is all about and so um be there’s there’s no real agreement that the the fed’s not too long to pay for all these high famous high K people to come to DC and come up with a definition of intelligence they couldn’t do it the best they could agree on was with the ability to learn and problem solve so there’s no consensus on that however intelligence is not something we can lick or touch or put our finger on or it’s so it’s a it’s a construct of a theory and so I want to mention that the over the past five to ten years every cognitive test that has been published has been published with the could tell horn Carol theory of cognitive abilities as its foundation um and so this is what that that looks like um what that theory says is that when we’re alive and breathing and we’re engaged in any kind of cognitive activity we have this general intelligence set claim but depending on what we’re doing some other skills come into play so for example uh right now you’re doing auditory processing and so because I’m talking in your listening but you also might be um taking notes so you get short-term working memory going on so these don’t necessarily work in isolation they depending on the task you might have a number of these working at the same time and so this is I I use I just put up this little graphic because this represents and I’m not endorsing a singular test right now but the Woodcock Johnson test the cognitabilities measures more of the catelhone Carol Theory than every any other cognitive test so this green represents seven cognitive skills that you need to be successful on this planet and it’s cool and so um the Stanford egg measures five the the the the Wexler scales matches measures five um and so but then down below below each one there are different other kinds so long-term retrieval is just not one thing there are different kinds of long-term retrieval you have the colored boxes and then below you have the white boxes with the gray outlines they’re actually about at this point I think between 80 and 85 of those have been discovered in terms of uh so these are narrow cognitive abilities and so on the long-term retrieval that’s a broad ability long-term retrieval is my ability to pull information out of my brain that I have in there but a narrow ability is how quickly can I do that if I’m fast at doing that then I’m a quick Problem Solver and I get through my work if I’m slow at that that can create a whole host of problems for me so anyway what this graphic does is just represents um what the Wilcox Johnson measures it measures these seven broad areas and then it also anything below it it measures those narrow areas and so that helps us figure out a little more detail what might be going on with a student now you’re I have some other tests measures different things and and I’m going to give you some resources to look at those I just want to point out on the left here you have Reading Writing quantitative knowledge and domain specific knowledge like science and all that well those are actually have been found to be those are cognitive skills as well we just call them um academic skills and so if you look if you look here these are some of the things that are the narrow abilities under those so just to kind of recap um it’s a theory of intelligence that says that overall we’ve got a number of things happening when we’re engaged in any kind of conscious activity and depending on the Activity one or more of these broad abilities fluid reasoning Redemption knowledge are going to be at Play and depending on the activity we might have an operability now we also know that each one of these green areas has an influence on our academic achievement and that’s one of the reasons why we’re so interested in the cognitive piece so for for our students we want to find out are there any relative strengths or significant strengths in any of these areas or any significant challenges that are getting in the way of other things if you think just to kind of throw in some of the prop the the RTI and the patterns of strength and weakness we’re gonna we’re gonna we’re gonna be asking the question does this youngster have a pattern of a weakness in a cognitive area so for example let’s look at auditory processing do they have a pattern of a weakness in an auditory processing and a pattern and a weakness in that academic area that is associated or requires auditory processing and that area is reading we it’s essential to have auditory processing skills to become a good reader so now what we’re doing is we’re saying hey wait a minute pattern is showing up that I have a weakness in this area and now I have a matching weakness so the clock I don’t have the cognitive horsepower necessary to become a good reader because my auditory processing skills are so deficit when I look at reading I have reading deficits so it’s no longer a discrepancy model we’re looking for patterns that match so there’s a pattern of weakness and then we have a pattern of of weakness that shows up over on the left in the reading piece so just to have to give you a quick example how that’s going to play out in other areas of Eligibility um I just want to mention some tests that are commonly used out there uh we at subsequent uh our subsequent times together if you want to get it to meet more detail of some of these um I just I’ve already stated no tests to create all all tests are not created equal we have to think about reliability and validity and and so we have these are some of the most common cognitive ability tests you you’re going to come into contact with now remember what I said about reliability and validity if if we’re making decisions life-changing decisions about people the reliabilities of these tests that you use have to be 0.9 of a part remember we said if you square the reliability 99 9 times 9 is 81. so that means even if it’s a 0.9 which is an excellent test 81 percent of the score represents what you’re Miss measuring and 19 of some other thing that we’re not quite sure or we may know what it is but it’s some other variable that’s not it’s not what you’re measuring so there’s no perfect test of any any ability that we measure okay um now having said that remember we said that our young people are frequently not in the norm sample and so we’ve already determined that because of their their because they have cerebral palsy that they’re they’re eligible for special ed services so now we can lower the bar a little bit in terms of reliability um because uh two things one is that um it’s not uh we’re using these now to identify patterns of strengths or cognitive strengths in individuals that we can tap into to provide instruction and and so it’s that’s not a life altering um decision and so we’re able to use tests that have reliabilities of say 0.8 or above we’re never going to want to use the test that has a reliability of below 0.8 but at 0.8 or above okay the the second reason is and I alluded to earlier we’re not done so this comprehensive evaluation is a dynamic ongoing thing so we’ve developed we’ve done the evaluation we’ve we’ve accommodated some tests we’ve come up with some data we have a theory about our youngster and we have a hypothesis we developed and this is the road we’re going to go but we’re not 100 sure we hit it so we’re going to have to monitor so later on we’re going to talk about progress monitoring but we’re going to have to monitor the youngster’s response to our instruction to be sure that we’ve hit the mark because we’re using tests that aren’t quite as reliable um as we would like and um but otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get that information so it’s it’s one of those times where it’s okay for us to deviate from that point nine piece because what we’re going to do is going to follow up afterwards to make sure we’re on the right track we’re just not going to go down this road and then a year later take a peek and say yeah it didn’t work or it did work we’re going to be monitoring as we go along does that make sense to folks I hope all righty um here’s some questions that we might ask um during the the eval plan meeting that we want to then transmit to whoever’s doing the work what is Edward’s overall level of cognitive function now we may not able to be able to get that but I think it’s always good to to put that out there however we may decide that we can’t do we can’t administer an entire test get a a score and so that’s important from the outset when I’m involved in these kinds of cross battery assessments one of the things I let the parents and the team know right from the get-go is that we may not get that big score that people like we call it an IQ or a Gia or a comprehension cluster score or something but um but we’re going to get information about what this youngster’s strengths or weaknesses are but we’re going to ask this question just again okay we are going to ask does it I will demonstrate any significant or relative stress within this cognitive profile and the reason I phrase it that way is that um some of the students that we’re we’re going to assess all their scores may end up following below the mean um however within those scores there might be some that are a bit higher or significantly higher than others and those represent relative strength strengths within the individual that we need to tap into when we’re providing instructions we want that information okay okay this is a biggie we don’t want to let our evaluators out the hook we just don’t want numbers from these folks we want information what does Elwood’s cognitive profile tell us about potential instructional approaches or strategies we want recommendations from the persons who are working with us to doing these comprehensive evaluations to tell us where do we go from here what’s next after your examination of the data okay the the next piece that we we’re going to look at is is the assess adaptive Behavior basically that’s this is the individual be able to respond to the day-to-day demands that we would expect of of someone that’s this person’s age um be uh when we have to do this is and it’s probably a good idea for many but when we have to do it is is if we suspect the youngster has might be affected by an intellectual disability our regulation says that a student’s performance thus fall one and a half standard deviation below the mean of intellectability and exists concurrently with deficits in adaptive Behavior okay um the domains become a good adaptive Behavior scale is going to address all of these domains um there and I’m not going to go through them I think you you pretty much know what each one of those are but you’ll end up with with some scores um we don’t want developmental scores for these even though you’ve got I even though standard scores you get here are going to be fairly low you’re still going to be able to identify potential strengths and challenges developmental scores are going to be useless um we also want to know from the from the person who is interpreting the data and Reporting it out um well we’ll get there in a second so so here are some measures of adaptive behavior um the uh skip so the scales have been independent Behavior Uh is outdated now it’s an excellent tool but it needs to be revised we need the Third Edition so we can’t use it anymore I don’t know if I mentioned it the last time but when a school or when a test is 10 years old or more we cannot use it any longer um because of the Flint effect and and just the Norms have changed and grades uh scores just artificially become inflated um violent adaptive Behavior scales is a is a strong candidate um this one a school functioning assessment I I I recommend highly because um we’re not just that was it’s detailed it’s it’s it lets us know can this youngster the youngster in question um navigate to school environment there are certain things we need to do to at school in order to and enhance the onsters independence when we look at the Fine Line piece there are some items on that but it’s not as detailed so this is school functioning assessment it’s fairly it’s not that long it’s not that tough to complete and that would be completed by someone who who knows so that’s that’s some of the issues to think about with these adaptive Behavior measures um uh the ones that I just mentioned are well known but some of them are not as well normed it was changed that there aren’t enough people in a norm sample and they don’t represent a large enough group um this is a big one um I would never suggest sending the Vineland adaptive Behavior protocol home in an envelope for the parents to complete and then send back it’s it’s very long there are lots of questions on it and and I would say one out of five questions when I’ve administered this orally to parents one out of five questions they have a question or they don’t understand the question or they need one clarification or they want to discuss it with you to come up with a with a more accurate response to it so it’s really something that you have to do as in an interview format or the reliability of it I think just plummets okay um some of the issues around it is sometimes there’s poor inter rate or agreement you I’ve been in situations where it’s a mom and a dad and they they don’t live together and the answer spends weekends with with one parent and then the other and you get these really just disparate um ratings on on these on these scales and somehow get so you have to balance that and frankly what happens is if you have other data like the school functioning assessment that kind of supports one or the other piece okay um this the ratings are fairly subjective and so um that’s why doing it in an interview format is so important because you can you can help answer questions and the panel will describe um the situation and that the vinyl and manual actually gives you some guidance on how to on how to respond to some of these questions and items that come up okay and lastly yep you have a um there’s a comment Tony said that one of the tests that the Adaptive Behavior tests um that you had in the list was something she’s got on an evaluation right now um and you also had a question what is the maladaptive domain oh okay familiar with this yep so the maladaptive domain is they’ll have it’s a thank goodness it’s one of the shortest domains and it has questions about behavior um does the youngster uh things like the theft temperature to the youth have tentative Tantrums um it’s more behavioral stuff um to be perfectly honest I often don’t report it um if you have a youngster who’s who does really ciao that’s really poor on the maladaptive scale on the on this scale you’re going to have data from other places that is well known to folks that that you can work with and and identify okay what are we going to work on first you know in terms of self-regulation and things like that yeah so the maladaptive skill is it only has a few items which is good and it’s typically it’s the smallest scale and it just gets at negative behaviors that can get in the way of learning it’s basically what it is okay and did you have a second question Mary Ellen well just that Tony also put in that it’s a social behaviors yeah yep so there get in the way of learning get in the way with developing peer relationships things like that so there you may be able to draw so part of this is when we get to the the questions is is uh an item analysis what did we learn from this what are some things that we need to work on and so you from that adaptive maladaptive scale you might have learned that we’ve got to look we’ll work on some social skills here we’ve got to work on initiating contact with peers in a positive way whatever it might whatever might have have come up in that scale yeah right um the finally you want to make sure that that typically you have more than one informant but you want to make sure they really know the the student well um here’s where I’m going to put a pitch in for our our paraprofessionals um it’s uh whenever I I do an evaluation I always the youngster has a powerful professional that supports them I always make sure that I meet with that person get their their insights and and sometimes I’ve sat with the paraprofessional and the special educator orders paraprofessional and a classroom teacher and and we’ve completed let’s say for example the the teacher part of the Vineland and what both of them providing input because the professional is eyes on all the time and she’s the subtle things that sometimes when you’re the teacher and they’re you’ve got 20 little squirrels in your classroom and you’re trying to hurt all of them and you don’t you don’t see it the whole thing um relative to one particular student yeah all right um some questions might we ask what is Elwood’s overall level of adaptive Behavior we need to know that because then we can get that score from this um because that’s part of the eligibility piece if we’re looking at an intellectual disability um does that would demonstrate any significant or relative strengths within this adaptive performance profiled um uh I’ve seen kids who have one of the their biggest strengths is that social piece that they they’ve got these uh their their social domain is through the roof that’s okay how do we tap into that okay um and then lastly very important what skills need to be developed in order for Elwood to progress within the Adaptive Behavior Continuum and so whoever is is revealing this data and looking at it um needs to give us some guidance on where we need to go next in order to move on because these adaptive Behavior scales or their Criterion referenced and that means that someone will call that person an expert someone has determined that these are the skills you need at this certain age and the tech tech they tend to be on target which means that if and they build on each other so if you if you’re missing a particular skill it might interfere not always but sometimes it interferes with your acquisition of a more complex or sophisticated skill that grows out of that initial skill and so we need to address that and we need examples for we need that information from whatever reviewing the data and give that recommendation in our report okay um some considerations for the adapter is reliabilities um we want to make sure that we can hang our hat on this course the scores provided we want we want uh standard scores um I think so that we can and not just you know developmental scores um remember we talked about percentile ranks as not being good scores to measure progress but they’re good scores to measure your current performance so it’s a percentile ranked score is an okay score at this point as long as we’re not comparing it to three years ago when we had a a adaptive behavior management because you can’t compare scores for for to to document growth you can’t use percentile ranks to document the world and lastly the the breadth of coverage I listed a number of of um adaptive Behavior managers some of them are much longer than other the longer it is the greater the breadth of coverage and and so we need to consider that do we we really want to use this uh which test do we want to want to use even though um the Vineland state for example might be more onerous than it take longer to do versus one of the other tests that it’s a little quicker and and has fewer items and they might yield similar domain scores okay so this is a perfect timing you’re going to we promised we wouldn’t make you sit forever we’re going to take a 10 minute break and we come back we’re going to talk about uh tests of academic achievement rich yes how come the Kaufman’s not on there
ah because there are too many but you’re right it could be there I just had to I just had to pick kind of limit them but yep so I’ll mention that that’s a good point Tony that that this is just a sampling there well if you think about Pro Ed there are hundreds of tests so right I was wondering I had a question back too if I can ask it yep when you’re talking about using standardized scores uh our standard scores um so if in the adapted scale I mean I have some scores that are like 13 17 19 and 57 so 57 it automatically makes me go oh here’s the strength right um so depending on so if I recall some of the scales that were on a scale of 0 to 20 and some of them are on a scale of wow 42 say 140. so be careful which one is coming from if you know this one this one is the standard score of 100 is the and a deviation 15. okay then that so that right so is that the 53 one or the that well that’s all all of those are from that test okay so there’s so you got so you got a that that would qualify as a relative strength for sure right which is which is personal living skills yes so yeah so that area is taken care of so they can blow their nose they can toilet elves and and all those things yeah and okay now now the team needs to figure out where do we want to focus our energy now Independence so with the Adaptive Behavior the goal was always the highest level of independent functioning without adult anyone else’s support well that’s what independent function means Tony just during the break race is an important point and so um I’ve just listed some of the most common assessments that that I come across but she raised a good point so depending on what part of your state you live in you might have some some professionals or clinicians who have kind of adopted another set of tests and so there are thousands of tests and I couldn’t list them all um so what I’ve done is listed the ones that I see most commonly being occurred commonly being used and also on subsequent time together if people have certain tests that they want to talk about or want to kind of review or put that in the chat and then we’ll we’ll make we’ll make that happen so um so again so this test of academics is no way exhaustive it’s what I’ve done is is put in the in the ones that I see the most use frequently and I just want to point out that on the last one I put in it is the pro-ed family and narrows Focus test they publish a ton of stuff you just need to be careful that the if you’re using them for eligibility that they rise to the level of um reliability that we’ve talked about at 0.9 or above but if you’re using some of these narrow Focus tests to find personal strengths and weaknesses and and and informant structure then it’s a little less uh rigorous in terms of statistical requirements for them um they tend not to have the highest reliability as as in psychometric properties as other test Developers the the thing I want I if you’ve noticed in the slide I put the Peabody picture vocabulary test five in red you got to have this in your trunk of your car if you’re if you’re working with with this population so many um so many youngsters have uh fairly accurate pointing responses and so if you’re not familiar with the pbd picture vocabulary test what it is it’s an array of four pictures and you say point to the and you say whatever it is and and then they have to have to point um and the they’re not just so it starts off point to the truck but but they they get as a progressive it gets into to slice that point to think more more abstract so have a picture and have more extract terms and that they have to point to the the correct one that represents um enjoyment for example um and so uh that’s a that’s a biggie it’s it’s but most of the times when most of the time when I’m evaluating a youngster who is communication challenges this is this is one of the first things that I do just a quick story about this and this was years ago but just the power of this test so um I was best to do an evaluation with young a young gal in Middle School who had cerebral palsy and it affected most of her core and she had a great deal of difficulty uh generating um air to communicate with with speech and so exhausting and so we we started so when I first met her she was um she had a little office space set up in the office of the where the special Educators were housed and she had a paraprofessional working with her and The Specialist and that’s where she was all day now this was a long time ago um and so I administered the one of the first things I did was administer the paper puberty picture vocabulary test so then I did whatever other things I could and when I wrote out the report she had or shared that uh this is a measure of receptive vocabulary and that receptive vocabulary or vocabulary has the highest correlation with overall cognitive abilities so anytime you measure vocabulary if you get a high score there it suggests overall you’re pretty your cognitive skills are pretty good but she got a 115 on the puberty picture vocabulary test which means she was a stand this is my point like a standard deviation above the mean which means that this gal who was in a Mobility device was taken in everything around her so the point that the next time I went back there they had shut down that little office that they had and she was now in the regular red setting and so just so this is one of the peach my the famous picture book picture pbd pitcher vocabulary test stories that it just got people thinking about this little person in a difficult different way the fact that she Bing Ding Ding did so well on this on this test so anyway a shout out that’s the only test I’m going to worse um obviously people who know me know I’m a big Wilcox Johnson guy but I’m going to try to be neutral here throughout this but except this PVD picture vocabulary there’s such a wide range of folks who can who can who can participate in this test and it provides valuable information that is related to overall cognitive functioning all right so um let’s go to the next one so um just mention the notion between the difference between an achievement battery and a narrow Focus test so achievement batteries are things like the Woodcock Johnson test of achievement and the the wexl individual achievement scales and Kaufman and so what they do is they measure all of the basic skills so that’s convenient um and depending on the test it means that you can be fairly confident that all those tests that you’re looking at within that battery of high by high reliability and validity so it makes your job a little easier um the the drawback is is that there tend to be fewer items so the scope depending on the test the scope can be somewhat narrow or it can be okay but anyway then a narrow Focus test so for example um the um the key map for example all it does is measure math and you’re going to have a lot more items and a lot more so so sometimes what we’ll do is if we have a significant challenge in one on in one of the basic scale areas on one of these achievement batteries we may decide to administer another test that has more items so that we can kind of pinpoint where the where the issues lie um just want to mention these are the basic skill areas that we’ve got to be looking at uh and and to be sure that kids are making growth um there’s some considerations with these these bad test batteries and the achievement tests reliability really important again point nine or above that for making decisions say okay we think the shelves might be affected by a learning disability point eight or above if we’re going to make big decisions about um uh programmatic work in conjunction with other data we have we want to make sure they have the scores that we’re that we need for the work we’re doing what’s the breadth of coverage so even though it’s a test battery you might take a look at say the maths calculation test on civil States for example on the Woodcock Johnson and say yeah that seems to cover everything that we’re interested in it’s it sounds good okay um the whole notion of item selection are there parts of it that you might want to use and parts that you don’t want to use this is really important it is some kind of overlooked cluster index composite compasses so those what those are names that so when you combine two tests together it either would be called a cluster score and index score or a composite score and so for example on the Woodcock Johnson if you give the um letter word ID test which is a you have to look at words that are phonetically irregular and you have to be familiar you have to know them before I say we call them sight words but they’re phonetically irregular words so you’ll have one of those tests and then you have the word attack test which is these are made up words but they follow the rules of phonics and so um you have to read those and activists or so where we’re having two tests one gives us an idea of how are you with decoding phonetically regular words and how are you with your site vocabulary words that you have to been exposed to and have memorized and those combine to give you the basic reading cluster score which is a good score because you have two measures of basic reading however on the Wexler individual achievement test when you look at the basic reading score it it includes a reading comprehension test and a basic skills test and that’s a problem um because suppose you have strong um word identification skills so you do well you do really well on the on the reading the basic reading test but your your knowledge of vocabulary stinks and your reading comprehensions things so now you’re given that second test and you do poorly so let’s make believe one was a 115 and that’s the reading the basic reading test and you’re reading comprehension testicles we’ll say just for the heck of it was 85 which is a standard deviation below the mean which means that six things a significant challenge well you might get a cluster score a reading basic reading cluster score there of 100 which suggests that you don’t have any challenges with reading comprehension okay I mean with three basic reading so here’s the message you have to be careful to whatever test that you’re using if you’re using these cluster scores where they’re combining other tests you got to make sure that the two tests that comprise the cluster are actually measuring the same thing you see the same problem on the western individual achievement test when you look at math calculation it has a calculation score but it also has a math reasoning score well those are two different basic skills that you can’t combine in one score hopefully that’s clear to folks and so this is part of of your psychologist or your assessment person knowing these tests and guiding and directing you or you in turn you knowing it and guiding and directing them okay and then lastly considerations achievement battery versus narrow Focus if you look at the achievement battery and you believe it’s not the needs for this youngster you’re good to go if you think that we need a little more information and regarding the space and skill you may want to pick one of the narrow Focus skills that has more tests that has more items for that basis skill area okay all right well the question is going to ask does that would demonstrate any relative strengths within the basis skill areas you may even want to go as far as asking listing them out or in this case just you’re asking to look at all the basic skills what specific skills related to each base of skill area this L would possess so in order to be a good reader there are certain underlining skills that you need what does l would have what and then what specific skills need to be developed in order for Elwood to progress with each within each base of skill area so you’re you’re as I said earlier and if your your reval reports and the data you get back are only as good as the questions asked so when this one here we want them to know you want we want them to tell us what can this kid do in reading and writing and math that that’s what we’re interested in and then what do we need to work on in order to get back on a positive trajectory or what comes next in line in terms of what we want to do in this whatever the basis skill area is by asking them specifically they better respond if they send you a report and it’s not there send it back all right so we’re going to move into some other different kinds of tests so any any thoughts or questions or anything before we move on
alrighty okay um curriculum-based assessment this and I just want to mention we’re also going to talk about curriculum-based measurement which is different so that’s why I highlighted the a um so curriculum-based assessment tends to occur within a general Ed setting and it can be important for us to look at this so that we can we can figure out what is it we need to do so that the youngsters we’re working with can access the General Ed curriculum um so basically what it is is it’s it’s it’s it’s a test that the teachers developed that samples the skills they’ve been taught to a specific point in time so maybe it’s the first uh three uh five weeks of school and then I’m going to administer this this test to see if we think about math have they have they mastered the math concepts that I’ve been trying to inculcate over the past five weeks after you the administer the test and you score it you might determine that e somehow this whole long division this just says on the side I haven’t met a middle school student who can remember how to do learn division in years so it needs to be recursive in nature so suppose we were working on Long Division and now um it didn’t it didn’t catch when I did this first sample uh five weeks into the year now I know it informs distraction I need to go back and review that and then finally what I do is I start to set up a a schedule of Assessments so this data will be available to you and and and you and you can use it to relate to what we need to do with our students so if you look at this is kind of complicated but let’s try to make it acidic so we had time one and this is what we’re looking at does you know does he understand the commutative property of multiplication does he demonstrate how to multiply three digit numbers um I put a a minus there because it didn’t happen so after five weeks they didn’t have this multiplying three digit numbers so I provide instruction and I go back and I redo this now four weeks later I do my next curriculum based assessment and I include it’s recursive so I put back in demonstrate how to multiply three digit numbers there’s a plus sign that means yes they got it but also along the way the last three weeks till four weeks I’ve also been helping them to understand that division of multiplication or of inverse operations do they get that okay and then again I’m sorry and then it goes on and on I understand the demonstration that are opposite so checking that demonstrate understanding of decimal notation of money add subtract that and then what do I sneak in here demonstrate how to multiply three digit numbers and go back again because that’s been a problem so that’s the nature of curriculum-based assessment it’s a general Ed that process that we can use to as part of our comprehensive valuation work the way we slide our youngster in okay um some aspects we might ask here are what aspects of the general education curriculum can Elwood acts currently access
this is this is not this is for and again that’s a lot of people are going to be weighing in on this this answer the classroom teacher the paraprofessional the special educator parents perhaps um what specific accommodations or adaptations might increase Elwood’s participation within the General Ed setting and then what specific skills if developed would enhance Elwood’s participation within the General Ed curriculum now this is an interesting one um this doesn’t necessarily have to be an academic skill what if Elwood is someone who screams every time something happens that he’s not happy with and he’s tends to scream at a high rate somehow we have to work on a different way for Elwood to communicate is just satisfaction with us because there’s going to come a time when perhaps people are going to say hey this High rate of screaming in the classroom is getting in the way of this participation within the generally curriculum so I have a story later about a young gal that’s the this incredible Mobility device that was having some challenges in a high school classroom but relative to this whole noise type thing so all right now curriculum-based measurement if if you’re going down an RTI model or or patterns of strengths a weakness model or anytime we’re putting programs in place for youngsters we need to be doing curriculum-based measurements um and that is that what it does is they help us monitor the progress and so um they’re fairly quick they’re just signs of gender that’s General Ed achievement so for example in order to be a good reader we need to know our letter name so with with our youngest kids or students we’re going to have these measures where they just have to quickly read you know one minute or if they can you name the lettuce as quickly as as other folks and we move on and say okay what are the letter sounds okay and then we move on now we talk okay what are the letters CVC words they might be nonsense words they might be real words can you read those all the time
um checking to see how quickly they can do this because the notion of fluency suggests that we’ve met we’ve mastered the skill um I want to mention that they’re standardized there are certain ways you have to administer them and score them so we need to do that so we’re all on the same page we get more than one person are administering and scoring these we’re all going to get the same results um they’re they’re really short the most Cinema one minute some of the writing ones are come up for three minutes but typically they’re one minute and the reason is is if if I’m asking you to read CBC words and you could read 20 of them in in one minute how many do you think you can read in two minutes you got it around 40 three minutes around 60 so the research has indicated a one minute sample is adequate um and it lets us know how things are going these are very sensitive to Improvement in in growth um so one of the ways to Turbo Charge any work we’re doing with youngsters and we’re measuring their progress is to have the youngster be involved in the the graphing of their own progress so for example with if you have a youngster and you’re learning the letter sounds and the first time they do it they can they can say we’ll say uh 15 in one minute we would graph that and then we we practice that we measured a week later we’ll say or now you can do 20 and put that on the graph and we actually when I’ve done this with kids when I was when I had contracts with school that I could visit once a week I would meet with them and then they left put my laptop up they put the data in we click it and we they could see their graph there’s research that shows that when students are involved with with graphically monitoring their own behavior their own growth through these visualist visual graphs that’s what the graph is it’s a visual representation they make more growth than youngsters who are not participating in that so that’s why I call it a turbocharge anytime you’re you’re graphing the results and the youngsters doing what the assessment results and the youngsters watching that with you and setting goals perhaps okay we’ve got let’s set a goal for 24 next time we do this and and working towards that goal you’re going to get better you’re going to get more growth okay um some important things to remember about these is they’re equivalent in difficulty so if you obviously if you change the how difficult each measure is well you’re measuring the difficult of the item and not the youngster and so they tend out so if you’re uh they tend out to be they tend to start maybe a little challenging and then as the youngster improves this the score goes up um you do it as frequent as as possible um the big part about representing the data graphically is a huge part of this um and then we can use it to make the instructional decisions I just want to throw up my throw up I just want to show you this this graph so this is a uh where we’re teaching a particular skill and these Wands on the bottom represent the the weeks that we’re that we’re providing instruction in this and the column on the left is the score and that aim line is the goal that we set in the beginning of the of the program on week one and usually that aim line is set as an ambitious goal that gets us towards what a typical student might be doing at that time so that blue line is where we want to be so if you notice that that the dots the black dots on the left side of that dotted line vertical dotted line those are the the scores that the youngster got and that’s typically how they go it’s it’s rare that you get one that just goes consistently up they tend to be erratic and that’s why putting that trend line in place so the computer put in that trend line the red trend line and the team looked at this and said you know something they’re they’re making growth here but it’s not really close in the gap because so if you would extend up that that red trend line up out to Roots out to week 15 at the same level of the same incline you’re you’re not really getting as close to that to that um aim line that that goal that you set and so what they did is they made an instructional change at this point and they start collecting data and now you see that the the trend line has changed it’s it’s growing more steep we still oh God so this is an interesting thing and this is something important point we’re still parallel with this line and this aim line represents the growth of a typical student so this is fairly common what we see with youngsters who are receiving special ed services um
is is that they they tend to um they’re making the growth at the same rate as their peers but guess what they’re behind and see how it’s consistent that’s never going to match so at some point we have to say how do we get more growth how do we set more ambitious goals because our goal is to to close that Gap and this just graphs is telling us even though we’re making growth when the school year ends this chance is still going to be behind so what do we need to do to increase that graph yeah all right so that’s just something if if next year and the years to come you’re going to see more of these graphs because this is going to be part of of what’s required through our regulations all right um yes uh there’s a question is there a list of uh standardized curriculum-based measures yes they’re they’re um I can what I can do is um one of the big one is one Cub uh amesweb uh there’s progress Pro there’s a number of commercially available and typically what will and will happen is a district will subscribe and more of these so just to kind of give a little historical perspective uh probably 10 years ago the agency of Education in Vermont saw what was coming down the road and we had a number of pilot programs implementing RTI and part of it was responsive to intervention part of it was all these schools got subscriptions to Ames Webb and and they create these graphs for you and all that and it was a huge resource to these districts that you don’t have to create the assessments they’re there you’re plugging in it’s the scores and it makes the grass for you but Angela was just one of them that’s the one that the state of Vermont one of the things I did for the state was reviewed all the different commercially available curriculum-based assessments measurements and and that was the one that was the most I think at the time the most user-friendly and provided the best results and blah blah so they went with that but something else shiny came by and now we’re talking about mtss and the the focus tends now to be on tiered instruction versus progress monitoring and and early intervention and things like that which is why I still use the term RTI because we can’t lose all those other pieces we have to progress monitor so I can um for part of the Resource Services I can make a list of some of the commercially available um places where you can get these things so rich rich Tony just shared that they’re using uh track my progress yeah so there there are quite a few that popped up over the past couple of years because there’s the these test Publishers are seeing the trend this is where it’s going when uh more and more the discrepancy model is going away and we have to have ways to track whether or not the interventions that we’re providing are are effective also they’re good screening tools as well um and the app might so typically a lot of what districts do is they you can they only take a minute they’ll administer so for example with with their kindergarten students they’ll administer all all kids will get the the letter named uh curriculum-based measurement and those that passed off you go no problem those that don’t they get some supplemental services and okay we’ve gotta we’ve got to get these letter names down then they graduate to the letter sounds etc etc the same as through is for reading fluency and and things as you progress through the grades they have different grade levels and you can use them to identify those at risk get those Services early and then avoid more intensive specialized instruction or special education services because you’ve picked it up early just as a note if uh there’s a bunch of research that came out of the Midwest that if if only one in 17 kids if you’re not reading at grade level by the third grade only one in 17 kids will actually graduate being reading on grade level so as a third grader those kids we’re not reading on grade level the end of the year only one in 17 of them will be grade level readers when they graduate because we haven’t picked them up soon enough so this is why I’m a big proponent of the the early intervention and the screening that we can use with with these tests these these curriculum-based measurements rather than focusing just on the tiered approach which is important but you got to pick these folks up early so they can get supplemental services in tier two if that’s how it’s defined in your District
um Krista shared that many schools have Universal screeners that also have curriculum-based measures yes and suggested asking your District what they’re using and Leah that’s exactly what they called Universal screeners yep yeah and Leah shared Wii U star and Leah I also see you have your hand up so and just um before we go to Talia Krista also added but to note some of these assessments or curriculum-based measurements are not always used with kids who have complex learning profiles yeah
uh can we go to you Leah sure um I apologize if we talked about this briefly um I was with a student for a little bit but um I was wondering if we had discussed multilingual Learners um I have a new multilingual learner that is uh was also diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder um so I was just wondering your thoughts in that rich and yeah because that’s a whole can of worms so I know so we got two problems with that um with multilingual Learners one is that um they and often times will not understand the questions or the items and all that the second problem is even if we do a translation there are so many cultural linked items that they don’t are depending on where they’re from they don’t understand what we’re what we’re talking about with those those items now having said that again I just I just the Woodcock Johnson has to test an oral language test what language is your I’m not good what language is your person’s primary language Nepali okay Nepalese I guess this won’t help so I’m not even going to talk about it and if they had I had a suggestion for you but be and again it’s it’s a low incidence population so there’s no money in it and so that’s why we don’t have have these tests but we have to be really careful even when they’re translated and that’s for us and interpret it that’s create that’s the third problem uh many interpreters will tell you that um there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence so frequently when they’re interpreting they they’re providing the response so if it’s a test item their their interpretation actually provides the response to the item that is being asked um and so this it’s a tough one I don’t have the answer for that we don’t have a lot of tests out there for them and now you’ve got the the Dual thing where I asked it was affected by an Autism Spectrum Disorder so you’ve got those communication issues there as well so sorry Lee or I could that’s okay I’d write the book and I’d be great I could retire you really know well good luck Rich you have a another question from Molly um is there a curriculum based measure like Ames web that is aligned with the alternate standards rather than the Common Core
so it’s hard to say so they tend to curriculum-based measurements tend to look at underlying skills not terminal skills so for example when we’re looking at a curriculum-based measurement for reading it starts off with can you say the letter names you have to know the letter names then it progresses to you know the letter sounds and then it progresses to can you combine the sounds to make words and then it progresses to reading whole sentences correctly and so it looks at a terminal skill of reading fluency which is your ability the way they Define it on curriculum-based measurements your ability to read the words correctly at the same rate as a peer and so these are these are just kind of the basic underlying skill set and they don’t tend to reference any of the any specific curriculum if you know what I mean it’s just these are the skills that you need to build on in order to become a proficient reader so thank you that was really helpful um I maybe later or at the end of the training I would love to ask um a few more clarifying questions about that I just don’t want to take out the time now yeah if you post them we’ll deal with them alrighty um so now we’re going to get into let’s I think the timing is good the whole notion of cross battery assessment and so what I did I just put up uh three of the most common uh there are other ones but these are the ones I sent to these people using and well the two I see that people using is the wexl scales which is in the right hand corner and then the Woodcock Johnson the lip North lower and in the upper left hand corner I put in the Benet scales and the reason I include them is number one there it’s psychometrically it’s an excellent test it’s got good reliabilities and validities but the nice part about it it measures five of the cognitive skills that I mentioned from that first chart when you looked at the those skills that are necessary for improvement and it has two tests for each one of those skills one of them does not require verbal responding so if you have a youngster who has uh communication issues this is a test that you there’s a possibility they could they could complete half of this test and actually get a score and it’s called the low verbal score it’s not called the non-verbal score because because there’s really no such thing as a non-verbal test there’s it’s a Mis well okay you don’t have to respond verbally so some of these non-verbal tests it’s a misnomer just because you don’t have to respond verbally does not mean it does not have it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have language demands they do most of these tests that have non-verbal in their names require you to have language skills like categorization and concept formation and things like that um but they they do not require you to to speak in the responding so I include the Stanford Rene even though it’s it’s outdated and it’s in the process of being renowned it’s still something that we can use and as a potential or a lot of tests in there that’s someone that we is on our caseload who was difficulty with verbal communication might be able to respond to okay all right so why does cross batteries thing um it allows us to use a whole bunch of different assessment tools as we said there aren’t a lot of tools out there developed for for a population of of kids with really unique learning challenges so um and style so uh that we can pull from all these different pieces we’re able to focus on on individuals response style and response mode and what they can do while we’re pulling rather than it I’ve seen reports where where psychologists have administered tests to kids who did not have the physical capacity to respond to the test a thing like block design is a thing where you have to shape move these blocks and and copy certain shapes but it was a it was it was administered to a youngster with cerebral palsy who had difficulty with fine motor movements and then the report it’s reported as being uh a challenge it’s it’s a measure of visual uh processing and it’s reported it being a challenge when in fact it’s what it’s really measuring in that case is her fine motor coordination so um we’re able to to kick out all those things that are just going to measure um the the disability or the challenge rather than the the skill um we’re able to utilize reliable and valid measures we try to um we can gain information about specific skills um and allows us to get multiple measures in certain areas depending you know coming from different tests and it allows us to respond more adequately to evaluation questions here’s the thing that we always mention if we’re going to use this approach during a comprehensive valuation you typically will not get a composite or an overall score something like a Gia or an IQ the exception B if for some reason you had a youngster was able to apply able to respond to all of the five tests on the low verbal portion of the Stanford Binet you would able to get a what’s called a low verbal IQ score um yeah how do we do it this the evaluator has to become familiar with the students response compelled capabilities and I already said one of the first one of the people that I’m going to be chatting with is the the the paraprofessional I’m also going to type with Mom and Dad I’m going to talk with the classroom teacher I’m going to talk with the the um special educator if if there’s another consultant It’s Not Unusual for me to talk with a representative consultants and from Vermont Association of visual impairment black w-ab-i or any other folks who are working with the youngster um to find out um what is what are they able to do what are their motor skills like what are their verbal skills like I’ll observe the student and I’ll get this information and then I’ll we’ll start to work as a team figuring out okay what are some of the things we might want to try what might be some appropriate tools or instruments to to try to answer the evaluation question we give it the tryout doesn’t always work we so we come up with with some let’s try this and it doesn’t always work we go back to the uh one of the things about this approaches is is patience and creativity so we came up with an idea about a test that we’re going to administer and then it gets blown out of the water okay let’s go back now what are we what’s the next step what are we going to do and then lastly when we’re all said and done we’re going to be reporting out strengths and challenges and making recommendations it may not necessarily be numbers um it might in some cases it might if I get a good number I always report that um but if it’s a yucky number it doesn’t really help us much then we focus on what are the strengths and what are the challenges and and what are we going to do to make to make things go okay all right so we’re gonna we’re gonna have an activity going in a bit so I just want to talk about something so um accommodations so when we look at these these tests I’m going to provide you with some resources um as we go into our little in a little activity group in in about five five minutes um I’m gonna provide you with some resources that tell you about the tests and then you’re going to have an activity whereby and I’ll explain it we’ll get to it but and so um so just a notion about an accommodation is is that it the purpose is to remove any obstacles that might be in the way of the the individual we’re concerned about participating in in the test without changing what the test is testing okay um so this is going to allow us to to get as much information as as possible so let’s let’s talk about some of these accommodations that we might see visual magnifying with equipment um I had a young gal with a um of visual impairment to who who was quite mobile around the school with uh she had a cane that she made herself around but she also had this piece of equipment that um you would place any materials written materials on a tray and then it magnified it so what I did with her was I just we we brought that equipment to our to the space we were working I took the materials apart I would hand her each if it was a visual thing uh visual task I would hand it to her she would put it in the little machine this is a this is an elementary school student um probably I think it was she was around the third grade but in the machine adjust it and then I would pose the question and she would respond and we’d do it now did that take a long time it did but we got great results it was print enlargement sometimes we just
enlarge whatever it is that we’re working with um through the of Xerox machines whatever um audio amplification It’s Not Unusual for for me to borrow the teachers this is an FM system while I’m working with the youngster I have the the FM unit around my neck and and we’re using that I’ve had high school students who were who were who were aided uh who were hearing aids and when I shared with them that I was I had some auditory processing assessments that probably was not going to administer because it would put them at a disadvantage they said no I want to do it I want to see how it works out with my hearing aids and so we’ve done that um we can use markers to help them keep placed we can read directions aloud we can paraphrase the instructions if we want keep in mind every time we make an accommodation we report that in our report um we can record the directions if necessary to claim back we can provide multiple choice options if if that’s a that’s an example uh a possibility depending on the item um we can give example items sometimes Junctions don’t quite get what is this that we’re what we’re looking for and so we can provide additional items um materials secured to the desk with tape or other stuff so for example I had to answer who I don’t recall the name of it but her vision straight on was almost nil but her peripheral vision was good so when I met with the the the paraprofessional who supported this youngster she showed me where I needed the Orient materials and I would Orient the material there and just stick a little piece of tape on it so we can go anywhere and then check with the student and off we went um so the materials had to be either to the far right or the far left um directions presented through perhaps an interpreter sign okay to present the directions not okay to get the results signed to The Interpreter and then The Interpreter providing it to us that doesn’t really work out um well highlighting test materials that it can it draws your attention to them orienting the material special way increasing spacing between items anything that can make the visual representation of the materials better
the second way is response accommodations um most unusual words but was that um I was a Youngster who uh was in high school who had it was affected by a cerebral palsy and she her core was affected and she had a great difficulty creating speech but she was a a really um ambitious and hard-working little gallon and she would she would work to to provide responses and and after two or three response I still couldn’t understand what she was saying and it was exhausting so we stopped and we decided to do it the youngster’s house so here’s what we did um we I went to the young we started doing the administration at the answers house in a living room and the mom was in the kitchen away from everything and so couldn’t hear anything and so we had a thing whereby uh more often than not I could understand the youngster’s response what’s a verbal response um but we had came up with an agreement after two times that the youngster provided the response and I didn’t get it we had a bell I would ring the bell and Mom would come in not having heard the item and the young gal would give her response to Mom and Mom would give it to me and more often than not it was on Target because Mom not like me was accustomed to her her speech style and so um obviously I included that in the report but that’s an allowable accommodation because Mom wasn’t there to hear it okay um we can have scribes that that’s if that’s if it allows so you just always have to remember is this accommodation changing the task um we can record responses so um young says who we suspect of being affected by an Autism uh Spectrum Disorder the [Â __Â ] the autism diagnostic observation system is a really uh helpful and important tool but there’s so much stuff with that that um it’s really hard to I believe score accurately in the moment so when I administer that I will try to score it actually in the moment but I also this I also set up my smarter than me phone and I videotape the whole all the sessions that I’m administrating administering the atos and then I go back to my office and I plug my smarter than me phone into my big TV and I watch it there and I score and that increases the reliability dramatically so um if we want if we can change the format somehow um communication devices using those allowing pointing so um it’s kind of any any kind of response accommodations um settings where does it as I mentioned I figured out this is going to be easier to do at home so we we went home the other part about it was that the whole comfortable setting this young person had this incredible Mobility device that um that had like a zillion buttons on the controls and she could work this thing independently so that was my first sign that there’s a lot going on with this kid uh if she can work this darn thing and what it did was this machine it was I don’t want to call it a wheelchair because it was more than that but it was motorized and get around but it it was seated it would stand her up she could push buttons and it would stand her or would incline her and anyway while we were working she would move that thing around and uh become comfortable as possible at her home while we were doing the administration of the assessment so that that that contributed to to the to better outcomes because she was more comfortable I need to share one of the issues for this youngster they wanted this youngster to go to a school this was not in Vermont but they wanted this school to the answer to go to a school that was located in a hospital if you can believe that and and not being her local high school and one of the reasons was of the noise that this her her Mobility equipment made so I observed in a classroom and it’s a high school classroom and the teacher provided verbal instruction for 50 minutes just talking at the kids and so when you watch the rest of the kids they’re all shifting in their seats they’re all getting up they’re dropping pencils all sorts of stuff going on however when our friend shifted herself you would hear a click and a hum because the machine that she was using was adjusting her she was doing the same thing as all the other kids except the teachers were annoyed that her her unit would make these these sounds whenever she was adjusting herself which just blew me away but again not in Vermont and just to let you know she got to stay in her local school she didn’t go anywhere okay um so uh yes there’s a question can you please share again the name of this assessment and what grade level is this appropriate for which which assessment which Michelle
was there a particularly did you say the adasi Adas oh yeah it’s it’s all it’s all all it’s it’s called the autism diagnostic observation scale it’s huge it comes in a a tub that you could put a body in it’s it’s Anonymous it’s got it’s it it’s and what it is it’s a great tool because it’s activities and you engage in the activities and you’re watching to see does this youngster respond in the same way we would expect and I put in air quotes typical youngsters to respond do they share interest you know there’s a variety of things every activity you’re looking for certain behaviors that persons affected by autism typically do not demonstrate you’re also for looking for activities or behaviors that persons with autism might frequently so for example there are there are some there’s some interesting tools there that toys that you can spin them and what so when the youngster grabs it and starts spinning it and that’s you can’t get them to stop there’s a data point if you know what I mean um and so it’s a big big tool that cause it it’s a big big test costs a lot of money and yet you need um uh pretty specific training on it but it’s a great it’s a it’s a great tool it’s a great way to interact with kids to get to know them I’ve used it mostly with school day it’s and it goes all the way up to adulthood I believe um would it be appropriate for like first second grade yes yes okay I’ve tended to use it with with kindergarten first because that’s when schools start to say hmm there’s something a little different about Billy uh you know we need to take a closer look at this so this okay so I’m sorry I don’t want to take that I just want to mention too it’s only one part of the assessment evaluation as well that’s not it’s just one part of it there’s a lot of other stuff too right so not just so really this is just looking for autism diagnosis but it’s not aiding in assessment for what do we do for the child right so okay sorry I would I needed to clarify thank you rich I think we’re past part of this whole cross battery assessment is that it’s going to apply to our folks but as I keep saying it’s going to apply to everybody in a year um it’s going to require on people who are doing our evaluations knowing these tests and what they measure and how they measure and I thought it would be helpful if you folks also knew that as well so you can support and encourage uh your about your evaluators to to take this kind of approach so what I did was um I took some of the the comp it’s like couldn’t do all the tests this takes forever but anyway I took some of the most commonly occurring test you’re going to see and I’ve broken out by the skills that they measure that influence in I have some slides later if we get to them that I’ll show you what cognitive skills May influence what basic skill areas so so the way this works is it looks at fluid reason and quantitative reasoning so fluid reasoning is your ability to problem solve in novel situations it’s it’s um so what I did was I list the name of the test battery the Wilcox Johnson the fifth edition what the test is concept formation the age that people can use it next to it and then what they have to do and so what I’m gonna and so I do that for all the fluid reasoning tests then I go down and I do it for the comprehension Knowledge Test comprehensive knowledge is what you know as a result of being on the planet it’s typically stuff we don’t teach in school but how what do you know about the world in general and so these are measures of that and what’s required and then I go through the the seven areas that are measured by uh the woodcut Johnson but I also include the other tests that met like the Wexler scales the Stamford Benet their tests so and then on the right I started to put in a couple of of of accommodations that that I’ve used in the past but this is the same thing except it looks at achievement tests what’s the test what’s the name of the what’s the test battery what’s the name of the test letter word ID what does a student have to do what account based on that student that you have what accommodations might you might might so you might just kind of scroll down through here see what there are things that you can do to to accommodate and so the person can participate in this and get some information about the basic skill area um so I want to mention when you get put into a group you’re going to have a scenario but if someone in that group has an impending evaluation coming up and you want to describe that student to the group and you want to work on that and your group members agree that’s that’s fine and come out with that but otherwise just you can do the the the the practice on the the um the scenario that you’re provided so any questions about the the task at hand what I’m asking you to do is to kind of review these different assessments and how might we include our person in the assessment without changing the accommodation providing obligated accommodation that does not change the construct we’re measuring you you really unless you intimately familiar with all these tests you really won’t know what their what the expectation is for the individual to participate and so won’t be able to make an accommodation okay but it’s but there’s a lot here um okay
let’s just do this let’s just look at a few and chat and then we can go back to the PowerPoint so um the first thing we’re looking at fluid reasoning as I said that’s reasoning and novel situations and so here’s what’s on this concept formation that as a name suggests how well is the youngster able to identify Concepts and actually formulate them so the students required to identify the rules for Concepts when shown illustrations and non-in non-instances of the concept so on this so let me cut to the quick so on this test there are categories of Concepts and one of them is size one of them is color one of them is shape and one of them is number and so for someone who is not affected by any kind of communication or motor issues or anything when you show them the items they have to tell you they have to identify what’s the pattern here how are things does this this pattern represent a difference in size color number so what you can do if you have someone who is not able to respond verbally you could make up what I’ve done in the past has made up what I call Concept cards and so sometimes the the color the answer is either going to be red or yellow so they would have a card and they could hand red or yellow they could point to red or yellow sometimes it’s size so you would have a card that has something big on it something small they can point to small they could point to Big um and so that’s one of the ways that I’ve used that for folks who who had difficulty with communicating after they they presented the information okay the other thing that we can do in this is that it’s a controlled learning task and this is one of the reasons I I this is I I started talking about this so I’m going to control learning tasks what you’re doing is you’re teaching this individual in front of you this new task they’ve never done this concept formation task before unless they were evaluated three years ago and they probably don’t remember it but anyway um and so we’re teaching them this task and then if they get it wrong we provide corrective feedback so in this cast if if the answer was color and they it was supposed to be yellow when they hand me the red I would give it back and I would point to the the yellow one said and say the answer is yellow and so what’s happening during here is I’m keeping track to see if the youngster benefits from this corrective feedback and if they do that’s a huge part of the evaluation because I’m teaching this youngster a new skill and on a one-on-one situation with corrective feedback and practice they’re getting the skill so um we’re kind of the the same holds true for this analysis synthesis test so what it’s measuring is again it’s a picture one so this one here um well I can give it a great example what we did was a young man with on the autism spectrum and this is what the team said and I love it when the team says this I hear it quite often they said we think there’s more going on in there than he can tell us and I love when I hear that because it demonstrates that yeah they they got faith in this kid they got they they’ve got they want to hold high expectations they they know there’s something there they just want help getting it out so so this I’ll just kind of elaborate on this one because it shows how where the paraprofessionals are so important as well too so I had met with with everyone and so for this test I I developed I took index cards and what happens is you answer by staying in color so it shows these patterns and you have to figure out what’s happening so the colors either going to be black it’s going to be red it’s going to be yellow um and or blue and so I created four index cards and and met with the youngster and on all these tests the other thing about the Woodcock Johnson is you always teach the test before you administer it so you know that a person understands the text expectations before you administer it otherwise you might be giving a test and getting it all wrong because they don’t get it I could tell when I was given the instructions this youngster was non-verbal um I could tell by his body language and facial expression he was getting this and actually looked like this was going to be fun for him and so anyway I administered the practice once we get into the test and I’ll cut them quick every time I presented an item he handed me the black card and so what I did is I moved the order of the cards I thought sometimes kids have preferences they pull the thing from the far right or pull from the so I changed the order up he still keeps giving me the black card so I said well we wish this isn’t going to work we stopped so later on I process with the the the paraprofessional and I shared I showed her everything I said well he he keeps giving me the black card and so she said what were the instructions I said well tell me but give me the card the the color that matches and she said well the black one’s the only one that matches so I said no wait a minute this is red and she said it’s not the same red as on your easel he’s very particular he’s not going to pick that so the black one was you know so anyway let’s go to the quick so this is a good example of how you have to be patient and great so I I go to the Xerox so next time I’m there I’ve gone to a xerox machine Xerox the page and I put it on um glossy photo paper so that the color would match perfectly and then I cut them out I put them on put them down and we start I administered the the practice items began we start to think he he picks up the first one and then throws it on the floor and sweeps the rest of the cards onto the floor so I I pick them all up I put them back I do the next one he squeezed them all onto the floor so it being a highly trained psychologist I inferred he didn’t want to do this right now so we stopped so I meet again with the paraprofessional and show her the stuff and she said he’s not going to touch those they feel creepy he has sensitivity issues so I said okay so now I go back this time I make it on a Xerox which is only on regular paper not glossy paper long end story went like a charm one part lone lift part though so anyway he would respond now he would hand me the little sheets of paper with it but it didn’t end here so on this test I don’t know if you get I gotta tell this story because analysis synthesis also has a as an executive function piece on so you’re going along and you figured out how to deal with these these logic problems which he did but then when you get to item 26 you have to switch it up and so I’m always alert to because it your your process that you’ve been using doesn’t work anymore and so I always watch to see what’s going on so he’s sitting there and he’s sitting there sitting there and then suddenly he picks up my book and throws it across the room hits the cement brick wall and shatters and breaks apart and so it so I inferred that he was annoyed and angry with this thing because I’m a highly trained psychologist so so I we stopped but here’s the point I sent it I contacted the test publisher and told them what happened and they sent me they said they sent me a new one only if I sent the old one back because they wanted to see why it failed so if they could improve it in the future they would so I thought that was a that was a pretty cool thing but anyway I shared that story because it was like one thing after another until the p and that’s what it is the people who know these kids the most are the best are the ones that are going to help you figure this thing out and you got to stick with it and that’s um just so it’s tough to get into so so anyway um when you have these materials and I’m not sure how else to deal with them because I didn’t I thought you we can talk about them in subsequent sessions as well but the whole idea that um by knowing what the demands are out of the test you can help the evaluator figure out which ones they might be able to use and which ones the youngster might be able to respond to and it should be ongoing in in nature um we it just take time it takes patience and you gotta stick with it with a bit um I just wanna so anyway I’m not quite sure so the if you look at this it just names it just looks at at these various tests and what the expectation is if you have other tests that your evaluators are using on a regular basis um let me know and I can develop some some sheets and we can have that for the next time that we get together but um this this piece isn’t gonna going to work out either I want to share One More Story just to show that sometimes you don’t get any numbers from the evaluation but just by doing it you’ve you get to figure out what’s going on so it was a a young gal it was it was not Vermont I became a a I was spending a lot of time traveling to New Jersey working with they have a advocacy agency down there to support kids who are being treated poorly and this is a young girl who had who attended kindergarten in her classroom in a school walking distance to her from her home when she went into first grade that the school told her parents she couldn’t attend there anymore she was being sent to a special school for kids with disabilities um and she had a thing called a Genesis of the corpus callosum and I don’t know if I had no idea what the hell that well I knew I knew what it was I knew but how it affected kids so so what it is the corpus callosum is a structure inside your brain that allows the right half to talk to the left half um and she didn’t have one of those and so she was she was a little unstable in her motor movements delayed in her her language but otherwise you know a smiley happy little kid um so anyway we decided that that Mom would come to to Vermont with this little one and they moved in for the weekend and I spent so I said bring all her favorite toys and Mary Allen was a part of this as well and we spent the weekend playing with this kid and getting another and just figuring out this amazing stuff and I’ll give you one and so also just this was before we had the interweb where we could find out about stuff so I got in touch with the the University of Maine in Orono has a place called The the National Organization of rare disorders I contacted them about a Genesis of the corpus callosum got information from them um they put me in contact with a parent of a youngster young man with it and I talked to them and then found out the center just did this it’s just Place stuff with this youngster where we found so much about it so I’ll just give you one example and then I’ll end the story with how it turned out so when you’re if you remember from your biology days the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body and the left side of your brain is involved with the right side of your body and so if we fine with this little gal is that if if we put a ball if she wasn’t looking and I took her hand and put a ball in her hand and asked her to tell me what it was she couldn’t tell me what it was because the language side with that word was was on the left side of her brain if I took the ball and then stuck it in her left hand it’s like what do you think happened well so anyway we we did these all these different tests okay remember this the other thing is sometimes you have to do unusual stuff to get kids to cooperate she had this little fairy that you pulled the string and it would fly in the air and anytime I pulled that she would then work for like five or ten minutes then she wanted the ferry going again but anyway it was just back and forth but the point be so then we get to the the court hearing where they’re they’re they’re being sued and this the school the parents are suing the schools so they can go to local school and the the psychologists from the district gets on this stage in the end of hadn’t done anything I get on the stage and I got all these recommendations on the stand I got all these recommendations on how to present material blah blah and the judge said School hadn’t done anything to support this kid and anyway she gets to stay in her school the point of that is being that we I had no test scores I had we just did stuff and we learned about each other I learned about her and then we wrote it up and and off we went so sometimes these these evaluations of our most challenging students aren’t as it isn’t about the numbers it’s about getting to know them and getting the information okay how do we how are we gonna how are we going to provide instruction a way that works for this youngster and no one getting people to understand how this little gal’s brain was working obviously I’m not a neurologist so the the recommendation was that they get a neurological consult so they’d have more detailed information how to deal with this um testing people at home were the most comfortable um is is one of the big ones the notion of make sure we have the right equipment if the youngsters have certain seating uh equipment that they use while in school that we’re using that while we’re while we’re working with them things like slap warts etc etc being attuned to the lighting and the acoustics a lot of times we’re putting these these cinder block rooms whenever I’m administering auditory tasks to youngsters nearly all tests provide a recorded version of it and you can either have it on your spot at a knee phone or to get your cabin on a a little CD player but and and have the youngsters with headphones on using that that way they’re getting the information in both there simultaneously and we’re also blocking out extraneous stimuli and that’s something to be in tune with um you know something going on outside um that gets it’s distracting whatever okay and being aware potential interruptions so some of the things we do so for example that those tests I was describing with that young person affected by autism through the book um those build on each other that you’re developing a strategy and so if that got interrupted midpoint that would be a tough one to to join back in because we it would we would have interrupted the process of learning the task and then applying applying it to new items so be aware of one of the things that I always do if I’m in a school doing an evaluation I always check in with the the administrative assistant and say okay what’s happening today any any drills any of this also what’s the whether what’s going on in the youngsters
um routine that day that you don’t want to interrupt you know one of my worst experiences was I bet with the classroom teacher in the morning interviewed her I said okay what’s happening today is there anything that I I uh I got to be aware of and says no no we’re good and so um it was an old wooden School we’re in the room we’re working and suddenly it sounds like there’s elephants upstairs above us and that’s where the gym was and I look up in this little second grade girl is crying and I’m tearing my heart I said what’s the matter what’s matters is that’s my class and they’re they’re in they’re in gym and that’s my favorite subject okay off you go so out the door she went happy as a clan but so so being careful about that stuff I I always ask students I ask them both ways what do you not want to miss it what do you want to miss it’s because that’s the one I’ll schedule it they okay all right um so that whole scheduling stuff um you got to have a lot of particularly a lot of breaks particularly uh youngsters who have have a law take a lot of energy to generate speech you have to take our time with that small small sessions frequent breaks we’ve got to be really flexible in what we’re up to um
accommodating the personal rhythms of the youngster how many I always ask what’s this guy like at the end of the day with scalic and typically if people will frequently say well they tend to do better in the morning and that’s when I’m going to want to work with the youngster I don’t want to work with I just tell I just had was working with a youngster last Monday 8 30 in the morning and after about five minutes I say we’re done here I mean this kid was head down on the table uh just exhausted I found out that weekend he had three hockey games in three different parts of the state Monday morning was not a time to be so I had to suggest I I can’t I had to suspend that I couldn’t say well I’m here and I drove all this way I wouldn’t I wasn’t going to get any good results so I had to say oh this ain’t happening we’ll catch you later all right so these were some scenarios perhaps we’ll get those at another time if we figure out the technology um all right so I just want to chat up chat a bit about reporting out the evaluation results um first off we gotta take the parental perspective I have been in meetings whether up to 12 people around a table and Mom that is that is not a that’s an intimidating situation I always sit next to the parent if there’s a whatever he needs meetings to sit next to the parents said I do have graphic representations of all the stuff I did so they can see them so all right so first up make sure we have this the right scores for the right situation so with parents I always use standard scores and percentile ranks if if appropriate and I always explain what they are know what because you know one minute you’re hearing a standard score of 50 and you’re hearing whoa that’s that’s four stupid deviations below the mean and then you hear a percentile rank of 50 and you say rate on the average range it’s confusing for Mom and Dad so try to stick to one score if you can but if you can’t be sure that we’re explaining each score before we we we use it okay and certain scores are better a certain time um always start by focusing on the strengths and at this at this point I’m probably speech into the choir but um unfortunately this is a this is not a strength-based process in general where where in terms of suppose we’re looking at eligibility we’re looking for what’s going wrong so we have to turn this into a strength-based process where okay here are things that are going well and we focus on those and how we’re going to use those then we’re going to describe the challenges um okay this is what’s going to ride here’s what we’re going to do to deal with that always avoid jargon but if you have to use a technical word be sure that we we explain it um one of the most I went to a one of the Walk takeaways most important takeaways I’ve ever had from a from a national conference I went to was was I want to listen to the to the the the the president of the National Association of learning disabilities it’s a parent parent group and he happened to be an attorney no surprise there I guess but anyway um one of the things he said was that in nearly all cases where he’s working with families that uh are at loggerheads with the school it’s because the family left the meeting the educational planning team meeting not understanding or knowing what was going on and so we can avoid that by being as clear as possible and and that has that’s not I I say that but that’s not the case in in Vermont I think we have we’re pretty good at this and I think we have pretty good relationships with most of our parents but sometimes we we run across the parent who is who’s anxious and and sometimes that comes across in a hostile in a positive way so the way to deal with that is just be as as uh as focused on the strengths and Challenge and confident and what we’ve our results are and get confident in what we’re going to do to make things better okay um bigot how are we going to use this data this we’ve summarized how we’re going to use the data to meet the universe the individuals needs anytime you can make explicit links between test performance and real life implications I think a common one that I that I get is a lot of times um parents adults perceive so for example here’s a big one that I was frequent pops up a youngster with processing speed challenges is ought frequently characterized as being oppositional non-compliant and just kind of frustrating to deal with and so when we can make the link between the fact that you just provided a three-step direction to this youngster he’s got pretty good working memory so I think he’s going to hang on to it but it’s going to take him a while to process do not expect immediate response and so that conversely if they have if we find out that boy one of the challenges with this young person is their their working memory their short-term memory and you give a three-step response don’t expect two and three to make it or one or two they’re going to focus on one aspect of that and that’s what you’re going to get the kids not being oppositional this is a real life link between what’s going on cognitively and what’s happening
um in the in real life
one of my favorite refers was a referral for youngster who for uh they suspected having ADHD and so I did a class of observation I didn’t see anything that was indicative of ADHD they also suspected he had a math learning disability which is kind of unusual I usually don’t get that kind of so anyway um we do the math assessment said yes he does have some challenges but they’re not huge and during the interview I I spoke with the youngster and I I asked them what his what his favorite subjects are and he told me and one of them was math I said wait a minute here I’m a little confused um your math teacher told me that that you’re frequently off task you don’t finish your work during math that she said you’re doing pretty good except I’ll accept the area math and he says to me well math is right before lunch and I’m starving how am I supposed to pay attention when I’m starving so no ADHD no math disability hungry so because so we have to oh yes Junction just needed snacks before the result was snatched before so from the Maza babes yes this is just a really good segue because Valerie when you were talking about um you know the test uh setting and what you need to pay attention she wrote I always made sure the student had a snack and was not hungry I I carry food I have snacks with me um if I also if you’re in elementary school I have a treasure chest and if if we I tell them my job is to help figure out how you learn best um I’m going to ask you to do some things that might be a little hard anyone who tries their best the whole time gets to pick from the treasure chest it’s got little Lego kits in there and all different things that people want but anyway that kind of little motivation part of the environmental thing where you’re not hungry and here’s a little motivation to participate to get through it and then lastly in reporting uh be cognitive of your audience um but we have we’re going to be working with parents with varying levels of sophistication um so we need to be sure that we’re communicating in a way that that is it’s hitting the mark whatever who it is whoever it is that we’re we’re sharing this information with okay all right um this actually gives me a couple of minutes to talk about the New World Order I don’t want to believe this without talking about this and so um I just want to talk about a bit about this cross battery assessment and how it how it’s it’s something that has benefited low incidence populations but also is going to benefit the broader the broader student body as well so if we look at the the term specific learning disability it says this is what’s in the federal regs and also in our state rates the term specific learning business disability means a disorder and one or more of the basic psychological processes okay so we have a disorder and one of the basic psychological processes that is involved then or contributes to or underlies understanding of the language spoken or written which disorder may manifest self in the imperfect ability to listen think speak read write spell and do mathematical calculations so the key part is basic psychological processes and so that’s going to become um that’s going to become a catch word and something that we’re all going to need to be familiar with because in a new world order as as which is similar to what we’ve been doing with with low incidence population we have to identify a basic psychological process that’s having that’s a deficit that is having a negative impact on their acquisition of the basis of skills hopefully we’re also going to identify strengths so patterns of strengths and weaknesses where that comes in so so this is um this is a research based uh this person Don Flanagan has been been following the research and doing meta-analysis so looking at a bunch of and determining what are the psychological processes that affect our basic skills so that’s what this chart is so it if we look at basic reading in order to be have good basic reading skills the literature the research suggests we have to have good memory skills good processing ability good auditory skills and good language use okay so this suggests that if we have deficits in any of these areas that’s going to impact our basic reading it also suggests that if a youngster in the New World Order is refused is referred because to having basic reading challenges we have to be sure that the educational planning team says let’s make let’s check memory we don’t have to do the whole shooting match if we don’t want to we said let’s check memory processing auditory and languages and see if that’s what which one of those might be contributing and so this chart represents what Don Flanagan has founded in the in the research to support the the notion of the relationship between those basic basic fight psychological processes and that on the left hand side the the basis skills that we we address in school so now we again I I have a hard time staying away from the Woodcock Johnson because one of the things about the Publishers of that is that they’re always staying ahead of what’s going on with us and they produce these tests for us in education and so what happened was the last time it was normed they knew that the so first let me say if you’re using the discrepancy model where I test your cognitive ability and I test your achievement and then I determine there’s a difference there a significant difference that suggests the existence of a learning disability we now we know that that’s not a great way to do it however if you’re using the Wilcox Johnson cognitive with the Woodcock Johnson achievement to do that procedure you’re doing it in the most statistically sound way possible even though it’s not the best way to do it it’s the most sound way to do it so having said that they now recognize that we’re going in a different direction and so the last time the Woodcock Johnson was normed what they did was they took and it’s if this is so if you remember your your statistics days and the whole notion of correlation there are almost 8 000 kids in the norm sample for the Wilcox Johnson and what they did was they said let’s look at each basic skill area and we’ll see as the basic skill area goes up what cognitive skills go up so as the basics reading goes down what cognitive skills goes down do you see what they’re getting at they’re saying which cognitive skills contribute to in this Norm sample of real kids so the first slide I showed you is theoretical and based on some some some research a lot of research actually this one here is actual kids and a norm sample and what they found out was that if if you’re looking at basic reading if you have strong basic reading skills you also had strong comprehension knowledge skills strong short-term memory cognitive processing speed and auditory processing those four things contribute to your basic reading skills if you had poor skills in these areas or any of these combination of areas you had four basic reading skills so in the in the in the New World Order of looking for psychological processes that affect reading this this this puts us in a place where we can actually look within an arm sample and find out what’s going on so for example so for example if we’re reading if we’re concerned about reading fluencies our youngster let’s just look at reading comprehension
things have been going pretty well but boy this youngster just doesn’t get what they’re reading we’re going to measure comprehension knowledge fluid reasoning cognitive processing speed and auditory processing to see if there are challenges in those areas if there are challenges in those areas that’s the New World Order says we’re not looking for a discrepancy we’re looking for a match so this tells me that when I measure the cognitive skills you need to be a good reader your deficit in those skills now I measure your reading and you’re also deficit that’s indicated and to me that makes more sense than the discrepancy model that’s indicative of a specific learning disability and that’s kind of at the underlying level of the of the an arti model and any uh uh uh strength or weakness model that you’re going to look at and so so I gave you two charts the first chart is this is evidence-based from research compiled by by this person she’s at she’s at a university in New York that works there and she’s been been following this for quite a while and then over here is the stuff that that McGrew found when he actually looked at 8 000 real kids he found that if you had four written expression skills you typically had poor comprehension knowledge for cognitive processing speed or auditory processing poor long term too which makes sense if you think about what you need to be a good writer conversely if these were strong you tended to be a good a strong writer alrighty okay so in the New World Order the questions are going to either got the disruptcy model is bye bye and we’re going to have RTI and we’re going to have um patterns of strengths and weaknesses and perhaps some other the federal legislature says an evidence-based approach so there are other approaches out there but these are the ones that are we’re hearing about in the model so the evaluation questions by the EPT team are going to be quite different now um we’re going to be asking our evaluation of psychologists to figure out why isn’t this youngster making in an RTI model why isn’t this youngster making the games in this basic skill area in spite of the fact that they’re getting high quality General Ed instruction they’re getting high quality supplemental Support Services we’re using um evidence-based programs and procedures to impart these new skills where we’re doing it with Fidelity Integrity we haven’t cut anything out we didn’t like this part so we’re not going to do it we’re doing the program the way it was expected but we’re not getting the growth we would expect that’s what has to be answered now why isn’t that happening and a pattern to strength and weakness we’re going to have a similar situation but now we’re going to they’re going to be specifically asking what cognitive skills or cognitive processes are at play that are facilitating this youngsters so that’s the nice thing about pattern of spreads of weakness if they’re facilitating their process their performance we’re looking for skills too stress not just weakness and and what Pat what cognitive or uh skills or contributing towards deficits the weakness part and that’s the Hallmark of a specific learning disability is that you’re not having trouble across the board for some unexpected that’s the in quotes reason you’re having challenges and and one or more of the the basic skill areas okay so again that the question is going to get posed differently and having said that we have about 10 oh so I I included these slides at the end just to give more test names these are although I didn’t address these in the test in the actual um text of our word but these are tests that you might encounter that look at cognitive performance.
