This Module Is Designed to Provide You with an Understanding of the Assessment Process

This Module Is Designed to Provide You with an Understanding of the Assessment Process

I. Introduction:

This module is designed to provide you with an understanding of the assessment process for young children (birth to five) with special needs. The purpose of this module is to extend your knowledge about assessment of exceptional learners to include information specific to very young children and their families. Therefore, it is assumed that you have a sufficient background about assessment principles and practices before you begin. In most cases this means that you have taken a class on assessment.

This module is required for either undergraduate or graduate students focusing their studies in early childhood special education. Ideally, prior to starting this module you should have completed one of the following:

  • ESE 423 Assessment (undergraduate) or ESE 655 (graduate) - Assessment of Exceptional Learners

It is also recommended that you should be taken in conjunction with one of the following courses:

  • ESE 450 (undergraduate) or ESE 550 (graduate) - Methods in Early Childhood Special Education

Other students in special education and other disability-related fields will also benefit from the information presented in this module.

Objectives:

The student will:

  1. Demonstrate an understanding of the purpose of assessment and the unique issues surrounding assessment of very young children.
  2. Be knowledgeable about range of behaviors of the child and characteristics of learning environment that are included in the assessment.
  3. Display an understanding of the different types of assessment approaches and their associated merits and limitations.
  4. Demonstrate an awareness of the standards of practices pertaining to assessment procedures.
  5. Comprehend the importance of linking assessment to intervention.

Module Topics:

  1. Introduction
  2. Goals and challenges in the assessment of very young children
  3. What do we assess?
  4. Assessment approaches and criteria for selection of measures
  5. Procedural considerations
  6. Linking assessment to intervention

Overview

This module provides you with an understanding of the unique issues involved in the assessment of very young children with special needs. Because it is intended to be a module and not an entire course, only the most salient information is included. It is highly recommended that you extend your studies to gain a more thorough understanding of the topics addressed. A list of selected references is included at the end of the module for this purpose.

The following is an expanded outline of the module topics:

  1. Introduction to the module
  2. Goals and challenges in the assessment of very young children
  1. Purpose of assessment
  1. To determine eligibility for services under IDEA
  2. Assist in planning intervention
  3. Monitor progress
  1. Assessment challenges
  1. Characteristics of young children
  2. Measurement issues
  3. Engaging the family in the assessment process
  4. Conducting assessments in natural environments
  5. Promoting collaboration among team members
  1. What do we assess?
  1. Requirements under IDEA
  2. Focus of newborn assessments
  1. Neurological integrity
  2. Behavioral organization
  3. Temperament
  1. Infants and young children older than one month of age
  1. Physical development (including vision and hearing)
  2. Cognitive development
  3. Communication skills
  4. Social-emotional development
  5. Adaptive or self-help skills
  1. Assessing environments
  1. Assessment approaches and criteria for selection of measures
  1. Formal assessment approaches
  2. Informal assessment approaches
  3. Criteria for selection of measures – LINK Dimensions
  4. Description of selected measures
  1. Procedural considerations
  1. Collaborating with the family and other team members
  2. Cultural considerations
  3. Natural environments
  4. Modifications in assessment practices
  5. Recommended practices from DEC
  1. Linking assessment to intervention
  1. Assessment reports
  2. Translating assessment information into IFSP/IEP planning
  1. Goals and challenges in the assessment of very young children

Online Lesson:

Welcome to the world of infants, toddlers and preschoolers with special needs and their families! The best place to begin is at the beginning.

SCAN IN A PICTURE OF A NEWBORN AND MOTHER

It is very unlikely that you will begin here, but always remember that you are just one person entering the world of this very special person, and that you will travel only a short distance in the life long journey of this child and his/her family.

SCAN IN A PICTURE OF A CHILD/FAMILY WITH OTHER PEOPLE (MAYBE A PROGRESSION OF SHOTS OF ONE FAMILY ACROSS TIME THAT SHOWS THE CHILD AND FAMILY YOUNG AND THEN OLDER, ETC.)

II. A: Purpose of Assessment

There are many reasons we conduct assessments of young children. In this module we will focus primarily on the purpose of assessment in the system of services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) – Parts B and C. Different assessment activities are described under IDEA including screening (Child Find) and comprehensive multidisciplinary evaluation.

NOTE: DOUBLE CHECK THE WORDING ABOVE

Part C of IDEA, pertaining to services for infants and toddlers with special needs delineates between the terms evaluation and assessment.

  • Evaluation is defined as the procedures used by appropriate qualified personnel to determine a child’s initial and continuing eligibility under this part consistent with the definition of “infants and toddlers with disabilities” including determining the status of the child in each of the developmental areas: cognitive development, physical development (including vision and hearing), communication development, social or emotional development, adaptive development.
  • Assessment is defined as the ongoing procedures used by appropriate qualified personnel throughout the period of the child’s eligibility under this part to identify (I) the child’s unique strengths and needs and the services appropriate to meet those needs; and (ii) the resources, priorities, and concerns of the family and the supports and services necessary to enhance the family’s capacity to meet the developmental needs of their infant or toddler with a disability (34 CFR 303.322, Federal Register, July 30, 1993)

Screening and evaluation procedures are usually conducted for the purpose of determining eligibility under IDEA.

Assignment: IDEA defines who is eligible for services under the law. Part B uses a categorical model while Part C uses a developmental model. Review the definitions for eligibility for both of these parts.

Part B: IDEA (Sec. 303.7 (c 1-13))

Part C: IDEA (sec. 303.322 (b)(1))

SCAN IN SOME FIGURE THAT SHOWS THE PROCESS (See folder)

Once a child has been determined eligible for services under IDEA a yearly plan must be developed that identifies long range goals for the child/ family and appropriate supports and services. Information collected through assessment activities should be used for planning the Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) or the Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Therefore, as assessment strategies are planned, members of the team should consider measures and approaches that will assist in developing the IFSP or the IEP.

After the IFSP or IEP is developed and services are in place, the team should monitor the child’s progress on a routine basis and modify intervention strategies as necessary.

II.B: Assessment Challenges

Assignment: Consider what you know about the assessment of school-aged children. Now, let’s talk about two children, one is Elizabeth who is ten years old and has Down Syndrome. Her counterpart, Erica, is 18 months and also has Down Syndrome. How might these two assessments look different? How might they be similar?

Online Lesson:

SCAN IN A PICTURE OF SOME CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS OFF THE INTERNET

I.B.1. Traditional assessment approaches used with older children are ineffective with very young children for the following reasons.

  1. Regardless of the disability, young children lack the verbal ability to respond to appropriately to instructions. While preschool children may have more verbal ability, they may not yet understand the expectations of the testing situation.
  2. Young children have limited attention spans which prohibits the use of measures

requiring sustained attention for a significant period of time.

These issues are illustrated in a scenario described by Linder (1990) who asks the reader to imagine him or herself as a 3-year-old child who is being evaluated in a more traditional manner.

After a necessary potty break and a few tears, the lady lets you see your Mommy and Daddy. But not for long. Here comes another lady to take you to another little room with another table and chairs and different pictures on the wall. This lady doesn’t talk much. She just keeps putting pictures in front of you and asking you what they are. Many of the pictures are things that you have seen, but you just don’t know what to call them. So you look down at the floor and up at the pictures on the wall. You pull on your shirt and wiggle a lot. You wish this lady would quit with the pictures. You’ve seen more than enough pictures. Then the lady gets another suitcase, only it’s a different color. She pulls out a couple of toys at a time and tells you what she wants you to do with them. Some of these are neat toys and you’d really like to play with them. Every time you start to do something other than what the lady told you to do, however, she takes the toys away. This lady sure is stingy. You are getting tired, so you put your head down on the table. The lady makes you sit up. Finally, she is through. She takes you back to your Mommy and Daddy and tells them that you were “somewhat resistant”.

(Linder, 1990, pp. 9-10)

I.B.2:There are several issues related to measurement in the assessment of young children with special needs.

SCAN IN A FIGURE OF YARDSTICKS, MEASURING CUPS, ETC.

First, there are a limited number of appropriate instruments that can be used with this population. Because there are so few, practitioners often inappropriately use instruments designed for a specific purpose such as screening (i.e., the Denver Developmental Screening Test) to determine eligibility. In other instances, some instruments that are designed for a specific age group, or for children with specific characteristics are misused with children for whom the instrument was not developed. An example of this is the use of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, an instrument that is designed for use with children up to 30 months of age with children who are older than 30 months with significant developmental delays. These practices must be eliminated as there is a requirement contained within the law that mandates that a test is validated for the purpose for which it is used (Federal Register, 1992, Section 300.532). Therefore, a test must be valid for the child being assessed and for the determined intent of the assessment.

Secondly, some of the instruments used by practitioners with very young children lack information about their validity or reliability. Some measures that have not undergone any kind of norming procedures yield developmental age scores that are inappropriately used to determine eligibility. For an assessment tool to be considered for inclusion in the assessment battery, it should have been normed on a representative sample of children. It is incumbent upon the individual conducting the assessment to consider reliability and validity of instruments that may be selected for use to determine eligibility.

Finally, the use of intelligence tests of infants and young children is inappropriate as these tests have poor predictive validity. Patterns of development vary considerably across children and there is a lot of variability in these patterns for each child during their early years. Because of this, intelligence tests fail to do a reliable job of forecasting a child’s cognitive abilities. Some practitioners continue to rely on these tools, in spite of their limitation. School psychologists surveyed to determine why they use intelligence tests with very young children indicated that they were required to do so by their administrator and that they lacked sufficient training to use alternative assessment approaches (Bagnato & Neisworth, 1994).

II.B.3: Public Law 99-457, passed in 1986, established a framework for states to develop systems of services for infants and toddlers with special needs and their families. This law emphasized the role of the family in the all aspects of the service system from the design and evaluation of programs to their participation in all early intervention activities. The literature contains numerous articles and books about this “paradigm shift” from services focused on the child to services focused on the family. Predictably, considerable attention has been given to the role of the family in the assessment process.

There are several reasons why families should be actively engaged in the assessment process. The first reason stems from our understanding of child development and the contextual factors influencing it. Below if a figure depicting the ecology of the young child with special needs (Bailey, 1992) adapted from Bronfenbrenner (1979) model. This “nested” view of the young developing child shows the centrality of the family among the many influences on the child. Artificially separating the child from family members in an assessment fails to account for their role in the child’s development.

SCAN IN BAILEY’S FIGURE

Secondly, family members contribute important information about the child’s typical behaviors, his or her strengths and areas of need, approaches that may be more effective and contexts that will promote optimum performance. This results in a more accurate picture of the child’s developmental status that has more ecological validity.

Not only can family members contribute important information about the child throughout the assessment process, but the law stipulates the IFSP must consider the family’s resources, concerns and priorities as they relate to the child and include both child and family outcomes. Accordingly, IFSP planning must result in outcomes linked to family resources, concerns and priorities and the child’s developmental needs.

Lastly, the assessment process often sets the stage for future interactions between early intervention practitioners and families. If they are actively engaged in the assessment process, they may feel they are truly partners in the early intervention enterprise.

II.B.4: The earlier scenario of a three-year old girl’s experience in a more traditional testing situation represents another challenge in conducting assessments with very young children. That challenge is responding to the legal requirement that all early intervention services must be delivered in a child’s “natural environment”. There are many advantages to conducting assessments in settings that are familiar to the child under predictable conditions. On the other hand, it may be difficult for all team members to complete assessment activities in these settings for a variety of reasons.

II.B.5: The final challenge facing early intervention personnel is collaboration among team members. In recent years there has been an emphasis placed on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches. This trend toward more collaborative approaches in the assessment process is in response to the need to view the child more wholistically rather than segmenting development into separate domains. All of the five developmental domains (physical development, cognitive development, communication development, social or emotional development or adaptive development) are interrelated and as such should not be separated artificially in the assessment process. Yet bringing the team together represents a challenge because of logistical factors and the fact that many early intervention practitioners are not prepared for inter- or transdisciplinary roles.

  1. What do we assess?

IIIA: IDEA spells out what must be the focus of developmental assessments of young children under Parts B and C.

Let us begin with infants and toddlers who may be eligible under Part C. In your first assignment you reviewed the eligibility criteria for Parts B and C. Remember that eligibility under Part C includes several criteria and states developed their own definitions for eligibility.

First, let’s discuss those children who have an established risk. In most circumstances you will not be the one to determine if a child has a “diagnosed physical or mental condition which has a high probability of resulting in a developmental delay”. These conditions are generally determined through medical and or genetic testing. Established conditions identified under Arizona’s definitions include Down Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

NOTE: LOOK THIS UP AND FIND OUT IF THERE IS A LINK THAT THE STUDENTS CAN REFERENCE.

Now, let’s consider those children who are experiencing developmental delays. If we return to the language of the law we will find that for a child to be eligible for services he or she must be experiencing developmental delays in one of the following areas:

  • physical development
  • cognitive development
  • communication development,
  • social or emotional development
  • adaptive development

Let’s shift our focus to preschool children eligible under Part B. Children may be eligible if they qualify for any of the categories under Part B including:

  • Autism
  • Mental retardation
  • Hearing impairments including deafness
  • Speech or language impairments
  • Visual impairments including blindness
  • Emotional Disturbance
  • Orthopedic Impairments
  • Traumatic Brain Injury
  • Other Health Impairments
  • Specific Learning Disabilities
  • Developmental Delays

They may also be eligible under the definition of “children with disabilities”. The definition mirrors that for Part C (see above) and the specific criteria are determined by the state. In the state of Arizona there are five categories for preschool children including:

Visual Impairments

Hearing Impairments

Severe Preschool Delay

Moderate Preschool Delay

Preschool Speech/Language Delay

III.B: In recent years diagnostic procedures are increasingly available to families who are expecting a child. Maternal serum testing is a procedure where the mother’s blood is analyzed. It can be an effective way to screen for meningomyeolocele, Down Syndrome and trisomy 18. The status of the fetus can be monitored through several tests including: ultrasound; chronic villus sampling (minute biopsies of the outermost membrane surrounding the embryo); amniocentesis (small amount of amniotic fluid is drawn from the placenta and analyzed); and percutaneous umbilical blood sampling (fetal blood is drawn from the umbilical cord for testing). As a practitioner, you will not be involved in the administration of any of these tests. However, this brief description is included as it is important that you know about these tests and their role in identifying established conditions and or other risk factors that may impact the health and well being of the newborn. As we learn more about human genetics, we will undoubtedly expand prenatal testing and develop more sophisticated techniques of fetal therapy that will help to minimize the severity of some disorders or conditions.

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