user friendly have been maintained. The text is a comprehensive introduction to educational assessment reflecting changes required by the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Information has been updated and expanded, some more extensively than others, as necessitated by changes in the legal infrastructure of special education law. Minor category changes have also been made; for example, oral language assessments and written language assessments have been combined into one chapter. Comparison of the tests reviewed in this edition with those of the seventh edition has been facilitated by the use of asterisks (*) to indicate
This study assessed the effects of two types of goal-setting graphing procedures used within curriculum-based measurement (CBM) to provide performance feedback to students regarding oral reading fluency. Eighteen second-grade students were assigned to one of three experimental conditions: dynamic goal line, static goal line, and control. Calculation of effect sizes for the treatment conditions suggested that students receiving biweekly performance feedback toward short-term (biweekly) or long-term (eight-week) goals evidenced educationally relevant and noticeable change in oral reading fluency compared with a no-treatment control.
This study examined three aspects of technical adequacy with respect to two general outcome measures in mathematics. The first two aspects were the effects of aggregating scores and correcting for random guessing on the reliability and validity of the measures. The third issue was the extent to which the measures were sensitive to changes in student performance. One hundred and five sixth-grade students completed two general outcome measures (basic facts and estimation) weekly for a 10-week period. With respect to aggregation, the results indicated that while fluency with basic facts is measured quite precisely with a single score, aggregation of scores for the estimation task increases both reliability and validity. Correcting the estimation scores for random guessing is recommended to increase criterion validity. Analyses of sensitivity to growth revealed that although both the fact and estimation measures reflect statistically significant changes across the 10-week period, the fact measure is likely to have greater practical significance. The article closes with a discussion of the relative merits of the measures for special education practice.
In this study we investigated differences in reading performance between 30 students in a suburban school district identified as having a learning disability and 30 students without a learning disability matched on the basis of grade and gender. All participants were in the third or fourth grade and were tested using the Woodcock Diagnostic Reading Battery (WDRB). Results indicated that all but three of the 10 subtests of the WDRB produced significant differences between the groups. The three subtests that did not reach significance were Oral Vocabulary, Listening Comprehension, and Memory for Sentences, all of which address oral language rather than letters or symbols. Results are discussed in terms of practical applications of the WDRB with students diagnosed with learning disabilities, as well as with other noncognitive indicators of reading performance.
There is growing concern that current methods of assessing students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds are sometimes biased against the student. For example, traditional forms of measuring English reading acquisition may demonstrate that a student has a learning disability or cognitive delay, when in fact; the student is merely having difficulty learning English. Alternative assessment methods are needed to monitor the English reading acquisition for these bilingual students for two reasons: (a) to ensure that they are not misidentified as needing special education and (b) to ensure that students who are in need of special education services receive the educational support necessary to be successful in school. This article discusses problems with traditional methods of assessing bilingual students and describes curriculum-based measurement (CBM) for use with bilingual Hispanic students. Additional information about the features of CBM is presented along with issues related to the use of CBM with bilingual Hispanic students.
The present study examined perceptions of the social problems and adaptive behaviors of children and youth with Asperger Syndrome. Parents and teachers used the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC) (Reynolds & Kamphaus, 1992) to evaluate 20 children and youth with Asperger Syndrome. In addition, the 20 students using the BASC self-report instrument evaluated their social problems and adaptive behavior. Findings are discussed relative to better understanding and planning for the needs of children and youth with Asperger Syndrome and their families.
This study examined the content validity of the Visual Similes Test II, designed to measure affective and cognitive arousal in individuals 5 to 21 years of age. The 54 participants were asked to rate the affective and cognitive content of unoccluded stimuli from the Visual Similes Test II. The participants, whose mean age was 27.0 yr. (SD=8.6), included 1 (2%) man and 53 (98%) women who were enrolled in undergraduate and graduate special education courses. Paired-sample t tests comparing the affective and cognitive ratings for each item were significant for 53 of the 55 stimuli. The mean effect size (Cohen d) was 1.49 (range = .08 to 1.9).
Assistive technology is used to help maximize the educational outcomes of students with disabilities. However, few schools or districts effectively measure the outcomes of assistive technology. This article describes activities of Project OATS (Outcomes of Assistive Technology in the Schools), including identification and piloting of existing assessment instruments for possible use as an outcome measure; examining the validity of an existing instrument called the School Function Assessment (SFA), and field testing the School Function Assessment-Assistive Technology Version, an adaptation of the SFA.
Students with attentional deficits are better able to maintain attention to tasks if novelty is added, especially during later trials. In this study, we assessed generality to a standardized reading test when noninformational color was added to one of two altemate forms, counterbalanced for order of condition and form. Participants were 25 third- to fifth-grade students with and without attentional deficits. Students with attentional deficits: (a) read as accurately as their classmates with color added (during a first test administration and across sessions), (b) read worse in the black-white condition, and (c) improved reading accuracy during the second test administration with color added (i.e., all other groups showed a decline in performance). Because the noninformational color did not change test difficulty (i.e., by altering the discriminability of task-relevant features), the implications of these findings may be more accurate assessment of the performance of students with attentional deficits.
This study analyzed the instructional reading methods and reading assessment practices employed by K-12 special education teachers. Eight hundred special education teachers from four Midwestern states were surveyed regarding the frequency of use and usefulness of standardized and informal reading assessment practices and the frequency with which they used various reading instructional techniques. Responses were analyzed to determine percent of teachers employing each technique and the mean rating of usefulness assigned to each. Analysis included examination of the relationships between grade levels and instructional settings and teachers' preferences for reading instructional and assessment practices. The survey found that reading assessment practices present in the literature are not commonly used by special education teachers.
While assistive technology devices are common in most schools, to date assistive technology appears to be acquired more frequently in response to advocacy efforts on behalf of individual students rather than as the result of systemic evaluation of the needs of all students. While such efforts are developmentally noteworthy, they are hardly adequate for achieving large-scale benefits. The purpose of this article is to describe professional development and change strategies for fostering collaborative and systemic efforts to consider assistive technology and evaluate its impact. A self-study process is used to engage teachers, administrators, and related service personnel in a series of collegial conversations about assistive technology outcomes. Four topics are used to structure the conversations: (a) assistive technology and human performance, (b) assistive technology consideration, (c) assistive technology service delivery systems, and (d) accountability initiatives. Group processes are critical for the profession if we are to move beyond individual visions to common, shared visions of the ways assistive technology enhances independence, communication, mobility, and learning opportunities for students with disabilities. The implications of these professional development and change strategies are noted relative to current practice, policy, and future research.
The authors review the current mandate for considering the need for assistive technology services within the IEP process and highlight the importance of collaborative teamwork in assessing individual student needs for assistive technology (AT). Current assistive technology models are described to show what each contributes to our understanding of the process of AT assessment. They then outline "AT CoPlanner," a model that draws upon current models to create a more comprehensive framework for supporting AT teams. Finally, the efficacy of using " groupware," software to facilitate team planning and communication, is considered and a software version of the AT CoPlanner model is described.
Documenting outcomes is becoming an essential function in assistive technology. Successfully documenting outcomes, however, depends on having appropriate measurement instruments and methodologies available. This is a challenge, as few measures are available which target the measurement of assistive technology outcomes. New instrumentation and approaches may need to be created or older measures radically adapted for assistive technology applications. This paper reviews measurement issues specifically relevant to assistive technology outcomes assessment. Many of the issues relate to measurement theory, as it is important to understand how instruments based on traditional psychometric concepts may not be the most appropriate for applications of assistive technology outcomes assessment. Fortunately, the assistive technology field also has innovative ideas being developed and tested. These may hold some promise as we all pursue better ways to document the outcomes of our assistive technology devices and services.
The K-BIT is an individually administered measure of intelligence for individuals ages 4 to 90 years. "It was developed specifically to be used for screening and related purposes" (Kaufman & Kaufman, 1990, p. 2). "The K-BIT is designed for those circumstances in which a brief measure of intelligence will suffice and trained professionals may be unavailable for the assessments. Examples of such instances are (a) large-scale screening to identify high-risk children who require subsequent in-depth evaluations; (b) screening for educational diagnosis; (c) testing adolescent or adult job applicants to facilitate hiring or placement decisions; (d) obtaining an estimate of intelligence as part of a thorough personality evaluation, where a suspected psychiatric disturbance rather than an
