"Evaluation" under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is among the major responsibilities of school psychologists. This concluding article in the series on evaluation under the IDEA provides legal analysis and professional recommendations related to procedural appropriateness. Specifically, it addresses notices,…

Assessment is used to describe the process of gathering information to make judgments about how well someone has performed, how much progress has been made, and how much potential someone has. In other words, gathering information and forming judgments are both indispensable to good teaching. Educational institutions, government agencies, and…

For students with severe or complex challenging behavior, incorporating hypothesis testing as a component of functional behavior assessment (FBA) is often warranted. Several hypothesis testing strategies (i.e., functional analysis, antecedent analysis, concurrent operant analysis) can confirm whether and how features of a student's environment…

Despite decades of tenacious advocacy and improvement efforts to expand and enshrine rights for students with disabilities, many students with individualized education programs (IEPs) still lack access to high-quality, effective learning opportunities. This can be due to a range of factors, including low expectations, exclusion from general…

While the field advocates for a diversified and comprehensive professional role (National Association of School Psychologists, 2020), school psychologists have long spent most of their time in assessment-related activities (Farmer et al., 2021), averaging about eight cognitive evaluations monthly (Benson et al., 2020). Assessment practices have…

In Part 1 of this series, the authors briefly reviewed some challenges inherent in using standardized tools with students who are not well represented in norming data. To help readers clearly conceptualize the framework steps, the authors present two case studies that showcase how a nonstandardized approach to assessment can be individualized to…

Historically assessing deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) students has been a daunting challenge. Although significant strides have been made, there continues to be a dearth of research and literature specifically addressing the endemic challenges multidisciplinary teams encounter when assessing D/HH students. This article delineates a historical…

Rangahau Matauranga o Aotearoa / New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) is refreshing the PAT mathematics assessments. As the owners and administrators of PATs and strong proponents of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, NZCER has a responsibility to ensure our assessments evolve and reflect the unique context of Aotearoa New Zealand. The…

Assessing learning outcomes for students who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing presents ongoing challenges given the largely verbal nature of classrooms and the presentation of information. Educators should carefully consider several factors when assessing their students who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing. Those factors include, but are not limited to:…

Assessment techniques for students with visual impairments (that is, those who are blind or have low vision) are designed to meet their unique learning needs. Considerations for assessment both within the general curriculum and expanded core curriculum (ECC) for students with visual impairments are presented. The roles of educational team members…

This article presents a structured blueprint for school psychologists to assess and intervene in cases of automatically maintained self-injurious behavior (SIB) while adhering to the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) mandate. We outline a six-step process for conducting Functional Behavior Assessments (FBAs) of automatically maintained SIB,…

This report outlines the approaches that state education agencies (SEAs) have taken in defining and using formative assessment practices, including practices to explicitly support students with disabilities. At the state level, there have been efforts to develop or adopt formal definitions of formative assessment practices that guide how these…

Educators and researchers strive to build policies and practices on data and evidence, especially on academic achievement scores. When assessment scores are inaccurate for specific student populations or when scores are inappropriately used, even data-driven decisions will be misinformed. To maximize the impact of the research-practice-policy…

Through-year assessment is enjoying a surge of attention. A through-year assessment program is: (1) Administered in multiple distinct sessions during a school year; and (2) Intended to support (a) the production and use of a summative determination, and (b) one additional aim. More than a dozen states are designing, piloting, or implementing…

This Brief offers preliminary guidance for the development of interim assessment options for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities. There are federal requirements that all statewide and districtwide administrations of an assessment must have an alternate assessment. Given the importance interim assessments have now when there…