Review of Assessment Procedures for Students with Moderate and Severe Disabilities.

Assessment procedures for students with moderate or severe disabilities cover a range of procedures and practices. This article reviews recommendations for assessment practices for these students. These recommendations are compared with the assessment actually conducted by a sample of 22 teachers of students with moderate and severe disabilities. Three assessment purposes were analyzed; diagnosis and placement, curriculum and program development, and evaluation. Results are discussed in terms of best practices and recommendations for assessment of students with moderate or severe disabilities. Assessment procedures for students with moderate and severe disabilities represent a conundrum. Students must be assessed to be classified and placed into special education, yet these assessments rarely yield information useful to practitioners for designing or evaluating effects of programming (Snell & Brown, 2006). Sigafoos, Cole, and McQuarter (1987) noted this dilemma in their investigation of then-current assessment practices of students with severe disabilities. Their analysis of assessment practices indicated that over 50 percent of students with severe disabilities had been administered standardized, norm-referenced tests (NRTs), which evidenced varying degrees of reliability and validity. In contrast, use of criterion-referenced tests and adaptive behavior scales was much less common. As Sigafoos et al. point out, use of NRTs, while required for classification purposes, requires supplementation by other sources of data. This is necessary to ensure that data generated by the assessment process would be “relevant for planning and tracking on going progress” (Wolf-Schein, 1998, p. 52-53). The necessity of additional types of assessment becomes more apparent when the purposes of assessment are more than classification and identification. Two critical areas that require assessment procedures that are carefully chosen or created, administered and interpreted are program development and instructional evaluation (Grisham-Brown, 2000; Macfarlane, 1998; Siegel-Causey & Allinder, 1998; Snell & Brown, 2006). For each of these, a range of assessment practices is promoted to meet best-practice standards. Program development, in which an individual education plan (IEP) for the student is developed, may be grounded in the assessment done for classification and placement purposes (Alper, Ryndak, & Schloss, 2001). Assessment for these purposes includes, at minimum, evaluation of intelligence and adaptive behavior. If data drawn from assessment for eligibility purposes are used to develop IEPs, several caveats must be issued. One relates to use of intelligence tests for these students. The appropriateness of these tests has been questioned for a number of reasons. First, for students who have accompanying disabilities, which make responding in standard format impossible, modification of response type makes validity and reliability unknown. Second, validity and reliability is This study was conducted as part of Project CAAR: Creating Alternative Assessment Results. We extend our thanks to the teachers in Lincoln Public Schools, Special Education Division who participated in our portfolio research for students with moderate or severe disabilities. We also thank Julie Ortgies for her role as research assistant with the project. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ellin B. Siegel, Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders, Communication 318 Barkley Memorial Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68583. Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities, 2005, 40(4), 343–351 © Division on Developmental Disabilities Review of Assessment Procedures / 343 questionable unless tests’ normative populations include students with the same range and level of cognitive functioning (Salvia & Ysseldyke, 2001). A final concern with using intellectual functioning for program development purposes, for students who are able to complete them, is that these tests were designed to compare them with their age peers, not to document what students do and do not know or can and cannot do. In addition, caveats for using adaptive behavior assessment results must be noted. While this type of assessment also yields a norm-referenced score similar to that obtained in intelligence tests, it is possible to use adaptive behavior assessment for program development purposes by examining ratings of specific items within the domains of the adaptive behavior scale. Using adaptive behavior scales for this purpose, however, must consider if they are conducted only tri-annually. The information may be too out-dated to be of use for annual IEP evaluation and planning. Practitioners are urged to re-assess adaptive behavior more often when updating and revising IEPs. While adaptive behavior scales may be used for program development purposes, other types of assessments should be used to develop each student’s IEP. These other assessments may include criterion-referenced tests (CRTs) and ecological inventories (Snell & Brown, 2006). CRTs measure the degree to which a student has obtained specific skills. As BeirneSmith, Ittenbach, and Patton (2002) point out, CRTs vary with regard to what skills are assessed and the specificity with which skills are assessed. Practitioners are urged to use care in selecting CRTs to use with students with more severe disabilities and may find that creating their own CRTs is more beneficial for the student. Ecological inventories are a form of assessment in which activities and skills necessary for different environments, such as community recreation, vocational, domestic or general education settings are analyzed (Browder, 2001; Downing, 2002). A student’s performance on the ecological inventory contributes to the IEP both for the present level of performance and goal-setting sections. Some students with moderate disabilities may require assessment of functional academic skills. CRTs and NRTs may provide insight into the degree of academic skill development as well as pinpointing specific functional academic skills to be targeted for instruction. Using either CRTs or ecological inventories or some other method of assessing students for the purpose of educational programming can result in an overwhelming number of concerns. In this mix of data, family concerns, interests, and desires may be slighted. This should be avoided because creating education programs around family concerns, interests and desires may increase the likelihood that the student will obtain and maintain educational goals. The importance of building students’ programs around family concerns is underscored by IDEA 97 regulations that require that “concerns of the parents for enhancing the education of their child” (34 CFR 300.346) be incorporated into the IEP process. Several processes have been developed which help uncover families’ visions and hopes and dreams for their children and which help delineate important and meaningful goals for individual students. These processes are intentionally strengths-based, focusing not merely on the needs and deficits of the student with moderate or severe disabilities, but their strengths. These methods include personal futures (Mount & Zwerkik, 1988), Making Action Planning System (MAPS; Forest & Snow, 1987), and Choosing Outcomes and Accommodations for Children (COACH; Giangreco, Cloninger, & Iverson, 1998). In personal futures or lifestyle planning, concerned family members, friends, advocates and professionals meet to collaboratively evaluate an individual’s quality of life and describe a desirable future for that person (Browder, 2001). MAPS (Forest & Snow, 1987) is a collaborative team approach to identifying critical information about the student with severe disabilities. Family members, professionals, advocates, and peers relate their dreams, nightmares, and descriptions of the student as well as their descriptions of the student’s strengths, needs, and ideal day. Responses to these questions can aid in developing and prioritizing goals for the student’s IEP (Forest & Lusthaus, 1990). Similarly, COACH (Giangreco et al., 1998) is used by school personnel and family members to identify IEP goals and objectives in accordance with family-centered 344 / Education and Training in Developmental Disabilities-December 2005 priorities, using a structured family-interview approach. After the educational program has been developed and instruction begins, it is critical to assess student progress. As Wolf-Schein (1998) points out, “educational assessment is useful insofar as it contributes to positive development of the child. ” (p. 38) The best care in selecting, administering, and interpreting eligibility assessment information or program development information is pointless if the child does not make progress. Typical ways of assessing progress in other students may be of limited use for students with moderate or severe disabilities. It is important that assessments, which are sensitive to small changes, are used. This may be various ongoing assessments such as informal anecdotal recording keeping, task analytic assessment, discrete trial or opportunity assessment, curriculum-based measurement, or time-based assessment (Farlow & Snell, 1994; Macfarlane, 1998). While expert advice is to craft assessment practices in alignment with best-practices standards (e.g., Macfarlane, 1998; Siegel-Causey & Allinder, 1998) it is not known to what degree practitioners implement these recommendations. Sigafoos et al. (1987) studied assessment practices for a large number of students with severe disabilities by examining students’ cumulative files. Results of that study indicated that tests used with these students were lacking in technical qualities such as reliability and validity and that measures other than NRTs such as CRTs and adaptive behavior measures were used less frequently than recommended