Why should I have my child assessed?
Parents choose to pursue learning assessments for a variety of reasons:
You may sense that your child is gifted, has a learning disability (e.g. dyslexia/specific learning disability with impairment in reading), or both, and you want to confirm this and to know how best to address these needs.
You may have concerns about your child's attention, ability to focus, or executive function abilities. You would like clarity about how best to help your child and information about whether or not your child has ADHD.
You may have concerns related to your child's level of anxiety and want to better understand to what extent feelings of anxiousness and worry interfere with learning.
Your child is applying to a school which requires testing.
You want to understand your child's unique learning profile well and would like information that will illuminate strengths and challenges.
You would like information to help guide school placement decisions or to guide accommodations for a current school placement or future standardized testing, such as the SAT or ACT.
Your child has completed testing elsewhere and you would like a second opinion or more detailed information than the previous testing allowed.
What can assessments do?
Learning assessments offer a number of potential benefits. They can:
Identify unique learning needs, such as giftedness or learning disabilities.
Indicate areas that need strengthening, and provide strategies that are likely to be effective in remediation.
Identify important accommodations for schoolwork and/or standardized testing based on your child’s performance in relation to objective measurements and standardized comparison groups.
Suggest the degree to which a school difficulty is cognitively or emotionally related.
Provide a marker of present performance that can be used to measure progress in one or more areas.
What exactly does a learning assessment evaluate and which testing instruments do you use?
A comprehensive evaluation will involve examining a number of different domains of functioning. Such as:
Social and Emotional Functioning is most typically evaluated using interviews and questionnaires filled out by parents, teachers, and, if appropriate, the student being assessed. Occasionally projective testing is performed.
Cognitive Functioning is assessed with the age-appropriate IQ test instrument (e.g. Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, 5th edition/WISC-V, Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, 4th edition/WPPSI-IV, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, 4th edition/WAIS-IV, Stanford Binet, 5th edition/SB 5)
Current Academic Achievement is measured with a standardized, individual achievement test, or a combination of several such measures (e. g. Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, 4th edition/WIAT 4, Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement, 4th edition/WJ-IV, Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing, 2nd edition/CTOPP-2, Gray Oral Reading Test, 5th edition/GORT-5, Test of Word Reading Efficiency, 2nd edition/TOWRE-2)
Executive Functioning is evaluated through questionnaires (e.g. Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function/BRIEF, Comprehensive Executive Function Inventory/CEFI), assessed with individual measurements (WJ IV, WISC V, etc), and through clinical observations and interview data.