Challenges in Assessing Children: The Process and Multimethod Assessment

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, legal precedents, and assessment types from Chapter 1 on child assessment.

Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1 (2017)

A Supreme Court decision ruling that every IEP must set out an educational program reasonably calculated to enable a child under IDEA to receive educational benefits and set out a plan for pursuing academic and functional advancement.

Individualized Education Program (IEP)

A plan formulated with a multidisciplinary team whose essential function is to set out an educational program for pursuing academic and functional advancement for a child under the auspices of IDEA.

Multimethod Assessment

An assessment approach emphasizing information from multiple sources, several assessment techniques (the four pillars), evaluation across multiple areas of functioning, and using findings to develop interventions.

Screening Assessment

A relatively brief evaluation intended to identify children who are at risk for developing certain disorders or disabilities, eligible for certain programs, in need of remediation, or requiring a more comprehensive assessment.

Focused Assessment

A detailed evaluation of a specific area of functioning, also referred to as a problem-solving assessment.

Diagnostic Assessment

A detailed evaluation of a child's strengths and weaknesses in several areas, such as cognitive, academic, language, behavioral, personality, emotional, and social functioning.

Counseling and Rehabilitation Assessment

An assessment that focuses on a child's abilities to adjust to and successfully fulfill daily responsibilities.

Progress Evaluation Assessment

An assessment focusing on a child's progress over time, such as day to day, week to week, month to month, or year to year.

Curriculum-Based Assessment

An assessment focusing on assessing a student's progress in basic academic areas such as math, reading, writing, and spelling.

School Function Assessment

A detailed evaluation of a student's ability to participate in activities in various school settings, need for supports, and ability to function in school.

Psychological Testing

A procedure involving administering and scoring tests, where the focus is primarily on collecting data.

Psychological Assessment

A broad process encompassing several clinical tools (formal and informal tests, observations, interviews) focused on collecting, integrating, interpreting, and synthesizing evaluation results.

Four Pillars of Assessment

Norm-referenced measures, interviews, behavioral observations, and informal assessment procedures that complement one another to provide information about a child's knowledge, skill, behavior, and personality.

Norm-Referenced Measures

Assessment tools standardized on a clearly defined group (the norm group) and scaled so that each score reflects a rank within that norm group.

Unstructured Interviews

Open-ended interviews without a set agenda of specific questions, designed to address the child's problem area.

Semistructured Interviews

Interviews that provide a list of questions, but allow the focus of the conversation to change as needed.

Structured Interviews

Interviews providing a rigid, comprehensive list of questions usually designed to arrive at a psychiatric diagnosis.

Short-Term Follow-Ups

Follow-ups conducted within 2 to 6 weeks to identify interventions that prove to be ineffective due to changing circumstances, initial inadequacy, or improper execution.

Long-Term Follow-Ups

Ongoing reevaluations conducted because children change as a result of development, life experiences, and interventions, ensuring initial assessments are not treated as final end points.

Steps in a Multimethod Assessment

An 11-step multistage process for planning, collecting data, evaluating results, formulating hypotheses, developing recommendations, communicating results, conducting reevaluations, and following up on performance.