Chapter 4: Assessing Student Needs
Chapter-At-A-Glance
Instructor’s Overview and Outline
Chapter 4 identifies the valuable role classroom teachers play in assessing students with special needs and
provides your students with time-efficient strategies for doing so. First, six important special education
decisions that general education teachers can help make are described: screening, diagnosis, program
Learning Objectives
Instructor’s Resources
Media Resources
How general education
teachers contribute to the
assessment process
o Norm referenced tests
o Psychological tests
o Strategies for fair assessment
o Curriculum-based assessment
Activities #4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12
in Education (NCME),
Key Terms & Concepts
o Screening
o Diagnosis
o Program placement
o Curriculum placement
o Universal screening in RtI
o Communicating with parents
o Instructional evaluation
o Program evaluation
Activities # 1, 2, 4, 6, 12
o CAST:
http://www.cast.org/publications/nc
ac/ncac_curriculumbe.html
Development and scoring of
alternate assessments for
students with cognitive
disabilities; and
constructing probes of
academic prerequisite skills,
content-area knowledge, and
independent learning skills
Key Terms & Concepts
o Curriculum-based assessment
o Assessing fluency on basic academic
skills with probes
o Peer comparison
o Fluency
o Accuracy
o Progress monitoring
Activities #3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12
o CBM Warehouse
o CAST
o http://www.interventioncentral.org
o http://dibels.uoregon.edu
A. How do your student assessments contribute to special education decisions?
2. Diagnosis
4. Curriculum placement
6. Program evaluation
B. What information sources are used in programming for students with special needs?
1. High-stakes achievement tests
2. Standardized achievement tests
C. What kinds of curriculum-based assessments can you create for your students?
1. Probes of basic academic skills
2. Curriculum-based assessment in content areas
a. Assessments of prerequisite skills
b. Measures of independent learning skills
D. How are curriculum-based probes used to make special education decisions?
1. Peer comparison in screening
E. Wrapping it up
1. Back to the cases
2. Summary
Learning Objectives
1. Explain how general education teachers contribute to assessment process.
2. Describe uses of high-stakes, standardized achievement, and psychological tests.
4. Define curriculum-based assessment.
6. Use curriculum-based assessments to make special education decisions.
Key Terms and Concepts
Accuracy
Alternate assessments
Assessment
Criterion referenced
Curriculum-based assessment
Curriculum-based measurement
Curriculum placement
Activities and Discussion Questions
1. Why do proponents of universal screening advocate for its use in schools? Have students create a T-
chart of advantages and potential disadvantages of universal screening.
2. Have two groups of students role-play a parent meeting with teachers and school psychologists to
3. To illustrate how probes of basic skills can be used to help make instructional decisions, distribute
Handout 4-1, a see-say probe for letter sounds. After you have reviewed procedures for giving the
probe, select one student to administer the probe for you. Have a student role play being a student
whom the teacher suspects is not learning letter sounds. Have the rest of the students score his or her
performance at their seats. Have the student control the performance so that he or she gets ten
correct, or a score of ten letter sounds correct per minute.
After the probe has been administered and scored, use Handout 4-2, which represents the
performance of two first grade classrooms on the identical see-say probe. Discuss your performance
4. Since having students read orally is the main way for teachers to monitor the acquisition of key word
identification skills, particularly in the primary grades, the issue of whether to use oral reading is an
important topic to discuss with your students (i.e., how can you deal with the potential embarrassment
felt by poor readers. and the impatience and frustration of more fluent readers?).
5. High school teachers in your class may not see the connection between academic skill probes and
high school teaching. Explain that the probes of prerequisite skills, measures of student independent
skills, and student self-evaluations are intended specifically for high school teachers. Performance on
6. Guest speakers:
• Invite a school psychologist or other person who is qualified to administer diagnostic
achievement tests, individual intelligence tests, and other assessments to speak to your class. Ask
the person to bring examples of the tests he/she uses and discuss how they are administered and
scored.
7. If students are placed in schools while taking your course, ask them to meet with a school
8. If your state uses high-stakes testing (possibly Common Core), examine sample tests and scoring
9. If students are placed in schools while taking your course, have your students practice selecting and
using CBA reading probes to gather information to make instructional decisions for a child in a
10. Using the Strategies for Fair Assessment of Diverse Students in the Instructional Edge feature (page
113), engage students in a problem solving brainstorming process to address some (or all) of the 10
11. Have students identify one or more instructional outcomes for a unit or lesson. Then, in pairs or small
12. At the end of the chapter, have students use the information to complete INCLUDE Handouts 1-3
(see Appendix). In Step 1 of the INCLUDE strategy, students identify classroom demands in terms of
classroom organization, grouping, instructional materials, instructional methods, and student
evaluation. Directions for the instructor and students, as well as worksheets and case study materials,
are provided in the appendix.
Web Links
Instructor Resources
Web Based Content Resources
Additional Readings
Christ, T., J., & Silberglitt, B. (2007). Estimates of the standard error of measurement for curriculum–
based measures of oral reading fluency. School Psychology Review, 36, 130–146.
Feldman, E., Kim, J., & Elliott, S. (2011) The Effects of Accommodations on Adolescents’ Self-Efficacy
and Test Performance. Journal of Special Education, 45(2), 77-88.
Foegen, A., Jiban, C., & Deno, S. (2007). Progress monitoring measures in mathematics: A review of the
literature. Journal of Special Education, 41, 121–139.
Goldstein, J. & Behuniak, P. (2012) Can Assessment Drive Instruction? Understanding the Impact of
888.
Tindal, G., McDonald, M., Tedesco, M., Glasgow, A., Almond, P., Crawford, L., & Hollenbeck, K.
(2003) Alternate Assessments in Reading and Math: Development and Validation for Students
With Significant Disabilities. Exceptional Children, 69(4), 481-494.