Assessing for Autism
ASSESSMENT PROCESS
The assessment process involves several steps and multiple stakeholders.
START
1. The student may have been diagnosed with Autism privately. OR
The teacher may have noticed some struggles in school.
2. The student is referred for assessment.
3. The school psychologist will receive the referral and read the concerns
listed. From there the pschologist will determine what assessments need
to be completed.
4. Areas to be assessed(may include all or a few):
a) health
b) academics
c) behavior
d) occupational therapy
e) language & communication
f) intellectual
Evidence-Based Evaluations Should be used to determine the student's abilities in each area.
The assessment process involves several steps and multiple stakeholders.
START
1. The student may have been diagnosed with Autism privately. OR
The teacher may have noticed some struggles in school.
2. The student is referred for assessment.
3. The school psychologist will receive the referral and read the concerns
listed. From there the pschologist will determine what assessments need
to be completed.
4. Areas to be assessed(may include all or a few):
a) health
b) academics
c) behavior
d) occupational therapy
e) language & communication
f) intellectual
Evidence-Based Evaluations Should be used to determine the student's abilities in each area.
Assessing Academic Performance
A student has been assessed and determined that he has Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Now that the student has been placed in an appropriate educational setting, the teacher, case manager, and required stakeholders must participate in monitoring academic progress. What is academic progress monitoring, and why is it necessary for the child's success?
The practice of progress monitoring is a scientifically evidence-based practice used to assess a student's academic progress and evaluate the effectiveness of instruction. Progress monitoring tells the teacher what the student has learned and still needs to be taught. Progress monitoring involves the teacher using short tests or assessments to evaluate the student's progress in specific areas. The teacher may assess the student often - every week or two. The teacher creates progress graphs that show the student's progress toward the IEP goals. (Wright & Wright, 2023)
One data tool used to monitor academic progress in San Jose, California, is the iReady Diagnostic and Growth Monitoring program. i-Ready Growth Monitoring is a brief, computer-delivered, periodic adaptive assessment in reading/English language arts (ELA) and Mathematics for students in grades K–8, assessing Phonological Awareness, Phonics, High-Frequency Words, Vocabulary, Comprehension of Informational Text, and Comprehension of Literature. Growth Monitoring is part of the i-Ready Diagnostic & Instruction suite. It is designed to be used jointly with i-Ready Diagnostic to allow for progress monitoring throughout the year and determine whether students are on track for proper growth. Growth Monitoring is designed to be administered monthly but may be given as often as every week in which the i-Ready Diagnostic assessment is not administered. i-Ready Growth Monitoring is a general outcome measure form of progress monitoring. The reports show whether students are on track for their target growth by projecting where their ability level will likely be at the end of the school year and comparing the projected growth-to-growth targets. For students below level, Growth Monitoring can be used as a tool for Response to Intervention (RTI) programs. Evidence-based and proven valid and reliable, Curriculum Associates designed and developed iReady specifically to assess student mastery of state and Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Growth Monitoring assessment takes approximately 15 minutes and may be conducted with all students or specific children that have already been identified as at risk of academic failure. i-Ready's sophisticated adaptive algorithm automatically selects from thousands of multiple-choice and technology-enhanced questions in order to discover each student's strengths and challenges, regardless of the grade level at which he performs. The depth of the item bank enables the assessment to pinpoint each student's ability and ensures the accuracy of results. The system automatically analyzes and scores student responses. As soon as a student completes the assessment, iReady's intuitive Growth Monitoring reports—available at the student and class levels—focus solely on how students track toward their end-of-year growth. (National Center on Intensive Intervention at the American Institutes for Research, 2023)
Another tool used to assess students' progress on academics/goals is progress monitoring via data collection and observation. Progress monitoring, a vital component of a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS), occurs throughout the data-based individualization (DBI) process to assess responsiveness to the validated intervention platform and adaptations to the intervention.
Before delivering the validated intervention platform, intervention teams should develop a progress monitoring plan outlining the progress monitoring tool, student goal, and data collection and review frequency. During the delivery of the validated and adapted intervention, educators should collect and graph frequent progress monitoring data. After sufficient data are collected, they are graphed and evaluated against the student's instructional or behavioral goal to determine whether the student is progressing sufficiently. If so, the teacher continues to implement the validated or adapted intervention. If the student's progress needs to be improved, the teacher consults with a team to determine how to intensify the intervention further. This cycle regularly repeats throughout the DBI process, with adaptations to the intervention indicated using phase change lines on the progress monitoring graph.
Progress monitoring data also may be reviewed along with other diagnostic data to assist teams in developing a hypothesis about why the student may not be responding. As part of the diagnostic data review, the team may conduct an error analysis or look for other trends in the progress monitoring data.
Curriculum-based measurement ensures that the questions test the comprehensive abilities of the student. With the help of curriculum-based measurement data, teachers can better understand how to develop improved teaching methods to meet each child's needs. (Hall, 2018)
Through both the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) the expectations that students with disabilities will participate in the general education classroom has dramatically increased. Students with ASD often experience challenges that prevent their ability to access and demonstrate learning. Such challenges can be connected with the way instruction is presented (e.g., text, lecture); the way the student responds (e.g., writing, speech); the setting (e.g., noise, lighting) and, the timing and scheduling of instruction (e.g., time of day, length of assignment). Depending on the severity of ASD and the needs displayed by the student, accommodations and modifications may be necessary for optimal educational benefit.
Educators can address these challenges by providing students with accommodations—adaptations or changes in educational environments or practices that enable students to overcome the challenges presented by ASD. Two main areas in which accommodations can be utilized are within instruction and testing.
Instructional accommodations are changes to the way the educator delivers classroom instruction. Instructional accommodations change the method of how students learn but do not change what they are learning. In other words, they do not change grade-level content standards or alter the complexity of the knowledge students are expected to learn. Students with ASD who use instructional accommodations must learn the same standards as their peers who do not require accommodations.
Testing accommodations change how students are tested but do not change what a test measures. Commonly used testing accommodations include having the test read aloud, allowing for an extended time, permitting scribes, and giving the test in a small-group setting.
For instruction or testing, accommodations provide students with the ability to achieve similar outcomes and benefits as students without disabilities. By addressing barriers, accommodations create better access to learning opportunities for students with disabilities. For some students, these barriers can be relatively simple to address. For example, a student with difficulty with fine-motor skills and struggling to hold a pencil might require a pencil grip to help him.
Accommodations allow support that enables students with ASD to achieve the same instructional goals as students without disabilities. Accommodations do not change learning, do not reduce the requirements of the task, and do not change the standards the student is expected to master.
Educators should provide accommodations that meet the unique needs of each student. Not all students with ASD or even those who experience the same challenge will benefit from the exact same accommodation. For example, students with visual impairments may require Braille materials while audiobooks might better serve some.
Modifications are adaptations that change the content students are expected to learn.They are used with students who require more support or adjustments than accommodations can allow. Unlike accommodations, modifications do change the expectations for learning and reduce the task requirements.
Students with ASD should have instructional/testing accommodations documented in their individualized education programs (IEP) or 504 plans. With this documentation, educators are required to provide those accommodations.
Before educators can select an accommodation, they must first identify the challenge interfering with the student's learning and consider how that affects his performance. Identifying the student's challenge can help the educator to decide on the accommodation that will most likely support the student.
With careful planning, teachers can provide accommodations to their students effectively and efficiently. These students are more likely to access and demonstrate learning with individualized accommodations successfully.
Implementing one accommodation will allow the educator to collect data, evaluate the accommodation's effectiveness, and determine if it is practical for use in the classroom. After effectively implementing one accommodation, the teacher can implement another that might benefit the student.
(Iris, 2023)
When a student has been placed in the correct educational setting, progress monitoring tools must be used to ensure the student receives the correct instruction, accommodations, modifications, and goals appropriate to the student. When used together, the student is able to receive maximum educational benefit.
References
Hall, L.J. (2018) Autism spectrum disorders: From theory to practice. New York, NY: Pearson.
iReady diagnostic and growth monitoring reading / english language arts (2023) National Center on Intensive Intervention at the American Institutes for Research. Available at:
https://charts.intensiveintervention.org/progressmonitoring/tool/?id=d264b2946d8df43d#:~:text=i%2DReady%20Growth%20Monitoring%20is%20a%20general%20outcome%20measure%20form,growth%2Dto%2Dgrowth%20targets. (Accessed: 22 May 2023).
Understanding Accommodations (2023) Iris . Available at:
https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/micro-credential/micro-accommodations/p01/
(Accessed: 22 May 2023).
Wright, P.W.D. and Wright, P.D. (2023) Progress Monitoring, Progress monitoring - wrightslaw.com. Available at:https://www.wrightslaw.com/info/progress.index.htm
(Accessed: 22 May 2023).