The Direct Assessment: An Alternative to Psychometric Testing

Abstract

There is currently a need for school psychologists to write remedial recommendations for the same educational problems identified by teachers and parents. Such fundamental problems as reading, writing, and arithmetic need to be assessed on the basis that a child simply has not learned the necessary subtasks within these skills or that certain immediate environmental conditions prevent the child from acquiring the skills. Previous assessment procedures ignore the task and the immediate environment and assess only the child's inability to learn. The child, the task, and the immediate environment need to be included in an assessment.

A direct assessment anaylzes the task to be learned in such a way that the steps required to learn the skills are specified, and the child's level within the task is determined. This assessment takes into consideration that the child's immediate environment can make a difference in performance.

Factors within the environment are assessed to determine whether they set the occasion for inappropriate responses. In addition, the environment in which the child must learn is systematically evaluated to determine those factors that can be modified so that learning will occur, while the unique learning characteristics of the child are also considered.

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