Consistency and Correspondence of Mothers' and Teachers' Assessments of Young Handicapped Children

Abstract

Due to the recognition of the limitations of standardized, formal assessment instruments and the mandates of Public Law 94-142, teachers, direct care staff, and parents are becoming Involved in assessment of young handicapped children. If the evaluation and judgments of parents are to be valid sources of information about the child, the utility of clinical judgment must be documented. Typically, parents tend to overestimate their child's general intelligence or ability; however, this may be a function of the specific test, measure, or rating scale used. The study described in this article was designed to determine (a) the degree of correspondence between mothers' and teachers' ratings on the same version of the same assessment instrument and (b) the degree of correspondence between mothers' ratings across a period of time. The data support the reliability of maternal assessment and provide evidence for the contributions of parents to the assessment process in early intervention.