Assessment for Effective Intervention

Assessment is an integral part of the learning and teaching process. The assessment process helps to (a) determine eligibility for special education programming, (b) plan instructional programs, and (c) monitor and evaluate student progress. Additionally, IDEA now requires that IEP teams conduct functional behavioral assessments and manifestation determinations. In this article we examine the legal requirements of assessing students with disabilities, especially students with emotional and behavioral disorders. We begin with a review of assessment legislation and litigation in special education. Next, we analyze the legal requirements for how to conduct assessments of students with EBD. Finally, we offer our analysis of school districts' obligations under the law and provide suggestions for how to conduct educationally appropriate and legally correct assessments.

This article discusses the potential benefits and detriments of high-stakes assessment, the characteristics of useful assessments for students with disabilities and the potential impact of high-stakes assessment on students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). We suggest that the benefits of high-stakes assessment (or, more appropriately, test-linked standards) are most likely to be found in schools that are already attaining acceptable results relative to the standards. In schools serving students who are less privileged, test-linked standards are more likely to be associated with detrimental effects. We suggest that these tests are unlikely to be useful to teachers of students with EBD because they differ dramatically from assessment procedures that have been validated for students with disabilities. Test-linked standards, we conclude, are unlikely to yield benefit to students with EBD and quite likely to expose them to increased risk by focusing educational practice only on a narrowly defined and poorly evaluated set of outcomes.

This article examines factors associated with the substantial underidentification, referral and service of the student population having emotional-behavioral adjustment problems in school. The identification of students as emotionally or behaviorally disturbed over the past decade is analyzed in terms of their absolute number and distribution across age-grade levels. These results are contrasted with those for students with autism, which show a highly divergent pattern in both level and distribution. The validity of the EBD categorical certification is evaluated in terms of its ability to identify a unique student subpopulation as distinct from students with social maladjustment and learning disabilities. The professional literature related to disincentives and barriers to the proactive screening and identification of students having behavior problems is discussed. Multiple-gating and universal approaches to the screening-identification of students with EBD are illustrated and some guidelines are offered as to their effective application in school settings. It is recommended that schools abandon the EBD certification process to focus instead on assessing behaviorally at-risk students along internalizing-externalizing and severity dimensions.

This article presents an overview of several problems associated with assessing students with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) for eligibility. Major issues include underidentification of students in the category of EBD and the continuing overrepresentation of students of minority ethnicity. Movement away from the traditional norm-referenced approach to assessment toward a more functional approach seems to offer the most promise for addressing these concerns.

Social competence deficits are characteristic of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), given that one criterion specified in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act include the inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers. Social skills can be defined as specific behaviors that an individual performs competently on a social task, whereas social competence is an evaluative term based on judgments of significant others (e.g., teachers, parents, peers) regarding the appropriateness of behavioral performances. This article discusses the social skills assessment process within the context of a three-stage problem-solving model of problem identification, problem analysis, and treatment evaluation. Specific social skills assessment strategies are described and linked to a classification system of social skills deficits. This classification was viewed as important in matching specific social skills deficits to intervention strategies.

The authors propose the use of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) to evaluate the effectiveness of the academic and behavioral programming for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. When applied to a problem such as the school failure of students identified as having emotional or behavioral disorders, CBM data regarding the appropriateness of identification as well as the student's performance may reveal important features of effective instructional practices and their effects on students' academic performance. CBM data can help reveal features of practices that increase achievement and reduce failure for students with disabilities and may be particularly effective in addressing problems in the assessment of minority students.