In my brief commentary, I offer a look to the past to celebrate lessons learned in social, emotional, and behavioral assessment. Then, I respectfully pose considerations for researchers and practitioners committed to early detection, intervention, and assessment of students with and at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders. Specifically, I…

The rise of computer-based testing has brought with it the capability to measure more aspects of a test event than simply the answers selected or constructed by the test taker. One behavior that has drawn much research interest is the time test takers spend responding to individual multiple-choice items. In particular, very short response…

School-based practitioners are often called upon to provide assessment and recommendations for struggling students. These assessments often open doors to specialised services or interventions and provide opportunities for students to build competencies in areas of need. However, these assessments often fail to highlight the abilities of these…

The Mathematics Fluency and Calculation Tests (MFaCTs) are a series of measures designed to assess for arithmetic calculation skills and calculation fluency in children ages 6 through 18. There are five main purposes of the MFaCTs: (1) identifying students who are behind in basic math fact automaticity; (2) evaluating possible delays in arithmetic…

No feasible screening instrument is available for early detection of children with autism in Taiwan. The existing instruments may not be appropriate for use in Taiwan due to different health care systems and child-rearing cultures. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a screening questionnaire for generic autism. The initial 18-item…

As a result of the upcoming Federal reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA), practitioners and researchers have begun vigorously debating what constitutes evidence-based assessment for the identification of specific learning disability (SLD). This debate has resulted in strong support for a method that…

Black and Hispanic students are undeniably underidentified as gifted and underrepresented in gifted education. The underrepresentation of the two largest groups of "minority" students is long-standing, dating several decades, and is a serious area of contention. Most debates focus on the efficacy of traditional intelligence tests with…

This article reviews the Conners Early Childhood (Conners EC; Conners, 2009), a behavior and development rating scale intended to assess children in early childhood, specifically defined as ages 2 to 6 years. Using multiple informants across multiple settings, the Conners EC is administered for the purpose of early identification of disorders or…

Limited research exists regarding the role of teachers in screening for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The current study examined the use of the "Social Communication Questionnaire" (SCQ) and "Social Responsiveness Scale" (SRS) as completed by parents and teachers about school-age children from the Simons Simplex Collection. Using the…

This article discusses the role of assessment in a response-to-intervention model. Although assessment represents only 1 component in a response-to-intervention model, a well-articulated assessment system is critical in providing teachers with reliable data that are easily interpreted and used to make instructional decisions. Three components of…

This article presents a review of the "NEPSY-Second Edition" (NEPSY-II), an updated and modified version of the NEPSY (Korkman, Kirk, & Kemp, 1998). The NEPSY-II is an individually administered compendium of tests designed to assess neuropsychological development in children ranging from 3 to 16.11 years old. The authors of the…

Conceptualisations of disability that emphasise the contextual and cultural nature of disability and the embodiment of these within a national system of data collection present a number of challenges especially where this process is devolved to schools. The requirement for measures based on contextual and subjective experiences gives rise to…

Agreement between the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) and two brief scales completed by parents was 93.1% for the Checklist for Autism Spectrum Disorder (CASD) and 89.7% for the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) in a sample of adolescents with suspected autism spectrum disorders. Our study is consistent with others showing that brief…

Students with internalizing behavior patterns are often overlooked and underserved in schools, which is problematic in that they are at risk for a host of negative outcomes. As a result, there is a need for universal screening procedures to proactively detect students with these behavior patterns and to provide them with early, ongoing supports.…

Recent occurrences of violence on high school and college campuses have led to increased interest among education professionals, parents, students, and community leaders in the identification of potentially violent students. Many school districts have implemented school-wide violence prevention plans to meet the safety needs of their students, and…