This document provides guidelines for preferred practice for the Child Identification Process for Colorado children, birth through five years of age. The guidelines were developed to be flexible and adaptable in support of individual community needs and in recognition of the variable resources throughout the state; however, the basic underlying…

Many are terribly frustrated in their efforts to implement the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (Public Law 94-142). Perhaps the most anxiety-producing letters of the alphabet for educators are IEP, Individual Education Program. Such programs are mandated for all handicapped students, but if they cannot be developed in the…

Although the federal government's involvement in learning disabilities through task forces, legislation, and funding has been evident only since the 1960s and 1970s, the roots of learning disabilities can be traced back to the early 1800s. Learning disabilities are one of the newest categories officially recognized by the U.S. Department of…

This paper provides an overview of traumatic brain injury (TBI), including incidence, definition, characteristics, assessment and identification, remediation, teacher responsibility, and parent involvement. It discusses the eligibility of students with TBI to receive appropriate and related services in school under the Individuals with…

Explains how many of the narratives told by children are mapped onto frameworks carried in long-term memory. Assessment methods that speech-language pathologists can use to determine whether a child can use narrative frameworks and how to explain the assessment results are discussed. (Author/CR)

The "Ages and Stages Questionnaires," a parent-completed developmental monitoring system, is described, and various strategies for using the system to identify young children with developmental delays are compared. Strategies include mail-out, home visit, on-site (completed by either parent with assistance from service provider),…

This article describes the two basic versions of the responsiveness-to-intervention (RTI) approach for identifying learning disabilities, the problem solving model and the standard-protocol approach. It reviews evidence on effectiveness and feasibility and concludes that more needs to be understood before RTI may be viewed as a valid…

A pilot test of 700 students in grades three, four, and five, investigated the reliability of curriculum-valid mathematics survey tests. The development of the test and the taxonomy of curriculum analysis that was beneficial in test construction is described. Results indicate the effectiveness of the test. (CR)

The Passage Comprehension portion of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised/NU was administered to 63 adolescents. Protocols were rescored using the following ceiling criteria: five consecutive errors, five errors in six consecutive responses, and five errors in seven consecutive responses. A strong relationship was determined among scores…

This article discusses using cross-language transfer as a diagnostic tool for identifying reading difficulties of language learners. It is argued that if children have enough exposure to and instruction in their first language, their skills and insights can be assessed and compared to skills and insights in their second language. (Contains…

This article takes a critical look at methods used to identify learning disability (such as use of ability/achievement discrepancy formulas and medical/neurobiological diagnosis) and presents an alternative method that adds assessment of the psychological processes of memory and learning to current practices of assessing intelligence and…

This overview of recent developments in redefining attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder summarizes articles about assessment instruments and procedures and identifies important issues, including the construct of hyperactivity as it relates to attention, classification systems, and the lack of technical adequacy of many assessment instruments…

A study examined two methods of using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales with people with Down syndrome at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Scoring the scales using the basal rule outlined in the manual resulted in highlighting significant declines in scores for those meeting the criteria for "probable Alzheimer's disease."…

This article describes a process known as dynamic assessment used to evaluate children's narrative and expository discourse abilities. These assessment procedures help speech-language pathologists better describe language learning potential of children who are referred for language assessment. How dynamic assessment provides critical information…

Arguments between response to intervention (RTI) with curriculum-based measurement (CBM) and traditional, individual psychoeducational assessments encourage a false dichotomy between alternatives that are not mutually exclusive, but complementary. This article discusses strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, touches on current legislative…