Qualitative interviews with 20 teachers of students with moderate/severe disabilities determined their use of visual analysis of graphically displayed data to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions. Results indicated that experienced teachers stressed student characteristics or the conditions under which the data were collected,…

The article presents a two-phase process for use by multidisciplinary teams making decisions on the reading medium for students with visual impairments. The first phase is a diagnostic teaching phase to guide initial decision making. The second phase, continued evaluation, leads to ongoing adjustment of the selected medium or media. (Author/DB)

Informal criterion-referenced techniques can be used to assess the writing skills of students with disabilities. Teachers can analyze student writing samples with regard to fluency, sentence types, vocabulary, structure, and ideation. A form is presented for collecting and analyzing data from writing samples, and use of the form is illustrated.…

Describes a methodology that educators can use to appropriately classify students who are linguistically and culturally diverse. The article lists the student behaviors to observe when distinguishing a language difference from a language disorder and illustrates how educators can conceptualize student background and current status in selecting…

This paper compares dynamic assessment of reading abilities to traditional assessment in the areas of orientation (process versus product), procedure (response to instruction versus enumeration of existing abilities), and interpretation (patterns of response to instruction versus indices such as percentiles or stanines). (DB)

Twenty-five general and 37 special education teachers were compared in their planning and adaptation for students with learning disabilities. Results indicated that special education teachers who used curriculum-based measurement (CBM) adapted students' programs more frequently and relied on more objective databases than did non-CBM special…

This article offers a framework for assessing problem behaviors in classroom settings. It explains three prerequisite steps (identification, prioritization, and delineation of operational definitions) and three methods for formulating hypotheses (structured interviews, systematic observations, and experimental functional analyses). (DB)

This article presents seven sequential steps to completing a functional behavioral analysis and a behavioral intervention plan for a student with emotional/behavior disorders: (1) description of the behavior; (2) refinement of the behavior; (3) data collection; (4) data analysis; (5) hypothesis generation; (6) behavior intervention plan…

Students learn at varying rates, and if a misconception in mathematics develops early, it may be carried from year to year and obstruct a student's progress. To identify fallacies in students' preconceived ideas, "Uncovering Student Thinking in Mathematics" offers educators a powerful diagnostic technique in the form of field-tested assessment…

An 18-month project researched the development of basic skills support in Further Education (FE) colleges in England and Wales. The methodology included 2 surveys of 206 colleges that provided basic skills support, and case studies of 8 colleges. The statistical surveys showed that many colleges were not collecting data relating to students…

This research abstract summarizes two reports titled: (1) "Mainstream Assistance Teams to Accommodate Difficult to Teach Students in General Education" (Douglas Fuchs and Lynn S. Fuchs) and "Prereferral Intervention through Teacher Consultation: Mainstream Assistance Teams (Douglas Fuchs and others). The project investigated a…

This booklet explores how a synergy between assessment and instruction can be forged to enhance student outcomes, especially for students with disabilities. The booklet defines and discusses assessment that enhances instruction, provides an overview of important criteria for judging the utility of this type of assessment, describes previous…

This summary of assessment information for programming in early childhood special education discusses principles of assessment, specific assessment procedures, and assessment instruments. An overview section on assessment provides definitions of "assessment" and "evaluation" and discusses the importance of assessment for…

The Enright Arithmetic Program is a diagnostic-prescriptive program designed to facilitate an effective remedial effort. The program is based on establishing for each student the set of skills that student needs to learn and also identifies the error pattern causing the student's current failure. Practice materials for each needed skill are…