All About Assessments: Undivided Learning with Dr. Sarah Pelangka

We sat down with Dr. Sarah Pelangka, special education advocate and owner of KnowIEPs, for a rundown of all things assessments: how we can ensure our child is getting the correct assessment, what to expect from different assessments, and what to do if we disagree with the results. Check out the clips below for highlights, watch the full recording here, or listen to our full conversation in this episode of the Undivided Voices podcast.

You can also read more about this topic in our article IEP Assessments 101!

Dr. Pelangka says, "Assessments are required to determine whether or not a child is eligible for special education services. If the answer is yes, then we take that information and add it to the IEP, and if the answer's no, maybe accommodations can be recommended." Either way, the assessment provides valuable information about a child's areas of needs and what supports they need to access their education.

Remember that you are your child's best advocate. When it comes to assessments and special considerations for your child's needs, make sure to have a conversation with the school district about getting everything in place.

In the clip below, Dr. Pelangka goes over some key points to keep in mind before an assessment, especially if your child is an AAC user:

Talking to the assessor about your concerns is important as they're considering specific tests that may be appropriate for your child. This conversation is critical if your child has challenges that would affect the assessment results. Dr. Pelangka gives an example: "If you have a child with ADHD, and then it's coming out there's all these low scores, how much of that is impacted by the attention? A student can't produce cognitive skills being confounded and impacted by their attention, so that's really the bigger picture of really parsing out."

Legally, the school district is not allowed to use test scores as justification for placing your child in a more restrictive learning environment, but Dr. Pelangka says that the district may try anyway. Check out this clip for Dr. Pelangka's advice for how to respond if this happens to you in an IEP meeting:

You can ask for an assessment at any time, but it can be helpful to know about some common assessments and what they reveal about your child.

Psychoeducational assessment

Dr. Pelangka says, "The psychoeducational assessment encompasses the cognitive and processing pieces. It also generally encompasses all the pieces that are done by the school psychologist, so that would be processing, sometimes academic and then any social-emotional pieces, so looking at behavior, empathy, impacted attention, if there's any component that may be impacting."

AT and AAC assessments

Full assessments to determine IEP eligibility often include evaluation by a speech-language pathologist to look at communication. Depending on their needs, a child may be assessed to determine if technology could help them access their education and/or communication. What is the difference between assistive technology (AT) and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)? What about assessments for them? In the clip below, Dr. Pelangka explains the differences and gives plenty of examples.

Dr. Pelangka notes that AAC can support students who vocalize but still need more support to participate in class. And AAC can isn't just for academics: "AAC also helps students be able to access their environment. It helps them access their wants their needs, to be able to participate, to be able to socialize."

Behavior assessment

A functional behavioral assessment (FBA) is often conducted when IEP teams want to develop a behavior plan to support a student with challenging behaviors in the classroom. Here are some key points Dr. Pelangka wants parents to keep in mind:

• Does the behavior assessment consider the environment? "Look at the environment. Is the environment properly set up and conducive to helping your child? Because that can be the reason why, and once you fix that, they don't even have the behaviors anymore." Dr. Pelangka notes that an inclusion specialist can look at this piece. "An inclusion specialist can go in and say hold on, let's make sure that this student is being adequately supported. Maybe we need to look at what does this environment look like, and is it meeting the student's needs?"

• Do the recommendations from the assessment make sense for your child? "A lot of what I see, particularly for ADHD, is we're writing these behavior plans for kids who are off task and attentive and distractible, and it's part of who they are, and it's part of their disability. So keeping that in mind and making sure that the assessment is taking into consideration. You really need to know your child as a whole and make sure that the recommendations make sense. You're questioning how it's going to be supported, what strategies are going to be put in place?"

Independent educational evaluations (IEE)

If you disagree with the assessment results, "parents can absolutely request to have an IEE and have a student looked at again," Dr. Pelangka says. "If you disagree and really feel strongly that they got it wrong, you have the option to request more testing, maybe there were pieces that were missing. You can go back and redo it. If you feel like you just don't want to deal with the district anymore and you don't trust them to complete a valid and reliable assessment, you always have the right to request an IEE, knowing going into that, that the district can deny it, and if they deny, they do have to then file due process to prove that their assessment is valid. It's very rare that that happens, but it can happen."

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