To qualify for an IEP, a student must receive an initial full assessment, sometimes called an evaluation. A full assessment is a multidisciplinary set of assessments conducted by a school psychologist, special education teacher, and any additional service providers that are relevant to the student’s disability; these can include professionals for speech, occupational, behavioral, adaptive physical education, physical therapy, vision, hearing, etc.
A parent can request an assessment of their child at any time. (If you're an Undivided member, here's a sample letter you can use to request an assessment for an IEP.) Within 15 days, the school will send you an assessment plan, which you should discuss in detail with the school psychologist. It is important to indicate in the assessment plan any and all specific areas of concern, such as autism, auditory processing, sensory issues, attention, and others.
If a student qualifies for special education services, a full re-assessment must be conducted every three years (called a triennial assessment) to ensure that they still qualify (although parents and the IEP team can agree to review past records instead of performing all new assessments). It’s also important to note that a new assessment is required before eligibility for an IEP is changed or ended.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that the initial full assessment include a variety of assessment tools and strategies to determine information about a child’s level of developmental and academic function. No one measure or assessment can be used alone to determine eligibility. Assessments must also be administered in the child’s preferred language(s) or mode of communication so that the assessments accurately reflect their achievement level. The evaluation includes assessments to measure health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, cognitive functioning, academic performance, communication, and motor abilities.
Dr. Sarah Pelangka, special education advocate and owner of KnowIEPs, reminds us that California is a dual consent state, which means that districts aren’t allowed to assess students without consent from a parent or guardian. On the other hand, districts have a responsibility to assess for all areas of suspected disability, and an IEP cannot be developed without some kind of valid assessment, so it may be better to discuss alternative methods of testing than to withdraw consent for testing. For example, if the district wants to do IQ testing and parents disagree, she tells us, “Parents can request assessment in processing areas in lieu of IQ tests to see how their child processes and learns best.” Hear more of her tips related to IEP assessments in this event recap.
Note that consenting to an assessment is more than just signing a form. It should be a conversation with the school psychologist who is usually putting together the whole assessment.
Under the IDEA, once the parent consents to the assessment, it must be conducted within 60 days. Assessments should take health into account, so it is helpful when parents are willing to share medical information with the school; take the 60 days to make sure you have your child’s hearing and vision checks up to date with the doctor, and provide that information to the school. If your annual IEP is coming up, schedule medical appointments prior to the IEP so that you’ll have updated records.
Assessments often take a deficit-based approach, mainly because the first purpose is to find the student eligible for an IEP. However, assessments are also to inform the child’s individualized special education, so it’s important to talk to the school about also using assessments to find your child’s strengths. For children ages 3-5, assessments are required by law to identify their unique strength, according to Ed Code §303.321(a)(2)ii. For all kids, the assessment is supposed to be used to identify their educational needs which includes identifying strengths.
When you are signing your consent for the assessment plan, ask the school psychologist: How do you plan to also identify strengths?
Thankfully, “neurodiversity-affirming” is a term and practice that we’re hearing more often. Did you realize this approach can be applied to IEP assessments and the entire IEP process? Breea Rosas, school psychologist and founder of ND Affirming School Psychologist, explains, “Neurodiversity-affirming really means that we accept a child for who they are, that their brain is valid, even though it's different, that's completely acceptable. And we value their unique strengths, and their unique support needs, and we're not trying to change them to make them fit into the neurotypical world. We just accept them for who they are. And so through that lens, we can conduct assessments that really speak to who the individual is, their strengths, the beautiful things about their brains, and also the things that we can do best to support them.”
Rosas says, “If a family is seeking a neurodiversity-affirming assessment, I think it's really important to keep in mind that some of your providers have been practicing the way that they've been practicing for a really long time. And it doesn't mean that they're not skilled providers, just because they aren't doing neurodiversity-affirming assessments. But you can definitely start broaching it with your teams.” She has this advice:
See our article about strength-based IEPs for more ideas and resources to help your whole IEP team see the benefits of using this approach.
Typically, assessments will take place at the school in different settings. The professional administering the assessment may or may not want you to sit in; they want to explore what your child can do.
The psychologist or other professional will likely bring your child to their testing room, which can be a strange and unfamiliar environment. When you discuss the assessment plan, you can talk about what might make your child feel at ease or how to build rapport, such as giving the professional insights about your child’s favorite things.
Rosas offers this advice to prepare kids, parents, and assessors:
A lot of the assessments used in an IEP evaluation include parent questionnaires that asks about what your child can do. These can be difficult — how do you answer whether your 3-year-old can prepare a snack? Answer each question realistically. Can your child do the activity independently? If the situation has never come up, answer that you’re not sure.
We like to be positive about our kids’ abilities, but it’s also vital that you provide an accurate description of your child’s challenges. The IEP team needs to understand the impact of their disability. For any question you are not sure how to answer, ask the assessor for guidance.
The use of accommodations depends on whether the assessments are standardized or curriculum-based. Dr. Pelangka tells us that standardized measures and norm-referenced tests help us understand how we learn, which is why these IEP assessments can’t include accommodations. “Those tests are given to students in the absence of accommodations so that the evaluator can determine if there is a delay or deficit. This helps guide us and discern what the student’s needs are; it helps us to understand what goals and accommodations the student would benefit from.” For example, she says, “If we give students accommodations on processing measures, then we may not have detected their processing deficit, and we wouldn’t understand how their brain truly processes information.”
Curriculum-based tests used for grading can include accommodations because that levels the playing field. Dr. Pelangka explains, “It wouldn’t be fair for a teacher to downgrade a student on tests when the student can’t fully access that test. Now that we know how the student learns (from the standardized measures), in class we can accommodate and afford the student access to show us what they know, taking into account their needs. For example, if a student struggles with reading comprehension but their listening comprehension is a strength, they can have the passage read aloud. This doesn’t change what is being asked of them, it just changes how they are accessing what is being asked of them.”
Observation and work samples can also be an important part of any assessment. Another option can be dynamic testing as an alternative to standardized norm-referenced tests. Some criterion-based evaluations, such as the Southern California Ordinal Scales of Achievement, can use accommodations so that the assessor uses the addition of an accommodation within the test to whether a certain accommodation will be supportive.
At first glance, the results of an assessment can be intimidating — you could be looking at a 20-page document! Remember that there is supposed to be someone at the IEP meeting who can explain the results.
Dr. Pelangka recommends that you use at least two different colored highlighters as you go through the assessments: use one color for strengths and one color for areas of need. Learn more here:
When you review an assessment, you should take note of any areas of relative weakness. Often, tests are broken down into subtest scores, which are averaged together for an overall score. Sometimes, a child will have a low score in one subtest but will test in the average range in other subtests, so the low score can get lost in the overall average. Even if the overall score may be acceptable, you can request a goal specifically to work on the area(s) of weakness.
Although we tend to focus on areas of weakness, obtaining accurate areas of strength from assessments is possibly even more important. Areas of strength can show a child’s potential and help the parent argue for more ambitious goals.
In this clip, Rosas explains how a neurodiversity-affirming assessment that focuses on a child’s strengths can transform how the IEP team uses the results to write goals and accommodations into the IEP:
Sometimes, districts will dismiss relative areas of strength as “splinter skills,” or abilities in a specific area that do not generalize into other areas. In this instance, even if the child cannot generalize their skill to other areas, they can still have an area of strength to help build self-confidence, make connections with others who also have that skill, and be recognized and celebrated for that skill. (Check out our article on strength-based IEPs to learn more about how important it is to approach the whole IEP process with our kids’ strengths in mind.)
Undivided’s Non-Attorney Education Advocate Lisa M. Carey has this advice when it comes to reviewing assessments: “When you're reviewing an assessment, the first thing I always ask a parent is, does this feel like your kid? Was there anything surprising? Were you shocked? Were you surprised? As you're going through it, if you have questions on the assessment, I always say put questions in the margins right next to where it came up, so when they're going through the assessment during the IEP meeting, you remember the question at the right time when the report is reviewed.”
Many of the evaluations used in IEP assessments are norm-referenced standardized tests. That means the developers of the test performed the test on a large group of kids and developed a norm based on the average scores. Psychologists will often include a bell curve in their report to help everyone understand what the scores mean. If you don’t know what kind of scores the evaluator is using when they provide numbers, ask for the scores to be explained.
Most tests use a bell curve, so the average score is assigned a value of 100 in the Standard Score range. The highest score recorded is 200 and the lowest is 0. Scores above 100 are above average, scores below 100 are below average. The Bell curve shows standard deviations, usually 15 points, so that everything from 85 to 115 is considered average. An assessor may be looking for two standard deviation points (+/-30) for a significant disparity.
Some assessments end up with T scores, some percentiles, some with age equivalency. The bell curve for any standardized test (for speech, academics, IQ, etc.) uses 100 as the average, or mean. This explainer video, though specific to IQ tests, can help you understand how to read the bell curve.
Dr. Pelangka warns against school districts using test scores as justification for placing your child in a more restrictive learning environment. She says, “Test scores alone cannot be used to dictate placement.”
At the end of the report, there should be a section for recommendations. However, just because the assessor recommends something based on the results, such as placement, it doesn't mean that's what the IEP team will decide. It's a good idea to ask the assessor what data in the report led to these recommendations.
Here are some of the most commonly used categories of assessments:
Here are other tests that might be part of an IEP but are not typically used for eligibility:
In All About Assessments, here's what Dr. Pelangka told us: “If you’re reading this assessment, and this report doesn’t sound like your child or sound like the person you know, because at the end of the day, you know your child better than anyone. A lot of these assessors, especially if it’s in the very beginning of an initial assessment, don’t know your child at all, aside from this very little time they’ve spent assessing them. However, it’s possible for your child to perform differently in different settings. Have you sent anyone to observe? Have your videos if you have a lot of questions. I definitely recommend that. Other things that determine the validity are: how long did they actually spend with your child? I actually had one this week where collectively the psychologist and therapist spent 40 minutes with the child. You obviously can’t really discern much with 20 minutes with a student.”
You know your child best, and you're a valuable member of the IEP team. If the district performs an assessment of your child and you feel it does not accurately reflect their strengths and needs, it’s probably not a thorough assessment. Dr. Pelangka says, “You have the right to disagree. California is a dual consent state, so [the school] can’t move forward with anything without your consent unless they file due process and they win. 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.”
Lisa M. Carey says that parents don't need to explain why they disagree with the assessment; they can simply state that they disagree.
If you disagree with the results, you have the right to an Independent Educational Evaluation, or IEE, at public expense. You can read more about IEEs and how to request one in our article Independent Educational Evaluations (IEE) 101.
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