the first week of school

Tyrone,

Each year I give my students the Brigance Inventory of Basic Skills. I particularly assess reading and math skills. It just gives me a way to see how much progress the child makes during the year. I think you are VERY wise to assess where the children are as opposed to depending solely on subjective opinions. Sometimes those opinions are not accurate.

Janis

Thank you for saying that Janis. I agree that these subjective opionions can be wrong. What is your opinion on this issue.

When parents are given their child’s IEP progress review (mid-term and at the end of the year) to tell us if goals have been met, it is measured solely by teacher observation. so, the IEP goal is written like this (i’ll give you one of the same three goals we have had for three years now).

Please keep in mind the scores you have recently seen on my son and what we have previously discussed if you will:

Annual goal: will use decoding strategies to indentify unfamiliar words

Instructional objective
1. When decoding unfamiliar words, he will break longer words into syllables paying attention to prefixes and suffixes.

2. When reading a passage, he will use the context to determine the accuracy of decording unfamiliar words.

3. He will reread and correct decoding errors to fit the context.

All of these benchmarks are to be assessed by teacher observation (only) within the gen ed classroom and the critieria is 80% accuracy. At the end of every year, they say that he does not qualify of extended school year because he met the annual goal. Yet the same goal gets put into the following year’s IEP. When I asked why, they said its because the curriculum is getting harder and we have to keep reinforcing these things.

This is how I see it: I see it as very vague IEP goals. As I have told you before, they are not willing to remediate his specific problems because we follow the full-inclusion model.

A. Do teachers know that relying on teacher’s subjective observation is just that (subjective) and that it can be inaccurate? Is this just not wanting to be held accountable in any substantial way?

B. What can I ask to be used instead of / or in addition to teacher observation? I’ve tried asking them to take a look at his Standford Achievement test scores (been told they don’t do that). I’ve been told by the district’s administrator of the tests that if the scores are consistant with his daily work, classroom tests and overall performance, we should be able to use these objective measures to review his progress. I have found that the teacher’s observations are not my observations. Report card grades are Cs, when I average everything out (and I have saved everything) I get Ds and Fs.

That is what I want, bottom line: I want objective measures, not just teacher observation. So what should I ask for? Any suggestions?

I give a first grade cumulative math test found in the back of the regular education math books to all of my students. This way, I can assess if they need to go lower or higher, and I am assessing the skills that they would need if they were in a regular education classroom. For reading decoding, I give the SORT (Slosson Oral Reading Test). It will determine what grade level they are reading on. I hope this helps!!!

Lulu,

It blows me away that you happened to ask me that question here! The reason is, I started to explain to Tyrone that we USED to use the Brigance scores to justify our IEP goal progress and help us write the next year’s goals.

Well, one day, we were told NOT to do that anymore. Why? The reason is that some special teachers (me included) were sometimes writing goals that said the child would make so many months progress in a skill area (for example, Joe will increase reading comprehension to to the 3.0 grade level, and the Brigance or some other test would be used to measure progress and the present level of performance would be listed according to the same test). Some kids, due to various LD’s and other challenges, do not necessarily make a year’s gains in one year. I would think that is common sense and understandable especially for kids with processing or cognitive delays. Each child with an IEP needs INDIVIDUALIZED goals…some may make more than a year’s progress and some may make less. I just don’t get it as long as the child makes SOME progress!!!

Anyway, what happened was that there was a lawsuit by parents somewhere in the US that challenged the fact that their child’s IEP gave goals that were for less than one year’s progress in a year and apparently they won. So the result of that lawsuit is that we must now write these stupid, vague goals and objectives that REALLY are not measurable since we can’t possibly show that we made less than a year’s progress with the child!!!!

This kind of stuff really makes me want to quit the whole thing, but I do have sweet little children that I love and I do not want to abandon them at this point.

So you are quite perceptive, Lulu. My suggestion to you is that you request that instead of teacher observation for the measurement aspect, that he be given a standardized test at the end of each IEP year. You have a couple of choices. If there are other subject areas on the IEP besides reading (and I think we discussed writing), you might ask for the Woodcock Johnson III test, and that he be given the subtests which are included on his IEP: all reading subtests, writing, math, if applicable. If all the goals are reading only, the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test is good, too. My only warning is that my first grader scored a little higher on these than she is actually functioning, but that may not hold true for kids that are older. You may want to ask the question on the teaching reading board: “what is the best (most accurate) standardized test instrument to assess reading decoding, fluency, and comprehension?” It would be good to get several opinions. The ones I have mentioned are commomly used and most schools should have them. It would not be good to ask for a test they might not have because they may resist the request more. I will be extremely interested to hear if you are successful with your request. I understand why some parents have to do lawsuits, but in this one case, it had devastating results for all the other kids in the country who had IEP’s. Please let me know what happens. I’ll be trying it myself on my chuild’s next IEP probably (although her shcool has done everything I have asked so far).

Janis

Under IDEA, if you give the Brigance without permission from the parents you are in violation of the law. Reauthorization states that testing that is not given to the entire school population must have parent consent. Sorry to give you the bad news. You can give non-standaridized assessments though and if you are clever teacher, you can “create” a test! If you know what I mean!!!

Kim, read the response I gave to Janis about the law regarding giving a standardized test - like the Slosson

Stuart,

I believe you are incorrect on this one. The Brigance is not a standardized, normed test. It is a criterion referenced test. I have been in schools in more than one state for years that used it for informal testing. It is never used for formal testing in any district I have ever been in since it does not give norms or standard scores. It is a skills based assessment and nothing more.

Janis

And again, if my knowledge serves me correctly, the SORT is an informal inventory which is not normed or standardized the last time I saw it.

(See my response to Stuart’s other post)

Janis

You might want to check with your district. We have been specifically given a hands-off to the Slosson and Brigance due to the nature and design of the test. I believe both of these tests are normed - even if they are criterion assessments. Teacher made is allowed, which would only require some cut/paste options.