IEP Assessments

I recently wrote an article on Understanding IEP Assessments for Bright Hub and thought I'd put some comments here as well. I've always found the assessment score portion of Gus's IEP to be more complicated than deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls, but I've come to gain a little better understanding of them. They're not quite as complicated as I thought (very close, but not quite). The odd thing is that the keys to understanding these things seem to be some nationally guarded secret – none of our service providers could ever give me a solid explanation for what it all meant. So here's my attempt at demystifying the matter.

The first things you need to understand are the terms and acronyms. Most of the assessment scores will be expressed as one or more of the following:

• SS – standard or scaled score. This is the score of the assessment itself. For instance, the SAT has a different scale (200-800) than the AP exams which are score on a scale of 1-5.
  
• Percentile – the percentile shows where your child falls within the range of other students being tested. A score in the 98^th percentile means your child scored in the top 2 percent of students tested, or better than 98 percent.
  
• AE/GE – age or grade equivalents tell where your child's skills are in comparison to kids of different age groups or in different academic grades.
  
• Raw Score – I've never seen this on our IEP, but it's useful to know just in case it comes up. The raw score is the actually number of successes your child has on each of the different test components. For example, your child might get 8 correct responses on one test out of a possible 10.
  

Many assessments use similar scales, but some have their own (just to keep parents hopping and guessing, I'd imagine). If you find out what assessment tool was used for your child in each area, you can try to find out what the scale is and take it from there. Some common tests are:

• General or Comprehensive
  
  • The Brigance Comprehensive Inventory of Basic Skills (CIBS)
    
• Speech/Language
  
  • Oral and Written Language Scales (OWLS – they're not just for wizards anymore)
    
  • Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)
    
  • Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT)
    
  • Educational – Woodcock Johnson III
    
• Motor/Physical Skills
  
  • Bruininsky-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency
    
  • Peabody Developmental Motor Scales
    
• Behavior
  
  • Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales
    

The article goes into a little more detail about scoring and interpretation, so if this is a topic that tends to confuse you (like it did me) by all means, check it out! And if you know of any assessments that I can add to the list, by all means, please share! Have a great day!