Assessment for Effective Intervention

There is growing recognition that the bulk of the traditional, norm-referenced tests fail to help teachers make instructional decisions. In rejecting these measures, diagnosticians and teachers alike are seeking strategies for identifying and directly remediating mistakes students make in arithmetic computation. This article presents a step-by-step series of operations for analyzing and categorizing arithmetic errors, for selecting corrective strategies, and for applying peer-referenced standards to judge the performance of special-needs students.

The nomadic lifestyle of migrants seriously hinders their access to and the continuity of appropriate educational services. As a result, migrant handicapped students are both underidentified and underserved. One means of insuring the delivery of appropriate educational services to migrant students is through assessment. The purpose of this article is to provide educators with guidelines for assessing the unique needs of migrant students. Specific guidelines presented include (a) identifying the student's language and cultural background, (b) examining adaptive behavior, (c) using the Migrant Student Record Transfer System (MSRTS), (d) determining the student's medical needs, (e) involving migrant parents, (f) interviewing the student's teachers, (g) choosing appropriate assessment instruments, (h) employing curriculum-based assessment, and (i) establishing a network of community resources.

The DDST and a brief measure of expressive language development were given to 114 children between 24 and 74 months of age. As in a previous study, the DDST failed to identify the majority of children who failed the expressive language screening. Changing total DDST scoring and using more rigorous cutoff scores—the ages at which 50% and 75% of the sample population passed language items—failed to substantially improve the predictive accuracy of the DDST. Adding a very limited number of expressive language items identified most of the children with language difficulties. Use of such a measure together with the DDST is advocated. Recommendations for further research include cross-validation of these findings, revision of the DDST language sector, and subsequent assessment of the test's sensitivity to a variety of mild handicapping conditions.

Thirty young children with handicaps were assessed using a series of five self-recognition mirror tasks developed by Bertenthal and Fischer (1978a, 1978b). The task data were submitted to a Guttman Scalogram. Generally, the set of items did form a reproducible scale, indicating these tasks are an appropriate measure of self-recognition in young children with handicaps. However, some general differences were noted between task performance by this sample and those reported by the authors for nonhandicapped young children, particularly, results obtained on task 1 (tactual exploration of the mirror). A partial correlation technique, controlling for chronological age, indicated that stage of self-recognition is positively and significantly related to cognitive development or mental age. Possible explanations for the observed differences are presented, along with recommendations for future research.

The relationship between the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) Nonverbal Scale and the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) Performance Scale was examined for a sample of 48 preschool age children. The children were grouped according to their level of language development. One group consisted of normal children with no language delays. The second group was composed of children who exhibited mild to moderate language delays. The third group included children who were essentially nonverbal. Subjects were administered the K-ABC Nonverbal Scale and the WPPSI Performance Scale in a counter-balanced order. The scores were then analyzed to determine if there were any significant relationships or differences between the two measures or the three groups. Pearson product-moment correlations between the K-ABC Nonverbal Scale and the WPPSI Performance Scale ranged from .59 for the language delayed group to .79 for the entire sample. A significant difference was found between the obtained means of the instruments, with subjects receiving higher scores on the WPPSI Performance Scale. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of assessing young language-delayed children.

The interrater reliability of three different interaction scales—the Maternal Behavior Rating Scale, the Rating Scales of Mother-Child Interaction, and the Teaching Skills Inventory—were estimated with four different statistical techniques: Pearson correlations, percentages of agreement, comparisons of raters' means, and generalizability theory techniques. The estimates varied widely, both within and across the three interaction scales. The meanings of each statistical approach are discussed, and some suggestions are given to help a researcher decide which approach to use in particular circumstances.

School psychologists were surveyed as to their perception and opinion of the fourth edition of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. The survey indicated that the majority of school psychologists feel they need additional training in administering, scoring, and interpreting the test; however, few have received such training. A small number of practicing school psychologists have adopted the revised instrument in their practice or sponsoring agency. When asked to rank, in order, instruments of choice, the Wechsler followed by the Kaufman were scales of choice.

The purpose of this project was to develop norms for Navajo Indian students for the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Revised (WISC—R). A stratified random sample of 539 Navajo students distributed in cells of 4 months of age were selected from eight county schools in McKinley County, New Mexico. Sixteen percent of the Navajo school population from first through eighth grade was tested. The norms help to separate cultural and language differences from learning difficulties.

The purpose of this research is to examine the statistical relationship between psychoeducational profiles of violent and assaultive youth and their success or failure in being mainstreamed into public schools. The research hypothesis was that specific variables contained in a student's psychoeducational profile may contribute significantly to differences between his being successfully or unsuccessfully mainstreamed. Uncorrelated t tests indicated that follow-up contacts with the public school system, numerical ratings on an ecological measure, Verbal IQs, one of the WISC—R subtests (Similarities), and the PIAT Reading Comprehension, Reading Recognition, and Spelling scores differentiated significantly between the two groups.

One hundred fifty-three individuals with mild mental retardation and borderline intellectual functioning who attended a transitional vocational program were evaluated for behavior indicative of emotional dysfunction and personality disorders. Based upon the multiaxial criteria of DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association, 1980), 80, or 53%, were diagnosed as meeting Axis I criteria for a clinical syndrome. Twenty-seven, or 17.6%, of the clients enrolled met the DSM-III criteria for an Axis II diagnosis, which involve more severe personality or developmental disorders. These findings are similar to epidemiological investigations conducted in community, hospital, and outpatient mental health settings for the mentally retarded. Behavior that indicates emotional pathology in individuals with mild retardation and borderline intellectual functioning has a great impact upon meeting the goals of transitional programs and fostering community acceptance.

All issues of the five most widely read general special education journals were examined for the years 1983-1987. Institutional affiliations of authors were recorded, and two scoring systems were used to produce two separate rankings of publishing productivity of institutions. One scoring system awarded fractions of points based on number of authors, while the other system awarded one full point to each affiliated institution, regardless of number of authors. The systems produced similar results, and both of these systems identified different institutions than those identified by a previous researcher who analyzed five educational administration journals. The results of this study will probably be most useful to students, as well as potential faculty, who are seeking institutions with high scholarly productivity in special education.

The Einstein Assessment of School-Related Skills (Gottesman & Cerullo, 1988) was developed to aid professionals in the educational, medical, and health-care fields in identifying children at risk for or experiencing learning problems in grades kindergarten through 5. Their brief (7 to 10 minute) screening instrument was constructed to measure reading, arithmetic, auditory memory, language-cognition, and visual-motor abilities. The items that compose the Einstein are in many cases similar to those found in achievement tests. Therefore, the Einstein should be, in part, a measure of school achievement. However, given the processes used in its development, the Einstein should function as a more effective screening device than traditional achievement measures. This study was undertaken to determine the extent to which the Einstein is a school achievement measure and to determine whether it predicts special education placement better than traditional achievement measures. For students in grades k-3, Einstein scores were correlated with reading and mathematics tests and with teacher ratings. The scores on the Einstein and on the achievement measures were also correlated with the presence or absence of school-diagnosed learning difficulty. Results showed the Einstein to be significantly related to achievement and generally to predict learning difficulty as well as or better than the achievement measures.

Career Incentive Plan coordinators, principals, regular class teachers, and special education teachers responded to questionnaires by indicating their degree of perceived importance of 23 characteristics of effective teachers. An oblique rotation within a factor analysis generated four clusters, labeled delivery, management, rapport, and planning. Multivariate test was significant (p < .002) and the univariate tests were significant for the four identified factors: delivery (p < .002), management (p < .002); rapport (p < .037), and planning (p < .015). One-way analyses showed that special education teachers' perceptions differ from those of principals and regular class teachers. Implications of the findings and recommendations are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate school psychologists' knowledge base, training, and experience in the area of traumatic head injury (THI). The results indicated that school psychologists have received little systematic training in the area of THI and consequently do not have broad-based information about this group of children. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for training professionals who will serve THI children.