Assessments: Fool Me Once - Shame On You!

My daughter who has Down syndrome and Autism and is primarily non-verbal at this time was recently given a psycho-educational evaluation by one of the school district psychologists. He gave her a few tests, one is the WASI which is for verbal kids, she had a lot of trouble with it. In his defense, he also gave her a non-verbal test, the NNAT. Their website, which the school psych could have read, says that the NNAT “is frequently used as a screening test for gifted program entry.” Also, “The NNAT® is commonly considered to be a difficult test.” Maybe that's why she seems to have made no gains, perhaps even regressed since her last testing, when in fact anyone who knows her has seen real improvement in her functioning, in her speech, and in her behaviors. The use of this very inappropriate test makes it appear that she is not getting any benefit from the services the district is providing. This then becomes their excuse for offering no more services or at least severely limiting what services they will offer.

In addition, the "very qualified professional" they used to evaluate our child called her "mentally deficient", deficient for what? Deficient for doing brain surgery I would agree, but too deficient to gain in a special education program? Early on we believed what we were told by the people at the schools, we believed all the people in the schools who told us that she couldn't have Down syndrome and autism together when in fact they were mistaken, or wrong, or I don’t know, possibly even intentionally keeping her from getting the help she needed. Mentally deficient is not a term used by any professionals for diagnosing children with learning disorders or other pervasive developmental disorders. It is NOT in the Diagnostic and Statistical manual of Mental Disorders or in the ICD-9 used by physicians. It is also insulting and inappropriate.

We as parents must be vigilant in areas we never expected in order to make sure that our children receive the fair and appropriate public education they are to be given by law. Luckily, thanks to our attorney I have learned to check every test on the internet that is given to my children. The people who sell the tests want to make sure that the districts and the evaluators who purchase them know what the tests are for so they give pretty good descriptions. We can’t always know why someone might give our child a test that seems inappropriate without asking because there may be information in the test that isn’t advertised, but this kind of testing can’t really be justified! It seems to me that every time we have an IEP it is another opportunity for me to learn, they may fool me twice, but never with the same bag of tricks.