Assessment is little bit different than to Diagnosis. Diagnosis helps teachers to understand the reasons why child is unable to learn the given tasks in school or classroom.
Though in general diagnosis is very important, assessment helps teacher to teach targeted goals. So, in this section we will try to understand what are assessments and why do we need to do assessment.
Assessment is an ongoing process. It is not just a weekend test or quarterly exam. The process of assessment starts with broad collection of data related to child once teacher observes that there is marked difference between child level of performance and expected level of performance in a targeted time given to all children in classroom. In first level teacher understands that child is having a difficulty.
When a marked difference is observed in child consistently for example slowness in doing written work, inability to understand the concepts, inability to read or comprehend, the child is needed to undergo detailed assessment.
This is going to be second level of assessment where reasons for difficulty are understood calling it as diagnosis. At this level child can be sent to diagnostic team to identify reasons as to why child is facing difficulty in learning and performing given tasks.
Once the problem or reasons for problems are identified the third level of assessment begins which is very important for teacher as well student. Teacher takes detailed assessment to understand weakness and strengths of child. This is going to be very intensive level of assessment which results in understanding child’s problem in a more practical way and in detail so that a base data for IEP is collected. Based on this information IEP annual goals, short term goals and classroom management etc is planned. So basically, a good assessment at this level helps to plan a successful IEP. Once IEP is developed assessment becomes more specific to child aiming to plan to overcome area of weakness. So, assessment also helps in understanding strength and weaknesses, child’s health, home environment other than child educational difficulties. Once IEP is developed the program is implemented.
In fourth level while the program is implemented and teacher continuously tries to understand the overall performance of child. Here assessment going to be continuous on-going to comprehend the performance of child. This is can be understood as fourth level of assessment though not exactly recorded anywhere. It’s just collection of day-to-day performance of child. This phase of assessment is very important in fact whether it is normal or special child. The teacher continuously assesses and collect the data whether or not teaching methods have an impact on student learning, whether program that was planned is properly implemented or not, whether the said curriculum was properly understood by student or not.
Final assessment is called as Evaluation which is – assessing how far the targeted goals noted in IEP are achieved. Based on this future planning is going to be done.
So, Assessment can be understood to have four to five levels. Teacher also gathers data from diagnosis and information given by all therapists.
Overall assessment is just nothing but collection of data which will be useful to analyse the performance of child. Frankly speaking to me it is understanding teachers’ performance and how near teacher is understanding child while writing IEP.
Well, this is very broad way of talking about assessment.
Assessment are many types and varieties. For each problem now a day there are umpteen number of assessments available in the market. But unfortunately, there is to my knowledge no single assessment which will help all children to understand all difficulties. The reason is each child is unique in learning, his problems, his environment and his understanding. So, the reason why we are planning IEP which is Individualized Education Program. The main and very important is the Assessment which we do before planning is done. That is based on which IEP is written, because that becomes base on which a program for entire year of the child is developed. There is specific assessment to specific problem and it should match with the curriculum of child. So, selection of assessment is also having role to play. Here teacher role is very significant and at one point of time teacher has to take a decision and has to make her own assessments to understand child performance. The tests that teacher makes are called informal inventories. These are done mainly to assess the child performance before planning and while implementing the program so that teacher can collect a broad data to help child in a minute and detailed way.