Assessment

Effective intervention begins with piecing together bits of information from many sources including parents, the student, the student’s record of academic performance, and other sources that will provide insight into who the student is, and how best to proceed. A current assessment is crucial to establishing a solid baseline from which to start. Administration of the assessment is often my first opportunity to witness how students perform given tasks, how they deal with stress and progressively difficult questions, and how they approach items that require critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Through this assessment, primitive movement reflexes, posture, balance, physical behavior, eye movement skills, visual cognitive ability, thinking strategies, and basic academic skills will be observed and evaluated. Assessment results and observations will be viewed through the lens of the developmental hierarchy. Gaps in the hierarchy result in misalignment and instability in any skill of higher order. Careful observation and error analysis afford valuable information that far exceeds a mere number or score. The assessment results along with all other gathered data and observations are woven together to reveal each student’s unique constellation of strengths and weaknesses allowing us to create a more targeted intervention plan. Students and parents should feel reassured, empowered, and more optimistic about the future following an assessment. Without an assessment, we are just guessing.

The need, or desire for targeted assessment of specific academic abilities will be handled on a case by case basis.