Tips for good assessment and report writing - 4

This is the forth batch of a few such tips written by the assessment  team at the Jerusalem municipality educational psychology services – with some additions by me.   The members of the team are:  Rita   Baumgarten, Hanna Brimer, Nadine Caplan , Eynat  Cohen Rahman , Etti Daniel Simon , Uri Dar ,  Michelle Lisses Topaz, Betty Netzer, Ruth Oman Shaked , Adina Sacknovitz , Smadar Sapir Yogev, Anan Srour   and  Dahlia Zayit.

Base your conclusions on a range of data and clinical 

impressions that is as wide as possible

When you draw conclusions about a certain cognitive ability, 

always consider the child's scores, your clinical impressions of the way the child performed on the tests measuring this ability, and your clinical impressions of the way he performed on other tasks in which those skills are manifested.  Your goal is to integrate all these data sources.

Try to avoid drawing conclusions out of one data source only, and be wary about "translating" single subtest scores into specific "statements".  A single subtest is not a sufficient basis for conclusions about the child's skills.

So, if you have three test scores measuring comprehension knowledge, don't write:  David's vocabulary is lower than average (vocabulary=6).  David has difficulty understanding everyday situations (comprehension=7).  David's general information is also poor (general information=8).

Write:  David's comprehension-knowledge ability is low.  Although he has intact grammar and syntax skills, his vocabulary is limited:  David didn't know many words and phrases in a text for his grade level (for example: "mythos"; " wait on you hand and foot").  When he expressed himself orally or in writing, David used simple everyday language and slang.  David had difficulties understanding complex questions and instructions, and he understood them better when I rephrased them in simpler language.  In a task requiring general information retrieval, David performed at the average level, but in other assessment  tasks David lacked general information that could have helped him.  For example, David had difficulty understanding a text about alcoholism, partly because he did not understand the phrases "blue collar workers", "the middle class", "western society" and more.

This paragraph demonstrates integration of evidence based information about the child's comprehension knowledge (the three subtest scores that indicate poor comprehension knowledge) with clinical information about the child's comprehension knowledge (gleaned from reading comprehension analysis, oral and written expression and instruction comprehension).

Prefer drawing conclusions at the broad ability level  to drawing them at the narrow ability level, and refrain from drawing conclusions on the basis of a single subtest.