Evaluation is an important part in the education process. Similar to tests given to students to assess how well they learn, different types of assessments such as direct observation, survey, rating scale, and so on are involved in the special education evaluation process. By conducting assessments, professionals are able to know whether a student has a disability and is eligible for special education and special services. According to the Department of Education (DOE), evaluation, as part of the IEP procedures, must indicate that a school-age child meets the criteria for one or more of the 13 disability classifications and the disability he or she has affects the school performance in order to be eligible for special education services.
To collect the most objective data and make sure the information being collected is fair and representative, different kinds of assessment could be conducted by professionals (school psychologists) from the IEP team at each school. Initial evaluation might include knowing about the student’s social history through an interview, and what the student knows about through a test. Observations and physical examination will also be given in order to know more about the child. There are even more assessments that could be conducted by school psychologists or teachers as a reference to know more about the student’s strengths and needs.
Tests like Woodcock Johnson which is being used to evaluate one’s cognitive ability might seem fair for most of the people. All of these tests have been tested for validity and have been used by professionals for infinite times, so people tend to put 100% trust in them and believe that what they reflect must be the truth. However, if we dig deeper and look at the questions, we might find that many of those test kits were designed by the “mainstream” under the U.S. context. Most of the tests were designed by Whites from middle class and English native speakers, so they tend to put what they see and know about the world into the test content.
Because of this, disproportionality and over- or underrepresentation have been problems in the special education field for a long time. Compared to White students, students of color (Black) are more likely to be labeled as emotionally disturbed and specific learning disabilities. This leads to a more serious problem on discipline. Research found that “[b]lack males are consistently disciplined more harshly for the same behaviors, when compared to White students”, and this leads to further drop out and expulsions (National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2014). Linking back to the assessment and evaluation, students of color, students from minority, students from different cultural or linguistic backgrounds, or even students from a lower SES can all potentially have poor performance due to the design of the tests.
Personally, I view myself as a well-educated woman from Asia, so answering the math questions from Woodcock Johnson won’t be difficult for me. However, I was stuck by the questions which included the units of pounds, inches, feet, and cent. Do I know the concept of unit conversion? Of course I do, but in my own cultural background, people don’t use these units. I failed to answer those questions because of the different cultural backgrounds I was exposed to, and it led to a lower validity result since the questions failed to measure my cognitive ability in Math calculations or comprehension.
People might argue that bilingual assessments are also provided, in which students have the chance to be tested in their preferred language, and therefore we don’t need to worry about any bias caused by linguistic differences. The fact is, providing bilingual assessments didn’t remove all diversity barriers. As my personal experience above, does translating the unit help to solve the embedded issue? The book, Assessment in special and inclusive education (2017), has a chapter focusing on the assessment of bilingual students. The chapter explained that questions are difficult to translate from English to other languages because “difficulty of the vocabulary can vary from language to language” and “difficulty of the content can vary from culture to culture”. There are also other concerns on the translated version of assessment. As we know, children develop language throughout their whole development stage. For many bilingual students who might talk to family in their first language and take lessons in English, they might perform better receptive language skills in their second language and better expressive language skills in their first language. These lead to the conflict on whether we should provide an interpreter or the translated format of the test to the student. If a translated version is provided, how could we ensure that the results can truly present students’ levels?
In general, assessments are given in the evaluation process of IEP to provide a most objective and comprehensive understanding of a student’s level, but this blueprint leaves gaps for the students who are not from the mainstream. Although alternative assessments are provided, they oversimplify the impact that one’s cultural background or growing up environment has on students’ school performance, which therefore continues the issue of disproportionality and overrepresentation. To fill out the gap, more professionals outside of the mainstream should participate in the evaluation process and help choose the best assessment for students.
For students of color, having someone who is familiar with their culture might help explain why their behaviors or language seem “abnormal”. For bilingual or immigrant students, having a professional who is also bilingual or understands their culture well participate in the evaluation process might help identify the “invalid” problems which might lead to further confusion or even serve as an interpretation, removing the potential barriers students might face during the evaluation. Professionals outside of the mainstream should be the representatives of the increasing diversity of the student population; they are able to see things differently and provide effective feedback from their own values. At the same time, they should also be well-trained and understand children’s development well, so that their opinions will be more meaningful when they are also able to understand students by taking the whole same-age students as a reference.
However, this is only the last step of the solution, and more problems should be taken into consideration when we are shifting our focus from assessment and evaluation to diversity and inclusive education. In order to have more diversity participating to the procedure, we have to have more people to come to the field and know about the field. Being in the special education field for more than 5 years, I realized that most of future educators are white middle class females, and schools also preferred hiring English native speakers rather than someone who requires a working visa. Things shouldn’t be like this, and students have to see themselves and know someone who can understand them at school.
The most direct way to attract more future educators is to raise teachers’ wages and lower the training cost (college tuition). Teaching has been a job which is full of tiredness and with low wages, so people need balance! As more people come to the education field and receive well training from the colleges, we are expecting to see a more diverse population going to school and participating in the evaluation process. Not only filling the gap in the evaluation process but also a diverse teacher population can help remove the stereotypes people used to hold regarding races and ethnicities. At the same time, the diversity of faculty members can be mandated by districts or government, if applicable. If schools are picking the teachers based on their own preference rather than teaching quality, many well-trained teachers might be omitted intentionally due to their identity and visa status.
In conclusion, the whole passage points out that education is never a single system in society, and more things related to races and policy link closely to it. To reduce the issues caused by the unfair and unrepresentative assessment given to students during evaluation for special education, different parties should take their roles, adjusting the construction of the educational system and making the system more diverse.
References (link embeded):
Salvia, J., Ysseldyke, J. E., & Witmer, S. (2017). Assessment in special an inclusive education (13th Edition). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
https://sites.ed.gov/idea/regs/b/a/300.8
https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/special-education/the-iep-process/evaluation
https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/recruit-teachers-of-color/