Conducting the Evaluation

In compliance with IDEA and Section 504, test instruments and other evaluation materials must meet the following criteria:

• Used for the purpose for which the evaluation or measures are valid or reliable

• Include material(s) tailored to assess specific areas of educational need and not merely material(s) that are designed to provide a single, general intelligence quotient

• Selected and administered to ensure that when a test is given to a student with impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills, the test results accurately reflect the student’s aptitude, achievement level, or whatever other factor the test purports to measure rather than reflecting the student’s impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills

• Selected and administered in a manner that is not racially or culturally discriminatory

• Include multiple measures of a student’s reading abilities such as informal assessment information (e.g., anecdotal records, district universal screenings, progress monitoring data, criterion-referenced evaluations, results of informal reading inventories, classroom observations)

• Administered by trained personnel and in conformance with the instructions provided by the producer of the evaluation materials

• Provided and administered in the student’s native language or other mode of communication and in the form most likely to yield accurate information regarding what the child can do academically, developmentally, and functionally unless it is clearly not feasible to provide or administer

Academic Skills

The school administers measures that are related to the student’s educational needs. Difficulties in the areas of letter knowledge, word decoding, and fluency (rate, accuracy, and prosody) may be evident depending upon the student’s age and stage of reading development. In addition, many students with dyslexia may have difficulty with reading comprehension and written composition.

Cognitive Processes

Difficulties in phonological and phonemic awareness are typically seen in students with dyslexia and impact a student’s ability to learn letters and the sounds associated with letters, learn the alphabetic principle, decode words, and spell accurately.

Rapid naming skills may or may not be weak, but if deficient, they are often associated with difficulties in automatically naming letters, reading words fluently, and reading connected text at an appropriate rate.

Memory for letter patterns, letter sequences, and the letters in whole words (orthographic processing) may be selectively impaired or may coexist with phonological processing weaknesses.

Finally, various language processes, such as morpheme and syntax awareness, memory and retrieval of verbal labels, and the ability to formulate ideas into grammatical sentences, may also be factors affecting reading (Berninger & Wolf, 2009, pp. 134–135).

Possible Additional Areas

Based on the student’s academic difficulties, characteristics, and/or language acquisition, additional areas related to vocabulary, listening comprehension, oral language proficiency, written expression, and other cognitive abilities may need to be assessed. Areas for evaluation are provided below in Figure 3.4 of the Dyslexia Handbook.

Primary Characteristics

Word Reading in Isolation: The ability to recognize familiar words as whole units.

Word Decoding in Isolation: The ability to apply letter /sound relationships to pronounce pseudo words accurately in isolation.

Oral Reading Fluency: The ability to read text fluently with both appropriate accuracy and rate.

Written Spelling: The ability to write orally presented words correctly in context.

Note:An isolated difficulty in spelling would NOT be sufficient to identify dyslexia.

Secondary Characteristics

Reading Comprehension: The ability to gain meaning from text and express an understanding of the text.

Math Calculation: The ability to quickly and accurately complete

Phonological Awareness: Assesses the examinee’s awareness of and access to the phonological structure of oral language e.g. manipulating, isolating, sound matching, blending sounds.

Phonological Memory: Assesses the examinee’s ability to code information phonologically for temporary storage in working or short-term memory e.g. recall of spoken items.

Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN): Measures the examinee’s ability to include efficient retrieval of phonological information form long-term or permanent memory and execute a sequence of operations quickly and repeatedly.

Listening Comprehension: Measures basic listening comprehension, including understanding oral directions.

Broad Oral Language: Measure of lexical (word) knowledge, listening ability, verbal comprehension, syntactic knowledge, working memory, auditory memory span and oral language development.

Math Reasoning: Measures the development of verbal, mathematical, and spatial reasoning abilities that are essential for success in school. Assesses verbal and non-verbal ability

In addition to a complete dyslexia evaluation, the following tests are administered as part of a comprehensive dysgraphia evaluation.

Writing Samples: The ability to respond in writing to a variety of demands.

Writing Fluency and Handwriting: The ability to write legibly and fluently for a variety of demands.

Phoneme-Grapheme Knowledge: Proficiency with phonic generalizations and common orthographic patterns in both decoding and encoding.