DIAGNOSTIC ASSESSMENTS
Provides a more in-depth means of finding specific skill deficits within a student's observed below grade instructional level
Diagnostic assessment measures are given in order to guide instructional grouping and pinpoint skills that require reteaching or further practice. These measures require more time, but yield valuable information that helps teachers learn more about a specific student's level of need for more explicit instruction on targeted skills (Gibbons, Brown, Niebling, 2019). Diagnostic measures can be both formal and informal, and can be found in an existing curricular resource, through a one-on-one conversation, through a rich math task at the beginning of a unit, or other creative means. Check out several resources listed below that will assist you in honing in at the student-level to identify specific areas of need.
DIAGNOSTIC CONSIDERATIONS
MATH SKILL INVENTORIES (FREE)
Before delivering instruction and intervention, educators need to ascertain a student's current instructional level. How can one effectively and efficiently go about this work? Our team has gathered several resources below, that will help make your job easier.
Prior to jumping into a new diagnostic tool, consider that your district may already have existing resources:
Create 10-15 question assessments based on focus standards for each grade-level; determine specific skill gaps and provide intervention within a data-based intervention framework
Conduct 1:1 interviews with students to observe and probe deeper at the student-level to determine instructional levels and specific gaps
Use items from core curriculum, such as a beginning or end-of-year assessments to determine instructional levels and identify gaps
MATH SKILL INVENTORIES (PAID)
Beyond the free resources listed above, there are many diagnostic systems available for purchase. Please note, Kansas MTSS & Alignment does not endorse any particular product listed below. Click on the links below for more information:
Listening to Learn (Marilyn Burns)
DIAGNOSTIC CONSIDERATIONS
FORMAL DIAGNOSTICS
Formal diagnostics are designed to be used with students who are not progressing as intended and need to be assessed for specific misconceptions that might not have been evident in previous measures. Formal diagnostic assessments for mathematics provide a more in-depth analysis of a student’s strengths and weaknesses and are used to further guide instruction. Most diagnostic assessments will provide either age-based or grade-based norms or rubric scoring, used to determine whether a student has significant problems in specific skill domains. This information can then be used to design instruction specific to the student’s individual learning needs. It is important that formal diagnostic assessments be given to students when additional information is needed for more customized instructional planning, but it is also important not to overuse these assessments. Formal diagnostic assessments require numerous building resources and should not be given as a matter of course to all students. Instead, they should only be given when their progress monitoring data indicates further information is necessary to adequately plan instruction.
SINGLE-SKILL CBM PROBES & ERROR ANALYSIS
Whenever students fail to make adequate growth in intervention, it might be an indication that further analysis is needed. The school may decide to gather additional diagnostic information by conducting error analysis and examining error patterns (Ashlock, 2006; Riccomini, 2005), especially at the student’s instructional level. When error analysis indicates possible skill deficits, verification of these deficits can be conducted by using single-skill CBM probes (Hosp, Hosp, and Howell, 2007). Each single-skill probe assesses only one type of skill at a time, enabling a more reliable and valid assessment of specific deficits for a given computational skill. Single-skill CBM probes for mathematics are available from Intervention Central. One source for error analysis are Marilyn Burns’ Listening to Learn math interviews.
COMPREHENSIVE FORMAL DIAGNOSTIC ASSESSMENTS
The school might also choose to administer a formal diagnostic assessment to determine underlying mathematics issues. This assessment is not necessarily for special education referral, but rather for the purposes of planning instruction. Understand that these types of assessments are dense in nature and will take training and larger amounts of instructional time to complete. It is important that these assessments only be used with students who truly need them. Less invasive diagnostic information including, but not limited to, suggestions listed previously, as well as an integrated look across reading, behavior, and social needs should be considered prior to administering a formal diagnostic. The team should also ensure that initial grouping was appropriate.
Formal diagnostic assessments for mathematics include, but are not limited to:
DECISION RULES FOR FORMAL DIAGNOSTIC ASSESSMENTS K-12
All buildings should establish decision rules to address when additional diagnostic assessments will be given, which students will receive tiered support, and how students will be assigned to skill groups. There could be different decision rules established for the use of brief, criterion-referenced diagnostic assessments as compared to more formal, norm-referenced diagnostic assessments that are more resource-intensive to administer. The leadership team needs to review each selected diagnostic assessment to determine the skills/concepts assessed and time to administer.