Report Writing

Before Starting a New Report

1. The School Psychologist is the individual who starts the evaluation template, and this occurs soon after the case manager receives parent consent for the evaluation.

2. For re-evaluations, always check the SpEd Forms 'History' section to verify that the previous evaluation report has been finalized before starting a new evaluation template. If someone forgot to finalize the previous report and you created a new template over it, the previous report would be lost.

Steps for Starting a New Report

1. Open the 'Evaluation Report' menu and click the 'New Evaluation Template' button.

2. Select the template for the student's primary suspected disability category. Because evaluation reports must be individualized based on a student's suspected educational needs and because you may be determining eligibility for more than one category, it's likely that you will still need to add tests and/or criteria to the "standard" template (see below). But, you can minimize this workload by selecting the disability category template that will necessitate the fewest additions.

In the "Other Options Considered" section of your evaluation plan PWN, indicate any areas of functioning where the team is not planning to collect data. Then, when completing the evaluation report, delete those identified sections so the finalized report will only contain sections in which evaluation data has been entered.

For example, during an OHD evaluation in which no Sensory Status information will be collected:

1. In the evaluation plan PWN, explain that no data will be collected in the area of Sensory Status.

2. In the evaluation report, click the 'Delete' button next to the Sensory Status section.

3. Click 'Save' and the order of the evaluation report will automatically update.

Because evaluation reports must be individualized based on a student's suspected educational needs, more often than not, we need to modify the "standard" templates that are built around each disability category. The 'Local Tests' and 'Local Criteria' menus are how we accomplish this.

• Local Tests: If you need to insert an additional interview, observation, norm-referenced test, etc., click the 'Local Tests' button and find the assessment template you plan to insert into the report.

• Local Criteria: If the evaluation team suspects eligibility for multiple categories (e.g., both EBD and OHD), use the 'Local Criteria' menu to insert criteria for the additional eligibility category.

The evaluation report templates are written with 'Find and replace' in mind, and using it will save you plenty of time. To use 'Find and replace':

1. Click the binocular icon.

2. Find "XXX" and 'Replace all' with the student's name.

3. Find a pronoun option (e.g., [he/she]) and 'Replace all' with one of the pronoun options.