Testing Students With Special Needs

Special Needs Assessment: A Review of Recent Literature on Testing Students with Special Needs One of the most difficult and controversial issues in education today is the question of identifying, testing and educating students with potential special needs and different learning styles. On one hand, individuals within the system of education wish to be inclusive in nature. They do not wish to label students permanently to the detriment of their educational advancement.

However, ignoring the special challenges some students face can be just as detrimental as tracking students too early into a special education niche. Furthermore, the increased demand for testing students of all levels of innate ability to verify the competency of individual instructors and the performance of students within particular districts on the whole means that the issue of testing students with special needs is unlikely to go away soon. It is a problem that all educators must take a stand on.

(Airasian, 2001) The educator Alba Ortiz, in her article "English Language Learners With Special Needs: Effective Instructional Strategies" from the 2001 ERIC Digest tackles the specific issue of students with dual special needs, namely those who do not speak English as their primary language. This gives Ortiz a unique and surprising perspective upon the subject. She suggests that the current system of special education assessment is faulty.

The over-representation of English language learners in special education classes is a clear indication, in her view, that educators have a demonstrable difficulty in distinguishing students who truly have learning disabilities from students who are failing for other reasons, such as limited English.

(Ortiz, 2001) The author quotes Valdes & Figueroa's 1996 study that indicates "students learning English are disadvantaged by a scarcity of appropriate assessment instruments and a lack of personnel trained to conduct linguistically and culturally relevant educational assessments." (Valdes & Figueroa, 1996) In other words, the learning disabled and ESL are dismissed as merely poorly functioning in an English linguistic and cultural environment, rather than having learning difficulties.

Also, "English language learners who need special education services are further disadvantaged by the shortage of special educators who are trained to address their language and disability related needs simultaneously." Thus when a special needs student is identified, if English is not his or her primary language, which can teach the student in a way to cope with both the language and the educational difficulties? The danger, Ortiz views, comes from under rather than over assessment and tracking.

Better to identify a problem early on, even to the point of eschewing mainstreaming, than to allow a student to flounder in a classroom where he or she cannot understand what is being said, and his or her needs as both an ESL student and a specialized learner are overlooked. This is a surprising position, given that one might think a person acting as an advocate for students of alternate cultural and linguistic backgrounds might be concerned about the over-identification of students as learning disabled.

Similarly, the educator and author Antoinette Dudek agrees that early assessment is of value for all special needs students. She states that despite the dangers of tracking, test-taking strategies for special needs students, such as using an approach that engages all five senses, rather than stressing the purely verbal or visual when studying course material can be helpful with special needs students.

Also over-learning material, and predicting test questions may be necessary and required for special needs learners, thus stressing early testing to allow for the alternative learning strategies to be integrated into the child's scholastic approach early on. However, Dudek also stresses that in early grades, some mainstreaming of special needs students may be required, arguing ultimately that rather than excuse students with special needs from testing, educators should allow them to participate, provided appropriate interventions are granted such as extended test time.

Assessment should not be a complete excuse from the regular curriculum.

However, this issue of extra time has become an increasingly controversial practice itself in recent years, particularly in the higher grades, and in regards to tests like the SAT, where extended time is not noted on the student's transcripts and thus has left some organizations such as ETS and the College Board open to charges that parents are getting their students assessed for nonexistent learning disabilities to secure an additional advantage when gaining entry to increasingly scarce spots at prestigious colleges.

(College Board, 2004) Assessing students with special needs thus stands at a crossroads. For the wealthy and the elite, the additional support given in some districts and situations may be a boon, but for poor and minority candidates, underassessment may be the greatest danger. According to the "Education for All Handicapped Children Act" of 1975, all children with disabilities must receive equal access to a free and appropriate public education, which does not.