Assessment permeates many aspects of our educational society. With the passage of federal legislation (i.e., No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004), assessment in the form of accountability is ever present in our K-12 educational system. Current assessment practices should be used in…

Assessment of lexical/semantic knowledge is performed with a variety of tests varying in response requirements. The present study exemplifies the application of modern statistical approaches in the adaptation and assessment of the psychometric properties of the "Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test--Revised" (PPVT-R) Greek. Confirmatory factor analyses…

A new professional credential, the Nationally Certified Educational Diagnostician (NCED), was established in 2006 for assessment specialists known as educational diagnosticians. The first cohort of 511 diagnosticians from 11 states received NCED certificates in January 2008. Discussed in this article are several issues of concern related to…

To make valid decisions about intervention effectiveness in a tiered intervention system, it is essential to formatively assess treatment integrity along with student outcomes. Despite significant advances in technologies for ongoing assessment of student outcomes, research regarding treatment integrity assessment has not shared the same progress…

While formal, standardized assessment instruments provide valuable and necessary information about students' various abilities and skills, the use of informal and qualitative assessment approaches has the benefit of leading directly to instruction based squarely on an individual student's needs, strengths, and existing skills. This article…

Rubrics are an integral part of many writing programs, and they represent elements of good writing in essays, stories, poems, as well as other genres and forms of text. Although it is possible to use rubrics to teach students about the processes underlying effective writing, a more common practice is to use rubrics as a means of assessment, after…

Accurate spelling is a complex act that requires cognitive and linguistic knowledge of the phonological, morphological, syntactical, and semantic principles of our language. Students with disabilities frequently exhibit spelling difficulties related to language learning disorders and inefficient cognitive processing. These difficulties often are…

Written language is a complex set of skills that facilitate communication and that are developed in a predictable sequence. It is therefore possible to analyze current skills, identify deficits, plan interventions, and determine the effectiveness of the intervention. To effectively accomplish these tasks, educators need to choose appropriate…

The intervention validity of cognitive assessment batteries is considered within an historical context to identify what the evidence supports (knowns), what cannot be known (unknowables), and what is not yet known (unknowns). Two ways cognitive batteries could inform intervention are identified: a disordinal (i.e., aptitude-treatment interaction)…

This article will first provide an overview of the transition assessment process in terms of the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 and the basic tenets of the process. The second section will provide an overview of the methods of gathering assessment information on the student and on the living,…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 mandates that students with disabilities graduating or aging out of the P-12 school system be provided with a summary of academic achievement and functional performance (SOP). The SOP should provide the student with one document that summarizes available formal and informal…

Professionals with expertise in assessment and diverse learners are in demand to assist in developing and implementing large-scale assessment and accountability systems. This article highlights aspects of current federal legislation that pertain to the development of these systems, describes the areas of expertise and unique perspectives of…

Response-to-intervention (RTI) technical adequacy standards should follow from model purpose, procedural specification, procedural adherence, outcome determination, and subsequent plans. Therefore, RTI raises atypical measurement questions for practice, and, for this reason, it may require hybridized technical adequacy methods. Due to RTI model…

Despite policy mandates to include students with disabilities in educational assessment and accountability programs, current practices suggest a substantial lack of capacity for effective inclusion. Continuing professional development (CPD) is an essential component of disseminating and implementing effective inclusion practices. Recent reviews of…

This article provides a brief history of curriculum-based measurement (CBM), clarifies its relationship to curriculum-based assessment, summarizes the primary features of CBM, and gives a rationale for its design. Extensions of CBM to new research domains are identified, and a perspective is provided in the place of CBM in the broader context of…