Running head: COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT FOR STUDENTS

Comprehensive Assessment for Students with Learning Disabilities

Hunter C. Somerville
Texas A&M University-Texarkana

COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT FOR STUDENTS

Comprehensive Assessment for Students with Learning Disabilities

Introduction
Historically there are a small number of ways that students are assessed for the learning
that has taken place. Primarily, standardized testing has been the tool for assessment and
evaluation of learning. Students with learning disabilities have learning requirements that are
outside of the normal box. Learning disabilities include Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder, Dyslexia (reading and writing), Dyscalculia (math), Dysgraphia (writing), Dyspraxia
(motor skill development), Executive Functioning Disorder (affects planning, organization, and
managing skills), and Giftedness. Students of all ages with learning disabilities do not always
perform well on standardized testing procedures and are subject to scrutiny as being lazy, illprepared, or having lower intelligence. There are exceptions to every rule and high-functioning
students excel even though they have learning disabilities. Comprehensive assessment of a
students learning can help educators in all fields measure the learning that has taken place.
Comprehensive assessment also allows for modifying a students educational tools to maximize
learning of a desired curriculum through observations, multi-faceted assessments, and
evaluations.
Needs
Comprehensive assessment as a tool of learning success and needs can be used for all
students but is especially effective in the assessment of those students with learning disabilities.
Comprehensive assessment encompasses the students performance and presents an overall
picture of the learning that has occurred. The process of compiling a comprehensive assessment
means understanding the tools available and what they mean. These sources may include
standardized tests, informal measures, observations, student self-reports, parent reports, and

COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT FOR STUDENTS

progress monitoring data from response-to-intervention (RTI) approaches (Gartland, 2010, p.

3). The National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) strongly supports
comprehensive assessment and evaluation of students with learning disabilities by a
multidisciplinary team for the identification and diagnosis of students with learning disabilities
(Gartland, 2010, p. 3). Research has shown that the multidisciplinary approach to assessment is a
better predictor of student success as the person reaches and enters into adulthood. This
comprehensive approach to assessment helps educators in determining that there is a learning
disability and the type of disability. Comprehensive assessment and evaluation procedures are
both critical for making an accurate diagnosis of students with learning disabilities. Procedures
that are not comprehensive can result in identification of some individuals as having learning
disabilities when they do not, and conversely, exclude some individuals who do have specific
learning disabilities (Gartland, 2010, p. 4). There is a great need for assessment and diagnosis of
learning disabilities because the adolescent and adult population with LD continues to be
underserved and underprepared to meet the demands of postsecondary learning and work
environments (Gregg, 2012, p. 47).
Comprehensive assessment means using all of these tools to create a bigger picture than
relying on any one individual test as a predictor of performance. Comprehensive assessments
are very useful in students with learning disabilities because they measure learning from different
perspectives. This form of overall evaluation can also detect learning disabilities or
exceptionalities that may have not been known. The results from comprehensive assessments
can help educators better design curriculum to enhance the learning needs of all students while
individually meeting the needs of others.

COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT FOR STUDENTS

Opposition
According to tradition and small bits of data that reinforce these time old traditions,
standardized testing is the means to predicting a students learning. Standardized test were used
to help students decide which path to take after graduating high school such as going in to a
vocational program, community college, or an elite four-year university. Traditional predictors
of college persistence and academic success center on the student's high school grade point
average (GPA) and standardized test scores, such as the American College Testing Program
(ACT) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) as appropriate means for establishing admissions
eligibility (Maulding, 2012, p. 642). Students not meeting the prescribed criteria are usually not
admitted to that university and have to enroll at a local community college. While high school
GPA and standardized test scores have been shown to be the best predictors of college success,
recent research demonstrates that high school GPA and ACT scores are unrelated to prediction of
college graduation (Maulding, 2012, p. 644). Standardized testing on a frequent basis has
become commonplace and expected as the means to successful student learners. No Student
Left Behind made standardized testing law throughout the nation. Almost every higher
education institution requires entrance standardized tests for undergraduate and graduate
students. Ironically, the problem is that such tests, ostensibly developed to leave no student
behind, are in fact causing major segments of our student population to be left behind because
the tests cause many to give up in hopelessness just the opposite effect from that which
politicians intended (Stiggins, 2002, p. 759).
Conclusion
Although standardized testing has been around for a long time in one form or another and
widely used in American education since World War I, it is not an all-encompassing predictor of

COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT FOR STUDENTS

learning or future success. Proponents of comprehensive assessment are greatly aware of the
benefits of this kind of evaluation of all students. Opponents say that standardized tests are
reliable and have validity but cannot say to what extent. According to Kohn (2000), the
following quote best sums up the attitudes that many individuals take when defending
standardized testing:
Many public officials, along with like-minded journalists and other observers, are apt to
minimize the matter of resources and assume that everything deficient about education
for poor and minority children can be remedied by more forceful demands that we "raise
the bar. The implication here would seem to be that teachers and students could be doing
a better job but have, for some reason, chosen not to do so and need only be bribed or
threatened into improvement. (In fact, this is the tacit assumption behind all incentive
systems.) The focus among policymakers has been on standards of outcome rather than
standards of opportunity. (p. 4)
The problem with this thought process is that many able and willing students are excluded from
educational opportunities because they are assumed to be lacking in one or more areas of
learning comprehension. As growing awareness and knowledge of learning disabilities continues
to increase there will also be an increased need for reliable assessment if these students are going
to succeed in school and work. Research during the past 20 years in cognitive, instructional,
educational, and developmental psychology has shown that students' learning is more than a
collection of discrete skills (Lawton, 1991, p. 12). Additional research has also shown that
students success is directly relational to their life experiences and how well they handle these
situations. Learning is not linear and therefore testing should not be either, comprehensive
evaluation and assessment gives a better analysis of the student. Comprehensive assessments do

COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT FOR STUDENTS

not eliminate standardized testing but rather incorporates the testing as one component of many.
Challenges to this concept are faced by educators that are not trained to assess students in any
way but through standardized testing. Colleges and universities should develop alternate
admissions criteria when enrollment falls because of narrow standardized entrance requirements.
Students with learning abilities are as deserving as any other student to receive an education and
comprehensive assessments will help them to succeed.

References

COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT FOR STUDENTS

Gartland, D. & Strosnider, R. (2011). Comprehensive assessment and evaluation of students

with learning disabilities a paper prepared by the National Joint Committee on Learning
Disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 34(1), 3-16.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=pbh&AN=65550374&site=ehost-live
Gregg, N. (2012). Increasing access to learning for the adult basic education learner with
learning disabilities: Evidence-based accommodation research. Journal of Learning
Disabilities, 45(1), 47-63. doi: 10.1177/0022219411426855
Maulding, W. S., Roberts, J. G. & Sparkman, L. G. (2012). Non-cognitive predictors of student
success in college. College Student Journal, 46(3), 642-652.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=pbh&AN=79547321&site=ehost-live
Stiggins, R. J. (2002). Assessment crisis: The absence of assessment for learning. Phi Delta
Kappan, 83(10), 758-765 http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=tfh&AN=6755928&site=ehost-live
Lawton, T. A., Paris, S. G., Roth, J. L., & Turner, J. C. (1991). A developmental perspective on
standardized achievement testing. Educational Researcher, 20(5), 12-20.
doi: 10.3102/0013189X020005012
Kohn, A. (2000). Standardized testing and its victims. Education Week, 20(4), 1-6.
http://math.buffalostate.edu/~med600/handouts/KohnTesting.pdf