Anyone who would like to share your thoughts, knowledge, and experience is welcome. It is for a good cause:)

I am writing a paper on parents experiences with assessment. What do you know about the instruments and tasks used to evaluate your children? What is your understanding of the scores or reports? Please feel free to elaborate on your personal experience with your child, it would really help me in writing this paper.
Thank you all! I am new here, but have already found myself engrossed in all the topics of discussion. I have soooo much to learn. I can't seem to stop reading the vast array of knowledge this forum offers. Anyhow, thank you in advance to anyone who takes the time

I can't be of much help to you. But you will find mostly teachers as opposed to parents on this forum.

I know the majority of the members here are teachers, but I have read numerous posts from parents. If anyone knows of a "parents of special needs" forum, I would love to know about it!

Please do not think I am running you off. But you will probably get more answers if you go to one of those forums. I put the following in a search engine:

Parents of Special needs children forum

and several came up.

More than I ever wanted to know.


Extensive, but I teach.


I tell my children to stop worrying about what they are going to "make" and concentrate on doing their best. I think it is ridiculous to stress an elementary level student over a standardized test. Focus should be on achieving your best ALL the time, not just at test time.

One of the more prominent organisations heavily favoring assesment tools are http://www.feat.org/ (Early intervention in autism)

As a parent I do understand the assesment tools - the ones that are scales, but you need intrepretation. It is easy to understand that an IQ of 85 is better than one of 60, but you need help to deal with the differences in functional level on that basis.

Good Luck
Jens