Special Needs Students and Testing

It's very important to use specified tests to identify and place special needs students. Specified tests are used to determine if a student has dyslexia or AD/HD, or Autism or mental retardation. Specific tests can rule out certain disabilities, and they can determine the severity of a disability. Specific tests can show what a student knows and how far behind a student is from his or her peers. Students need to be thoroughly evaluated before being labeled or placed, and the best way to evaluate them is to give them as many tests as possible. These students need to take specified tests since one test only shows a part of the big picture. The more specified tests a student takes, the more of a big picture teachers will see. It's very important to be aware of what students know and don't know, so the more tests they take the more information teachers will have of their knowledge. These students also need to be measure to their peers in certain areas, so specified tests will be able to compare them to other students and determine how they differ. Different tests measure different cognitive abilities, and the more that's known about the students aconative abilities, the better teachers will be able to place them. As I've heard many times before, it's important to know where students are at and to know where they're going. This is impossible to do without enough information about their cognitive abilities. Not only is it important to test students for placement, but it's important to keep testing them for further placement. A students needs changes over time, and continuously testing students is the best way to keep up with their needs. Just because a student is in a certain special education classroom one schoolyear, it doesn't mean that they'll belong in the same or a similar classroom the following schoolyear.