A complete assessment is necessary every three years for students in special education to decide their eligibility for special education. The case study of a seven year old autistic child named Adam gives a detailed educational assessment.
Adam the seven year old autistic child is the student in Special Day class for severely handicapped children. This child has an advocate and parents who are involved in his education. With the evaluation decided the parents desired for additional evaluations like the functional analysis, occupational therapy and also for helpful technology assessment. The signed evaluation plan copy was given to the particular specialists. They were the occupational therapist, speech therapist, nurse, psychologist and the special education teacher.
Adam had a psycho-educational profile revised with simple and clear instructions for which the response expected was non verbal. This test provides details on perception, fine motor, gross motor, eye hand combination, cognitive verbal and performance and also imitating activity. A set of toys and play activity helped in the determination of the skills. The result spread to seven developmental and four behavioral areas. This showed the child ability and weakness in the different areas
The evaluation tools for Adams portfolio were behavior reports, progress reports, work samples, daily reports and comments from parents. The daily report sent by the teacher and returned by the parents duly singed aided in the evaluation.
The functional analysis of Adam done by the psychologist showed unruly behavior like screaming and biting. The school sent a feed back form to the parents to be completed. The teacher in the class also collected the information for the repeated troublesome behavior. The assessment report made consisted of the data given by the psychologist, teacher and the parents.
The occupational therapist and the speech therapist evaluated Adam after working with him for one year and created a report. The nurse tested him with special equipment and said him to be normal in hearing. Adams parents said he had no problems with hearing and sight.
There are other tests used to assess an autistic child which rely on the information given by the parents or directly evaluated by an expert therapist. The other tests along with the parents and specialists provided are Pre-Linguistic Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (PL-ADOS), Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC), Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) and Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R),
Adams wide and complete assessment provided information about his behavior, development, health, coordination, communication and other cognitive skills. This information provided for the IEP Individualized Education Plan helped them to decide that the position for Adam was appropriate. The Occupational therapist set some goals for Adam. The functional therapist wrote that the unruly behavior occurred during a change. The assistive technology revealed that Adam was very good in that area. The team work help in the correct assessment and showed that Adam was improving excellently in his special day class.
