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Diagnostic Assessment Paper

Decent Essays

I interviewed Peter Arsenault, a School Psychologist for a local high school in South Jersey. Our interviewed focused on diagnostic assessments and his role in the process of evaluating individuals with exceptionalities. Arsenault stated the leading method for identifying whether a child is SLD is discrepancy analysis. This involves looking at the overall scores such as FSIQ, reading, math or writing. His preference is the neuropsychological. He explains this based on his doctorate studies. He further contends that neuropsychology looks at both cognitive, and learning as well as attention and executive functioning. Tests should be administered with the goal of getting the most accurate reading of the child, says Arsenault. Ways to do this are, make sure the child took his/her medications, got a decent night’s sleep and for students with weakness in language reasoning, you can deem the language parts of the cognitive assessment as invalid and focus more on the visual-spatial. I was struck by the way Arsenault interprets information about diagnostics. His view is that the assessments are not a “stead-fast, concrete representation of a child’s abilities forever” (Arsenault). This viewpoint is encouraging to me because most of my experiences have been that …show more content…

They are critical to the diagnosis and placement to a student with exceptionalities, however, they a one piece of the puzzle and can change as the student grows. The second thing that comes to mind is that information regarded testing must be clearly and accurately given to the parents. In my experience, may parents receive numbers and data and think that these numbers define their child and their abilities. If what Arsenualt contends, about assessment scores as a predictor of the future, I believe parent should take comfort in knowing their child has potential for growth and

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