In my head, Oprah is yelling “IT’S ASSESSMENT SEASOOOOOOOOOOON! YOU GET AN ASSESSMENT! YOU GET AN ASSESSMENT! EVERYBODY GETS AN ASSESSMENT!”
(Not too many assessments. Not unjustified assessments. Just the right number of assessments for just the right students. But several. And every three years, every student with an IEP does indeed get an assessment, and a thorough one.)
The puzzle of speech/language assessment, especially in mod/severe classrooms, will never not be fascinating to me. (I hope!). These students are in self-contained classrooms because the communication challenges they face are not simple, they’re not quick, and they’re not straightforward.
These challenges, and their solutions, are multivariate and overlapping. I love diving into the exceptions, the contradictions, and really puzzling over what works and what doesn’t.
This in-depth pondering of the assessment toolkit, of the results, and of what treatment decisions should be made, is very rewarding on an intellectual level. And seeing students make progress, whether incremental or in huge leaps?
That is everything.