I received a pass into the recent Advocate Academy’s webinar on Understanding Assessments: Psychological, Processing and Achievement Evaluation Data given by Alan Brue, Ph.D. Although I missed the live airing of the event, I have been catching up on the course work and hope to give you some insights into how to understand the evaluations school psychologists give our children.

Advocate Academy is the education program of the Advocacy Institute, a non-profit dedicated to products, projects and services that improve the lives of those with disabilities. In addition to a very impressive list of webinar offerings that can teach anyone advocating for their own child or other children with special needs some invaluable information about various processes, such as evaluations, behavior intervention plans and IEP meetings, the site offers several links to publications.

There is also an Advocacy in Action section, which contains summaries of regulations, court cases and other information that impacts special education law and advocacy efforts. Take for example, this article about parents being informed of procedural safeguards. It showed that many states make their Procedural Safeguard information that they are required to give (and explain) to parents very difficult to read and understand.

The study focused on the parts of the Safeguard information that explains Prior Written Notice, a parent’s rights to access their child’s education records and access to free Mediation. Sadly the vast major of the states wrote this information that was college reading level, making it not easily understandable to parents who did not attend college. Further the study showed that many of these Procedural Safeguard documents were lengthy (20+ pages), but that many did not include Tables of Contents or other structures that enabled the reader to find information quickly. In other words, the states don’t readily make this information easily understandable for parents.

One of the projects the Advocacy Institute is currently working on is the Ethics and Excellence in Advocacy project that will connect special education advocates nationwide and provide guidance on ethics/standards issues.

Photo Credit