Assessment for Special Education: Diagnosis and Placement

Over the last 40 years, federal legislation has led to improved access to public education for students with disabilities. Today, more than six million students receive special education and related services through American public schools; however, evaluation practices for eligibility determination largely have remained unchanged. Assessment approaches used for identification, program planning, and evaluation of progress, arguably, have been insensitive to cultural differences, contributing to disproportional representation of children from different backgrounds in specific special education disability categories, and inefficient because they are too broad to immediately inform instructional planning for both students within and across disability categories. This article critiques current practices for identifying children for special education services and offers considerations, grounded in developmental and cognitive neuroscience, that could lead to more useful assessment approaches that optimize all students’ learning.