A psychoeducational evaluation assesses your child’s cognitive, academic, and behavioral learning profile to identify strengths and weaknesses. Having a child that is struggling at school, or speaking poorly of themselves is scary, and distressing. A psychoeducational evaluation can answer questions you have about your child’s learning and provide valuable insight into how your child experiences the world, acquires new skills, and communicates their understanding.
Key ideas
- Psychoeducational evaluations are conducted by school psychologists, licensed educational psychologists, neuropsychologists, and clinical psychologists
- The evaluations are complex and include multiple components including reviewing records, interviews, direct cognitive and academic testing, rating scales, and a feedback session.
- Students may need a psychoeducational evaluation if their teacher is concerned about their academic progress, there is family history of learning disabilities, or documentation is needed to access appropriate accommodations or services.
Who does them?
Most psychoeducational assessments are conducted in schools by school psychologists to determine eligibility for special education, but can also be completed by other types of psychologists. Here at Breakthrough Education Support, I (Rowan) do all of the psychoeducational evaluations. I’m a licensed educational psychologist, and my training and experience are all focused on supporting school aged children in their growth journey. The important part of choosing an evaluator is making sure that the professional has experience working with children, and training to administer psychometric tests.
Components of a Psychoeducational Evaluation
Psychoeducational Evaluations have several components, only some of which your child needs to participate in directly. A typical evaluation includes a review of records, interviews with adults and the child, cognitive testing, academic testing, and rating scales.
1. Review of Records
In a school, your school psychologist will have access to their school records but it can be helpful to share outside evaluations, or information about any non-school services. For private evaluations, it is helpful to share recent school records like report cards, notes from teachers, summaries of conferences or Student Study Team (SST) meetings.
A review of records helps give the evaluator context for your child’s current situation. From records, a pattern of behavior can be verified and referenced. This is particularly important when evaluations are being used to request accommodations for high stakes tests like the SATs.
2. Interviews (parents, teachers, students, and more!)
An interview gives the evaluator the opportunity to learn about your child’s context, and ask questions they may have from reviewing records. I often ask about early childhood to further establish a pattern of behavior, or identify warning signs for current conditions.
I love to talk with teachers about students when possible. They spend so much time with their students, and often have insightful observations that help me formulate constructive recommendations.
When appropriate, I also incorporate interviews with even my young clients. They are the experts on their own experiences! It’s important that kids are aware that there is not a right or wrong answer to interview questions. I do my best to make these interviews fun, and not feel like a weird quiz.
3. Cognitive Assessment
Cognitive assessment is a tool that provides understanding of a child’s abilities including pattern-recognition, problem solving, working memory, attention, and processing speed. These abilities work together to comprise your student’s learning profile. The cognitive assessments can identify strengths and weaknesses that can be used to inform instruction, and make recommendations.
Cognitive assessments are typically administered individually, and are made up of several individual activities. These assessments often don’t feel like a “test” to kids, and sometimes they really enjoy the challenge.
4. Academic Testing
Academic assessments help to identify how a student is performing in comparison to others their age, and education level. Generally, a standardized test is used which compares the student’s responses to a sample set of children their age’s responses. This can help us to identify if they have learned what we would expect for someone their age, but does not directly relate to how they are doing in classes.
Academic assessments are vital in identifying learning disabilities like dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia. It is important for me to see how students go about working through the academic tests. I learn so much from hearing a struggling reader attempt a short passage. Similarly, the academic tests can help identify the source of a student’s difficulty in writing or math.
Further, academic assessments are required when showing the impact of other conditions like ADHD when determining eligibility for accommodations. High stakes test developers often have specific documentation requirements. For example, they may require that timed and untimed versions of tasks be administered to show how time impacts a students’ score.
5. Rating Scales
Rating scales are included in psychoeducational assessments when there are questions about ADHD, autism, or any mental health challenge. They are typically long surveys that ask a plethora of specific questions about your child’s behaviors. If your child is old enough (typically 8yrs or older), they can complete them as well.
The surveys are compared to a sample group of children, and identify where your responses differ from other children in the same age group. This helps to identify if a child’s inattention is just because they are only 6 years old, or because they are struggling to focus.
Rating scales are often uncomfortable to fill out. They often have a “forced choice” component, meaning they ask you an uncomfortable question and require you pick a specific response. Parents often describe feeling as though the statement “sometimes” applies. I promise that everyone feels the same way you do! Even the people in the comparison group!
6. Feedback Session
The feedback session is where you learn what I learned about how your child thinks, and experiences the world. At the end of a good feedback session, you should feel like you understood what the evaluator did with your child, strengths your child demonstrated, any vulnerabilities that were identified, and most importantly – have an action plan.
A feedback session should be a conversation, and is definitely a time to ask questions. There’s going to be a lot of numbers, and new language so don’t hesitate to interrupt to clarify something.
Do you need one?
Now that you know what a psychoeducational evaluation ua, the question remains: do you need one? Families typically seek psychoeducational evaluations when their child is struggling to meet classroom expectations. Often, families are recommended for evaluation by their child’s teacher, or other school progress monitoring system.
I recommend that parents consider an evaluation if:
- Their child’s teacher refers them for assessment
- Their child engages in negative talk around their schoolwork “I’m not smart enough to do this” or “I can’t read”
- Their child is demonstrating school avoidance or refusal
- There is family history of learning disabilities
I conduct psychoeducational evaluations here at Breakthrough Education Support. My goal is to provide families with a firm understanding of their child’s current skills, how they problem solve, and strategies to support next steps. If you are wondering if a psychoeducational evaluation is right for you please don’t hesitate to contact me.