VIDBE-Q Volume 66 Issue 4
The obligation I feel to guard my children from inappropriate assessment has
prompted me to decline any cognitive (IQ) and achievement testing as part of the
full individual education (FIE) process. It is my opinion that this testing is
unnecessary for students who are only being evaluated for needs in regards to a
sensory disability. In other words, if the team does not suspect a learning or
intellectual disability, this testing may not provide helpful information—and it has
the potential of providing damaging information. The reason I say this is because
often these formal assessments are not normed on students with sensory
impairments. Thus, your child's scores are being compared to the scores of those
without sensory impairments who took the assessment in the traditional method.
This is not to say that steps cannot be taken to make evaluation more accurate. If
you and your child's team do think formal assessment is warranted, please consider
the framework laid out by Loftin (2005). This resource is especially helpful due to
what I would classify as the limited experience of school psychologists and
educational diagnosticians with evaluating students with sensory impairments.
With these things in mind, I would also like to point out that it is possible for
students to have both a sensory impairment and a learning disability (LD), which
would be a reason for administering these test batteries. School personnel may
assert that they cannot assess for a LD due to the exclusionary clause in the federal
definition which states that the difficulties in learning cannot be due to hearing or
