Educational Diagnosticians

Citing research in our FIEs can make us look more professional, help us learn about the research behind the assessments we choose, and support our interpretation with evidence. The tool mentioned in this episode can be accessed through this link. Check back by clicking on the link in the future for updates to the link.

Dr. Ysseldyke and Amanda VanDerHeyden share their vision for the role of evaluators in special education. Together they wrote the 14th edition of Assessment In Special and Inclusive Education, the go-to textbook on evidence based assessment practices. They call on evaluators to make a paradigm shift away from a focus on IQ tests and towards a focus on assessment of the basic academic skills. This is a MUST HEAR, if you haven't listened live, or even if you did, you will want to listen again. https://www.proedinc.com/Products/40006/assessment-in-special-and-inclusive-education14th-edition.aspx

Here's a link to Dr Rasinski's website where you can read more about his books: https://www.timrasinski.com/index.html He talks with us about his newest book, Artfully Teaching the Science of Reading. You can purchase the book here: https://www.routledge.com/Artfully-Teaching-the-Science-of-Reading/Young-Paige-Rasinski/p/book/9781032080864

We wonder why RTI doesn't really take place in schools. Maybe it's because people would rather discredit the system rather than commit to actual school improvement? How do we assess in the context of a system that uses RTI by name only? What are the discussions around how to diagnose learning disabilities?

Dr. Schultz from MSU, Dr. Cavin from Tarleton State, Dr. Rueter from UT Tyler, and Becki Robertson from Region 10 join to tell us about some of benefits various programs offer and some of the challenges they are faced with.

CBM may not be the answer to bringing an intervention frame of mind to education, but they certainly are a step in the right direction! Nazzie Pater-Rov discusses reasons for using CBM in our FIEs, misunderstandings about CBM, and the various types of CBM that are available.

Dr. Nathan Clemens describes the concepts presented in his newest edition of a book he co-authored with his late mentor, Dr. Edward Sharpiro. The book, Academic Skills Problems, demonstrates how a good quality academic assessment has the potential to drive intervention.

Collaboration between the diagnostician and the Adapted PE teacher has the potential to add richness to Full Individual Evaluations. Dr. Linda Hilgenbrinck is a leader in her field at a national level.

In this episode we talk to Dr. Deborah Speece, a leading researcher in learning disabilities who later went on to be the commissioner of the National Center on Special Education Research under the Institute of Educational Sciences. She is introduced by Dr. Nathan Jones, the current commissioner.

Dr. Cecil Reynolds joins to tell us about how to prevent dyslexia through early and systematic screening and progress monitoring.

Dr. Ed Schultz tells us about the important features of C-SEP that we need to keep in mind to be sure that we are implementing C-SEP with fidelity.

In their book: Related Services in Special Education: Working Together as a Team, Dr. Bateman and Goran give guidance on making sure that related services are provided with good justification. Dr. Hope McCarroll, OT, gives her reflections as well on how to use our related service specialists to help all students in the school.

Dr. Mehta from TWU tells us about a study she's conducting using imitation therapy to help nonverbal children learn to talk. She also discusses issues around assessing these students.

Dr. Johnson and Dr. Feifer explain that trauma can impact brain neurology. Children who experience trauma over experience changes in their attention and emotional regulation. The slightest triggers can remind them of the trauma that they experienced.

Dr. Russell Skiba joins to talk with us about the way disproportionality is measured, what it says about our society, and how it can be improved.

Some countries around the world have less resources but better outcomes than the US. Disproportionality resulting from inequitable funding in education is a big reason for this outcome.

Dr. Byron McClure joins us to talk about the impacts of disproportionality in special education and how we can make a difference by focusing on what's strong, not what's wrong.

Sarah Holman is tells us how various questions from the referral can help to influence our hypothesis and choose the tests we want to use to verify that hypothesis. We talk about what resources to refer to for a standard referral, how prevalence of referrals and disability identification relate to the quality of systems of supports, and the barriers to receiving good information in our referral.

Robbi Cooper is one of the parents who pushed HB 3928 through the legislature last spring. She joins to tell us why this legislation was important, what the parent advocates hoped to achieve, and all of the work that went into creating the bill.

Dr. Miller uses correlations to create profiles of strengths and weaknesses of WJ IV cognitive and achievement subtests for various ages for each disability area. He answers questions about how he uses scientific statistical methods to achieve the evidence of these patterns. He cautions against not using IQ tests and explains how neuropsychological studies and psycho-educational have started to overlap. He wants us to understand the theory behind the tests we use and go beyond the standard scores to interpret the results.

Special Education was built on the vision of Evelyn Deno. She wanted us to fully realize separate is not equal and had a vision of an inclusive education system that saw special education as a safety net that would bring up the rear of those who fall behind in general education. However, there are those who blame her vision for issues in special education like defining LRE and what makes special education special. Nazzie shares the commentary the article by Hoffman, Where Special Education Goes to Die and the reaction from Norena Hale, a long time friend and coauthor of Deno's book, Dogged Determination.

Dr. Martin Bloomfield from Dyslexia Bytes and Dyslexia Compass tells us about his mission to create discussion and awareness regarding the challenges that various countries and cultures present when faced with the challenge of literacy and dyslexia. Candace Vielma joins to help with the interview.

Representatives from Region 10, Region 11, and clubhouse regulars put our heads together to find a way to summarize the new legal updates resulting from the last legislative session.

12 new courses are available on the TEA website to help you be in the know about DBI and it's role in MTSS. We talk to Deanna Clemens, the Director of Integrated Special Programs at TEA about these.

Tammy says people often don't understand why we decide to be diagnosticians, and we often forget ourselves. Our profession is in a crisis from the increased numbers of referrals. We struggle to focus on the child's story and put too much focus on scores. We've been through a lot of changes and we can go through these changes over time. CSEP was a lead in making the changes that TEA is now making. She'd like to create a book of our stories and why we chose to be diagnosticians.

Dr. Katie Maki does research on the elements that influence our decisions as evaluators and how consistent we are in our decisions.

Dr. Erica Lembke is pioneer researcher, creating CBMs and developing RTI research at the University of Missouri. She tells us about her work with the NCII to bring better RTI to Texas. Texas is one of 9 states taking on the DBI system of interventions and support for our students.

Dr. McGill wrote When Theory Trumps Science in 2016, an article about the lack of statistical reliability for our assessment methods. Since then, he's written similar articles examining the reliability and validity of cognitive assessments for predicting academic performance.

Anise Flowers, Ph. D, has moved on from Pearson learning and now works for Presence. Presence uses telecommunication technology to match evaluators with districts who need evaluations. She tells us about the benefits of the platform and the validity of using it.

Dr. Monica McHale-Small tells us about the position of the Learning Disabilities Association of America's position on identifying a learning disability and the work of the LDA to bring awareness to the issues surrounding learning disabilities.

The Texas Educational Diagnostician Agency celebrated its 50th Anniversary and became golden this year. Many didn't get to go because the conference was quickly sold out. I share my take aways from the conference for those of you who didn't get to attend.

Dr. Sarah Brasiel joins for Educational Diagnostician Week to tell us about the Institute for Educational Sciences. The organization offers lots of information and services to teachers and evaluators. Because they encourage the science of education, their work provides hope that one day, we will use science to find ways to prevent learning disabilities. In recognition of Educational Diagnostician Week, she wrote a blog about our Clubhouse and the researchers that have been interviewed through this project who have also been awarded grants for research from the IES.

Marnee Loftin is has had the unique position of being the LSSP for the School for the Blind. She tells us about the special considerations we should have when testing children who have significant visual impairments. She also shares her view on co-morbid diagnosis for children who are visually impaired.

Dr. Mark Shinn could be considered one of the Founding Fathers of special education. He led the way in research to find ways to measure progress for children with disabilities. His work on developing CBMs lead to the development of DIBELS and AIMSweb, both of which are widely used in schools today. Together with other pioneer researchers, he and others helped influence the federal IDEA and its revision in 2004. He sees interventions as the tool to closing the gaps between the haves and the have nots, but he feels like strict adherence to giving IQ tests stands in the way of the adoption of intervention practices and therefor our ability to truly realize social justice through education.

Dr. Schultz tells us about the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education report from 2002. The recommendations in this report drove the revision of IDEA in 2004. At the time, SLD identifications were reported to have grown by 300%. The recommendation was to include Response to Intervention. The question here would be, with the lack of focus on good RTI practices, is our rise in referrals a sign that we are Repeating History? Dr. Schultz argues that CSEP is the answer in the context of the state of RTI at this time.

Allison Hollis joins to tell us about all the special considerations when managing a transition assessment.

Nancy Mather tells us about the Test of Dyslexia and how to assess for dyslexia.

The Law Dawg tells us about the Texas Legislature and we discuss what we can look forward to in this legislative session.

Dr. Fletcher explains how he attempts to establish that Learning Disabilities are real. Likewise, he also describes the hypotheses in research surrounding subtypes of dyslexia.

Meet our OSEP director. Hear about recent cases heard in courts regarding child find and LRE, and get ready for subtypes of dyslexia!

According to the NAEP published on October 23, 2022, 66% of fourth graders are not reading proficiently to make good scores on college entry exams by the time they get into high school. Covid reflects low scores across the country. This begs to question: are our norms still valid?

Last year the number of AU identifications surpassed the number of OHI identifications. What are some the reasons for rising numbers of AU identifications? Is this a good thing or should be concerned?

So you want to be a contractor? There are a lot of choices today. Join us as we talk with Hannah Paulus from Accountable staffing. Let's keep our profession competitive.

Jack Fletcher argues in his book, Learning Disabilities from Identification to Intervention, that subcategories of learning disabilities are arbitrary, and that based on what we know about learning, Reading Fluency should not be an SLD because all areas of learning require automaticity. Meanwhile, reading fluency across the nation is lacking proficiency. Considering reading fluency in this current climate may be a serious lack of consideration for these trends in general education.

All around Texas, diagnosticians scramble to lock or activate their IEP documents on the last Friday of each October. What do we learn from PEIMS? Listen to find out.

Where did the term stealth dyslexia come from? Hear the opinions of experienced diagnosticians talk about the idea of the twice exceptional child.

The classroom observation is often something we save for the last minute, but new wording in the Texas state regulations sheds new light on the importance of including a good observation in an SLD evaluation.

Dr. Matthew Burns wrote the white papers for the NCLD on the state of methods for identifying SLD across the US in 2019. He included TX as an example of a state that uses PSW, but Texas has since re-written its regulations. Hear his opinion on what he thinks this means for Texas. Dr. Schultz joins the dialogue as well in the argument for IQ tests while Dr. Burns stands strongly against the use of IQ tests to identify children with SLD.

Dr. George Batsche was scheduled to join us from the NCLD to tell us about trends in special education effectiveness, but unfortunately, he lives in Florida and the hurricane hit the night before this episode. Attempts will be made to reschedule.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing is one of the lowest incidence disabilities, but there's a lot to remember for this population.

It might feel redundant and aimless to create a Prior Written Notice after every meeting, but the pesky form does have its purpose.