Martha: Is it legal to test a child with apraxia using the Dibels test? We have been told that it would not determine pass or fail but is a way to evaluate the child. This does not seem fair to me since it is a timed test.
Tests and Assessments: DIBELS TESTING FOR APRAXIA
Does anyone have a legal answer for this?
Hi Sarah, DIBELS are a set of procedures and measures to assess early literacy skills.
Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAC) is a motor speech disorder and is challenging to diagnose unless the evaluator has advanced training and experience working with children with apraxia. See the section about “Childhood Apraxia of Speech” on the American Speech Language Hearing Association site.
If you are looking for information about Assessments and Evaluations, you may be interested in Wrightslaw: All About Tests and Assessments. Chapter 9 is about Speech-language Assessments, including Apraxia Tests.
https://www.wrightslaw.com/store/aat2.html<
Can a child who had suspected CAS- but never tested for it, and issues with oral tone and language ever since – get testing for apraxia, and can it be remediated as late as tweens and early teens?
Can a students who does not speak English get accommodations for DIBELS?
No child should be given the DIBELS ever. The DIBELS provides no good information for any kind of instruction and wastes instructional time. The DIBELS was created and sold to schools as a money making project. A child with severe apraxia should have services from an SLP and modifications on his IEP for the general education classroom-not nonsense word reading without timing. The point of reading is to be able to understand and gain information or enjoyment from written texts. Speed reading makes no sense. The last time I read Tolstoy or Dickens, I read them slowly-enjoying the characters-and never wanting the story to end. The lower quality of the writing, the faster one can read it. How can we raise the standards when the testing we are using lowers them.
My son has severe apraxia and he was given the DIBELS but with accommodations which amounted to it not being timed. This is an allowable accommodation for students with speech and processing disorders. DIBELS instructions actually state this for test administrators.