Assessing Students: Why Background History Matters

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt of a post written by Tatyana Elleseff for her Smart Speech Therapy blog. Her full post can be read here. As a speech-language pathologist who works in an outpatient psychiatric, school-based setting, I frequently review previous evaluations on incoming students. I notice several common threads in these reports. In this post, I share my thoughts regarding the lack of background information in student assessment reports. Despite its key role in assessment, this section often gets left empty or includes only minimal details about the student’s age, grade level and reasons for referral. Occasionally, I also get notes on the student’s developmental milestones. A variety of reasons might cause the blank space: lack of parental involvement, lack of access to records or overwhelming paperwork burdens. However, I remember multiple grad school professors telling me the vital importance this section plays in the student’s evaluation. Many years later, I still see the relevance. Unearthing the student’s family history, developmental milestones, medical/surgical history and past treatment frequently leads to a successful diagnosis. I understand legitimate barriers in getting this information, but I think if we dig deep enough, we can find the information we need. I’ve used student background information to make important discoveries. These discoveries include traumatic brain injuries, family language and literacy disabilities, family geneti...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Tags: Speech-Language Pathology Bilingual assessment Language Disorders Speech Disorders Source Type: blogs