Abstract
This chapter is a discussion of school-based assessment for Autism Spectrum Disorders. Although often misunderstood, the legal statutes are clear that school teams can and must conduct comprehensive evaluations in order to determine whether a child suspected of having an Autism Spectrum Disorder is eligible for services under the ASD criteria outlined for educational settings. An educational eligibility is in no way equivalent to the clinical diagnosis process, which is described in other chapters of this book. This chapter will delineate and differentiate between evaluations for eligibility as compared to the process used for clinical diagnosis. The term “educational diagnosis of autism” is considered misleading and the authors propose that there are only two potential appropriate terms to use for school teams: (a) Educational Identification of an Autism Spectrum Disorder, and (b) Eligibility Review for services under the ASD Criteria.
A clear discussion of the legal requirements for school teams in terms of eligibility, as well as best practice approaches to assessment in compliance with these laws, will be covered. Although the Response to Intervention (RtI) or Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports (MTSS) process is legally required for schools, it is not clear in either the statutes or the literature as to how these processes should be integrated with educational evaluations for ASD. This chapter provides a proprietary Best-Practice Approach for conducting a comprehensive ASD evaluation within an RtI or MTSS framework.
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Kroncke, A.P., Willard, M., Huckabee, H. (2016). School-Based Assessment. In: Assessment of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Contemporary Issues in Psychological Assessment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25504-0_18
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