Chapter 7: The Multidisciplinary Team and Parental Participation in the Assessment Process

Question 1

Role of the Multidisciplinary Team

Answer 1

The role of the MDT is to work as a single unit in deterring the possible cause, contributing behavioral factors, educational status, prognosis (outcomes), and recommendations for a student with a suspected disability.

Question 2

Purpose of the Multidisciplinary Team

Answer 2

-This team usually comes into operation when the local school-based team (CST) has conducted a screening and suspects a disability. Once that is determined, the MDT takes over.
The MDT’s major objective is to bring together many disciplines and professional perspectives to help work on a case so that a single person is not required to determine and assimilate all of the factors that affect a particular child.

Question 3

What must be done to ensure the MDT complies with IDEA?

Answer 3

1. assessment materials and other evaluation materials are selected and administered so as not to be discriminatory on a racial or cultural basis.
2. assessment materials are provided and administered in the language and form most likely to yield accurate information in what the child knows and can do academically, developmentally, and functionally, unless it is not feasible to so provide or administer.
3. tests and other assessment materials have been validated for the specific purpose for which they are used.
4. Test and other assessment materials are administered by training personnel in conformance with the instructions provided by the producer of tests and other assessment materials, except that individually administered tests or intellectual or emotional functioning shall be administered by a credentialed school psychologist.
5. tests and other assessment materials are selected and administered to best ensure tat a test administered to a pupil with impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills produces test results that accurately reflect the pupil’s aptitude, achievement level, or any other factors the test purports to measure and not the pupil’s impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills, unless those skills are the factors the test purports to measure.
6. no single procedure is used as the sole criterion for determine an appropriate educational program for an individual with exceptional needs.
7. The pupil is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability including, where appropriate, health and development, vision, including low vision, hearing, motor abilities, language function, general abilities, academic performance, self-help, orientation and mobility skills, career and vocational abilities and interests, and social and emotional status.
8. Persons knowledgeable of that disability shall conduct the assessment of a pupil, including the assessment of a pupil with a suspected low incidence disability.

Question 4

What are the objectives of an educational assessment?

Answer 4

1. help determine the child’s stronger and weaker academic skill areas. The evaluation may give useful information when making practical recommendations to teachers about academic expectations, areas in need of remediation, and how to best present information to assist the child’s ability to learn.
2. The purpose of assessment is to gather relevant information about student performance or progress, or to determine student interests to make judgments about their learning process.

Question 5

What are the objectives of a psychological assessment?

Answer 5

1. determine the child’s present overall levels of intellectual ability
2. determine the child’s present verbal intellectual ability
3. determine the child’s non-language intellectual ability
4. explore indications of greater potential
5. find possible patterns involving learning style - that is, verbal comprehension, concentration, and the like
6. ascertain possible influencers of tension and anxiety on testing results
7. determine the child’s intellectual ability to deal with present grade-level academic demands
8. explore the influence of intellectual ability as a contributing factor to a child’s past and present school difficulties - that is limited in intellectual disability.