What is an Educational Evaluation?
An educational evaluation is conducted in order to provide information to help parents better understand their child’s personal style of learning and the skills they have mastered or continue to struggle with in school. This assessment typically focuses on a child’s reading, mathematics, and writing abilities. This type of evaluation often helps to identify specific learning disabilities, subtle academic weaknesses, or gaps in academic skills. An educational evaluation is often, although not always, conducted in the context of a neuropsychological evaluation. When conducted in the context of a neuropsychological evaluation, one can appreciate not only fundamental learning disabilities but how a child’s neurocognitive strengths and weaknesses specifically impact reading, writing, and mathematics skills, and vice versa.
An educational evaluation provides a detailed picture of a child’s overall potential and specific areas of difficulty and is particularly useful for parents making decisions about school placement, school readiness, and the need for additional educational services and accommodations outside of school. Importantly, an educational evaluation will bolster the need for an IEP or 504 Plan, and will support implementation of school accommodations and modifications, as well as placement decisions.
Evaluations are also available for students of all levels seeking accommodations on standardized tests (e.g. SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, Bar Exam, and Medical Boards) to determine if qualifications are met.
What are Related Educational Services?
Related educational services refer to the examination of all school-related records, including, but not limited to, teacher questionnaires, previous school-based evaluations, and past/current IEP’s and 504 Plans. Additionally, this service refers to the the development of an academic plan and specific recommendations to support your child’s learning.
