Educational Diagnosticians

Nazzie Pater-Rov, Candace Vielma, and Zarvonia Gibbs chat with others in the Educational Diagnostician Clubhouse about proposed bills for this legislative session. Would more money be appropriated for special education? Would the Diagnostician profession fade away into school psychology? What is the future of our careers?

Candace Vielma talks with Jan Cook and Diane Burke about Reading by Design, a Texas approved dyslexia curriculum.

This episode is a follow up to a discussion we had on 2/4/2022. At the time Dr. Dehn was helping Mr. Romstad to norm this new test that evaluates the fluid reasoning of culturally and linguistically diverse learners without discrimination or bias. We did a follow up because the test is now normed and is available on Dr. Dehn's Schoolhouse Education Services website. Here's the website if y...

Dr. Piltier drops in to help us out as we discuss the difference between an SLD in Basic Reading and Dyslexia. She says it's like saying H20 for water. Let's stop arguing about it and get to work helping kids learn to read! Thanks Dr. Frith for the suggestion to invite Dr. Piltier on to address this topic!

The science of reading requires us to assess morphology, but the tools for an assessment of morphology are less established than those of oral reading fluency and word reading. With the support of federal funding, Dr. Apel has created a test of morphology. Listen to what he has to say about it! Here's a link to his study: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sqf6EVz29Xxm1pmbk0k7GXjMIS0N9BX-/view?u...

Some current professors and professors in training join to discuss features of various conferences for educational diagnosticians and dyslexia therapists. Some of the conferences discussed are TEDA, HuMat, the CLD, and the IDA.

Dr. Branton Shearer utilizes the Howard Gardner's theory of intelligence to help educators help students find their strengths. Helping children find their strengths is a great way to add a special touch to our FIEs and hack deficit thinking. As long as we are focused on deficits, that's all we will see. Everyone has something the world needs, and families are depending on us to help the wo...

Dr. Dombrowski joins to tell us about the low achievement model for identifying SLD and the criticisms he has for PSW methods. Here are some links to articles he has written: 1) A Systematic Review of the PSW Diagnostic Accuracy Evidence: Is it Time to Abandon PSW? 2) After the Demise of the Discrepancy: Proposed Learning Disabilities Diagnostic Criteria 3) Beyond the Rhetoric of Evidence Based As...

The new team of Diagnostician Clubhouse reporters, Candace Vielma, Candace James, and Valencia Ashley join Nazzie to share various tidbits of information that is on their minds. Dr. Schultz joins to comment as well. Candace Vielma: Talks about a court case that found the school district liable when a dyslexia program was not implemented with fidelity. Candace James: Gives us a new diag tip for con...

Nazzie presents 3 sources that attempt to describe what constitutes Evidence Based Assessment. Amy Smith and Becky Robinson join in to comment. The 3 sources are: 1. Psycho-educational Assessment and Report Writing by Stefan Dombrowski. 2. Identifying and Teaching Students with Significant Reading Problems by (Vaughn & Fletcher, Winter 2020-2021) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OUiZywTZkTS38O...

Amy Smith, Candace Vielma, Lori Melton, and Zarvonia Gibbs pitch in to add commentary to Nazzie's summary of the FAQs of the the dyslexia handbook.

Texas yet again is starting the school year off with changes to the operating guidelines. The new moderators and Amy Smith, Region 10 representative charged with diagnostician continuing education, joins to talk about the changes. There's so much to talk about, that we are dividing it into two parts.

Dr. Julian Elliott joins to tell us about his new book: The Dyslexia Debate Revisited, co-authored with Elena Grigorenko from the University of Houston, this book gives a summary of the research in dyslexia and proposes that we use the term dyslexia to describe a persistent problem in basic reading skills rather than as a medical diagnosis.

Dr. Nancy Nelson leads the National Center on Improving Literacy to support states and districts to provide the information that leads to evidence-based practices and policies for improving literacy. Check out their website with this link . She and Nazzie talk about assessment for dyslexia, the prevalence of dyslexia, and how the role of the diagnostician is challenged by changes in the way we thi...

Joe Torgesen and Richard Wagner, authors of the CTOPP II describe the challenges related to direct assessment of dyslexia and their proposal for using statistics to evaluate risk. Dr. Torgesen shared an article that summarizes the LD summit of 2001 that is mentioned in the discussion. Dr. Wagner also shared an article about the Constellation Model.

Nazzie provides a summary of the book: Identification of Learning Disabilities from Research to Practice, edited by Bradley, Danielson, and Hallahan (2001) , which is a compilation of 9 white papers that resulted from the LD Summit of 2001 and led to the reauthorization of IDEA in 2004. She also shares a summary of email conversations with Jim Walsh regarding WBFWR (Way Behind For Whatever Reason)...

Dr. Steve Elliott is one of the authors of the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS). Check out free resources on his website: https://ssiscolab.com/ . He also shares that https://developingchild.harvard.edu/ describes the impact of stress for young children. Elizabeth Shanley also joins to tell us about free training resources from Pearson related to the SSIS. Use this link to get to one of tho...

For how long do students need to be exposed to tier 1 instruction before an assessment is appropriate? What tools can we use to test children in kindergarten? What should we be looking for in our evaluations? These are all hard questions that diagnosticians on Clubhouse attempt to answer.

Dr. Romig shares the research behind validating the best CBM variables for reliably assessing writing. Use this link to read one of his journal articles summarizing the reliability of various variables of writing CBM. He also mentions the 6 +1 rubric for measuring writing that can be reached through this link .

Candace Vielma interviews Dr. Kilpatrick about how understanding how kids learn to read helps us to be better evaluators of reading. For a copy of Dr. Kilpatrick's book: Use this link . For his PAST test, use this link .

We all fear the day we have to defend our FIE in court, but Dr. Lackey helps us to keep perspective by giving us things to consider and be confident in our conclusions.

Nazzie summarizes for the group both proposals for items removed and added to the Texas Dyslexia handbook. Aimee Seaberry also adds a summary of the Dyslexia Academies expected to be provided by TEA. Others also joined to comment. Thanks to Lori Melton for offering the perspective of a dyslexia therapist as well. See this link for the text of the proposed handbook.

The "Specific" in Specific Learning Disability can be confusing. A number of articles attempt to address this topic. Diagnosticians on Clubhouse examine articles by Mather (2023) , Pennington (2015) , Wadsworth et al. (2010) , and Peterson et al. (2021) are reviewed to explore this term.

Citing research in our FIEs can make us look more professional, help us learn about the research behind the assessments we choose, and support our interpretation with evidence. The tool mentioned in this episode can be accessed through this link . Check back by clicking on the link in the future for updates to the link.

Dr. Ysseldyke and Amanda VanDerHeyden share their vision for the role of evaluators in special education. Together they wrote the 14th edition of Assessment In Special and Inclusive Education, the go-to textbook on evidence based assessment practices. They call on evaluators to make a paradigm shift away from a focus on IQ tests and towards a focus on assessment of the basic academic skills. This...