Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment School testing without parental consent?

My 9 yo has dyslexia and over a year ago we had the school evaluate her. They determined her ineligible for a 504 and an IEP, so she has neither.

I learned from my dd today that they evaluated her today without asking me nor informing me. From what my dd describes it sounds like they did the Key Math assesment again. It wasn't a basic pencil and paper test. Are they allowed to test like this without permission and warning?

I'll be interested to hear what others say, but where I am (UK) I'm pretty sure they are. There's no hard-and-fast line separating the ordinary assessments they do all the time to support learning (i.e., class tests!) and more specialised testing like this; by sending your child to the school you are deemed to have consented. But it's the kind of thing that could easily be different from place to place. Are you concerned? Sounds on the face of it as though it would have been a good thing that they'd been considering where she's at again.

Where we are, schools can administer achievement tests without consent. I believe that they do seek consent for IQ or group ability tests and if they intend to test on a non-standard measure of achievement. For instance, everyone might be given the MAPs tests, NCLB state tests, DRA reading, SRI lexile, etc. at some point. However, they rarely, if ever, give tests like individual achievement tests such as the WJ-III or WIAT. If they are going to test on something like that, parents are usually informed ahead of time and, I imagine, permission could be denied.

I suspect that is b/c the former achievement measures are seen as standard measures of growth and achievement that are used for placement and the latter are used only when specific concerns exist or at parent request.

Key Math is a diagnostic assessment and is normed, so wouldn't that require them to get parental consent before testing a child with it?

If you are concerned, you can also look on wrightslaw.com to find out the specifics of your parental rights. I believe that there are nuances about when schools are allowed to test for suspected LDs and when they are not, but I don't recall those nuances at this point.

DeeDee

Also-- there is the possibility that because you once gave consent, that it was written as a blanket consent that extended into the future.

If you want to be notified each time, you may have to revise permission forms appropriately.