The Freshman Year Tests

Excerpt from Chapter Two

I’m writing a book. My goal is to have a finished rough draft by the end of June. This is an excerpt from Chapter Two, which discusses the transition time line and maps out options for the future. No paywall this week, but please subscribe to support my work.

The Full Barrage of Tests

In order to make the right choices for our kiddos, parents need an objective, accurate, comprehensive picture of their student. The first step is to ask the school district to conduct the following evaluations: academic, psychological, speech, a functional behavioral assessment, and an adaptive skills assessment. You should put that request in writing to your case manager. Schools should be conducting reevaluations every three years, so sync that testing time to the beginning of high school if possible.

It’s best to do these tests at the beginning of high school in order to set appropriate IEP goals for the high school, to supplement with after-school programming, and to start to formulate long term plans.

Keep in mind that scores, particularly in the functional/independent living area, will come out very low, because the kids are still young. Few freshman boys can make dinner for themselves. But we need that information to set the proper short term and long term goals for our kids. Then you’ll do the tests again in their senior year to help determine next steps for their transition years.

Let’s talk about each test — what they are, why they are important, and why they are not important.

Psychological Evaluation

The psychological evaluation by the school district will typically utilize two tests: the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV) and the Behavior Assessment System for Children, Third Edition (BASC-3).

The WAIS-IV will evaluate a student on verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed. The evaluator will combine those four subtests to arrive at a full scale intelligence quota. If there are great differences between those four scores, then they might just focus on the General Ability Index, which is the average between the verbal and non-verbal scores.

A score of 130 to above is Very Superior; 120-129 is Superior; 110-119 is High Average; 90-109 is Average; 80-89 is Low Average; 70-79 is Borderline; 69 and below is Extremely Low.

Keep in mind that it is extremely difficult to assess an autistic person’s IQ. If they are not in the mood to answer a stranger’s questions that day, they won’t do it. When he was very young, my son refused to sit still for the exam and ran around the room turning the light switch on and off. So, administrators didn’t start to get a good read on his abilities until he was in middle school.

Evaluators also can’t get an accurate cognitive assessment, if the student’s other autism quirks interfere with the testing methodology. My son always bombs the processing speed section, even though he completes tasks in real life faster than I can. He triple and quadruple checks his answers in a testing situation due to anxiety.

Most importantly, the WAIS test isn’t a great test for autistic people, because it’s a language-based exam. Even the nonverbal section involves listening and understanding the evaluator’s questions. Since people with autism have language-based deficits, they are clearly going to struggle with any language-based intelligence exam.

Experts prefer other cognitive assessments for students with autism, such as the Test of Non-Verbal Intelligence (TONI) or Raven’s Progressive Matrices, which rely less on verbal instructions. Your school will probably not do these tests on your child, because they don’t have trained staff to conduct those tests. To get an accurate assessment of your student’s cognitive abilities, you will either have to insist that the school district hire an outside consultant to complete these tests or just pay for the testing yourself.

Is it super important to have an autistic-friendly assessment of cognitive ability? Maybe. If you feel that your student has more potential than is being recognized by his school and isn’t getting the appropriate education, then it’s worth pushing for an outside evaluation. However, these even these imperfect scores can be used to get some rough ideas about future outcomes.

Sadly, the real world is language based, and our kids need to function in it. If they have trouble understanding an evaluator’s questions and can’t sit still to complete the test, then they’ll struggle with listening to a boss at a work site and will miss information about the final exam in a college class. So, a very poor score might be an indicator that parents and the student should examine other options for the future.

The Behavior Assessment System for Children, Third Edition (BASC-3) looks for red flags in several areas: School Problems, Internalizing Problems, Inattention/Hyperactivity, Emotional Symptoms Index, and Personal Adjustment. It’s basically a screening device for students with at-risk behaviors and social-emotional problems. Students who report hearing voices would mostly likely be sent to mandatory counseling sessions and be removed from school.

This behavior assessment does not evaluate autistic behaviors. My son has a long list of OCD triggers that would interfere with employment or higher education. If he hears particular songs, it causes him to have a panic attack, worried about the discomfort of a day-long ear worm. That test did not address that problem at all. Parents would have to request additional data to get more information about these autistic problems.

Educational Evaluation

Your student probably gets regular grades and evaluations from his teachers. Keep in mind that grades from special education classrooms are not the equivalent of grades in a mainstream, college prep class. An A in a self-contained English classroom does not mean that the student can read at a high school level. Because of rampant grade inflation, I probably wouldn’t trust that an A in a regular high school class either.

School districts want to graduate every kid. They want our guys out the door and off their spreadsheets. Special ed kid are expensive, as school board members remind us all the time. So, no special ed kid fails out of high school. If a student can’t meet standards, then administrators simply move the goal posts. So, a straight A report card with special education classes does not necessarily mean that the student is ready for college.

It’s important to really know what your students academic levels are for two reasons. First, with the right information, you can pressure the school district to set higher standards or hire tutors yourself. Second, this data is essential for knowing whether college or a specialized college plan is in the future.

Many autistic kids could be doing better with the right supports and appropriate goals. All high school staff should be receiving high level professional development about neurodiversity. Most might not even realize that most students with autism have average cognitive abilities. Nation-wide, special education suffers from underfunding and staffing problems. Without the right resources, corners are cut and academic instruction is not differentiated adequately.

Frankly, schools often give up on the academics for autistic kids after third grade, because expectations are low and resources are scarce. Middle school teachers tell me that their classes are just waiting rooms until the students can get job training in high school. High school teachers tell me that they are just keeping the kids busy until they can get job training after high school by a state agency. And then the state says that they don’t do that.

If your child would like to attend a four-year or community college, then you definitely need to determine their skill levels. What is your child’s reading level? Can they writing a paragraph? Do they remember basic math facts?

When you ask the school to do an evaluation, they might use one of the following tests aimed at measuring academic levels: Woodcock-Johnson IV- Nelson Denny, Woodcock Johnson, Gray Oral Reading or Wechsler Individual Achievement Test. I’m also not a huge fan of those tests, because they define “average” as anything above the 15th percentile. Average does not mean college-ready, because the average student in the United States does not attend college and probably attends a poorly resourced urban school. Sadly, we set the bar for all kids very low in our country.

So, you should work with your team — either school staff or outside evaluators — to determine if your student can do some of the most basic things expected in a college classroom. Can they read an entire book? Can they write a ten-page paper and use two citations? Did they pass high school algebra without modifications? Can they take notes during a lecture? Can they sit still and concentrate on someone talking for an hour?

It’s possible to be very good in one area, but have problems in another. Uneven skills do not rule out college as an option. In a typical liberal arts four-year college, the reading and writing skills are probably more important. In technical schools, the focus is on math. Students can squeak by in college with uneven skills, if they get the right supports and choose the right major.

Education scores are important, but the results of these tests shouldn’t shut doors. There are still options:

• At community colleges, academic expectations are lower than at four-year colleges. Those two-year colleges are understanding about academic weaknesses, and offer remedial classes and free tutoring to help students catch.

• More and more non-academic track college programs are popping up all over the country. Students with significant cognitive and academic challenges can still attend college.

• If you start the evaluations early enough, tutors can be enlisted to bolster weaknesses. In addition, these evaluations should trigger some remediation by the school district, where your student will get help for free.

Speech and Social Skills

One of the primary diagnostic criteria for autism is a disability with speech and social skills. It’s not optional. Even autistic students, who seem to be very talkative and chatty, still have deficits. Most likely, they can’t maintain a reciprocal conversation or misread social situations.

While we know that all autistic kids have speech and communication deficits, we need the tests to nail down exactly where the problems are. Can they speak in full sentences? Can they speak in a way that is understood easily by the family and by strangers? Do they respond to questions? Do they ask questions? Do they maintain the back and forth of a conversation? Do they know how to initiate conversation?

Those skills are essential for independent living. By the time that the student gets to high school, they most likely aren’t receiving much help with speech and social skills anymore. If you conduct these tests early in high school, it should trigger some response by the school district. Hopefully, under resourced kids will receive more speech and social skill training.

Because these language skills are such a fundamental weakness to autistic people, parents should supplement after school with a social skill group. Private speech therapy centers can run better groups than a school district, because they can attract students from a larger geographic area and, thus, put similar students together to form more effective groups. Often, health insurance will cover some of these expenses. Parents might also want to hire a therapist, just to focus on a student’s understanding of their emotional life. I’ll speak more about these skills in the next chapter.

Behaviors

Often older autistic kids do not get attention for their behaviors unless they are disruptive or violent. ABA doesn’t work for teens, especially those who have average cognitive abilities. However, all autistic behaviors, even minor ones like hand flapping or picking one’s nose, are game changers in the real world.

Sadly, we do not liven in a world where our autistic kids are allowed to be themselves. There are no aides or IEPs in college. The Bill of Rights does not include the right to a college education and the right to employment. So, our autistic kiddos have to pretend to be totally neurotypical when they are in public. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is. So, freshman year of high school is an excellent time for a full behavioral assessment and a review of those IEP goals.

Real Life Skills

An adaptive skills assessment will determine a student’s ability to function independently and interact with others. The test can be done in conjunction with the parent. The evaluator will ask about the following issues:

• Self care (bathing, dressing, grooming, and feeding oneself)

• Communication Skills (language, conversational skills)

• Self-Direction (planning activities)

• Social Skills (understanding and using verbal and nonverbal problem solving, exercising choice, initiating, and maintaining interpersonal relationships, understanding emotions and social cues, understanding fairness and honesty, obeying rules and laws)

• Leisure Skills (taking responsibility for one's own activities, having the ability to participate in the community )

• Home or School Living (housekeeping, cooking, doing laundry, maintaining living space)

• Functional Academics (using reading, writing, and math skills in everyday life)

• Community Use-shopping, using public transportation, using community services.

• Work - ability to maintain part-time or full-time employment, either competitive or sheltered, ability to work under supervision, cooperate with coworkers, be reliable and punctual, and meet work standards

• Health and Safety - ability to protect oneself, responding to health problems

Some might argue that these skills are more important to achieving the good life than academics. Yet, they are not addressed in most high school programs. This test is very useful for creating a to-do list of goals for high school and for the transition years.

You can tackle some of these skills at home. We taught our son how to do his laundry, for example. Some private therapists specialize in teaching these living skills in the home. But if there’s no time to handle these tasks in high school, there’s no worry. Any good 18-21 Transition Program will focus on these matters.

Strengths and Interests

Another essential component of autism, as defined in the DSM V manual, is a strong fixation on certain topics. Some autistic kids are obsessed with Pixar movies, others with historical facts about WWII. My son has no off-switch when it comes to information about vintage video games. He spends hours and hours researching old games, correcting Wikipedia pages about the games, and making 40-page Excel spreadsheets that itemizing the features of those games.

When kids are in public school, those strong interests interfere with the American education system, which demands a broad spectrum of knowledge in everything from physics to Shakespeare. Those interests can be so compelling that autistic people are unable to live outside those interests and even to socialize properly with neurotypical people who won’t talk for four hours about Mario Kart.

However, those interests can actually become strengths after high school, when the American education system allows people to concentrate on their passions. Of course, the person has to have some control over those obsessions. Even in a physics lab, nobody wants to talk about gravity ALL the time.

While there is no formal assessment for passions and obsessions, parents, teachers, and evaluators should discuss these issues. Do these passions interfere with independent living skills and social skills? Does a behavior plan need to be put in place to control the obsessions? Can these strong interests be utilized in some way? Are they a path to employment? Should the school and families invest resources in cultivating those passions?