In school evaluations, testing serves as a critical tool to understand a student’s needs, guide interventions, and ensure appropriate educational services. But there’s a growing challenge faced by school psychologists and educational diagnosticians - finding the balance between thorough, comprehensive assessments and streamlined, efficient evaluations.
When testing is overdone, it can lead to student fatigue, lengthy reports, and resource strain. When testing is insufficient, key areas of need can go unrecognized, affecting eligibility decisions and services. Striking the right balance is not only a best practice, it’s essential for student-centered, defensible evaluations.
Every test you administer comes with costs: time, effort, and emotional energy, not just for you, but for the student, their family, and the school team. Thoughtful assessments help safeguard these resources while focusing on what truly matters: delivering high-quality, actionable insights.
Balanced testing practices help you produce efficient, ethical, and effective evaluations, streamlining your workflow while meeting both student needs and legal expectations.
Every evaluation should start with why: why is this student being evaluated? Is it a suspected learning disability, behavioral concern, language-related difficulty, or perhaps giftedness?
A clear, specific referral question serves as the compass for your evaluation:
Referral questions sharpen your focus, ensuring that each test administered serves a clear purpose aligned to the student’s presenting concerns.
Before opening any test kit, review the data you already have:
This information can help determine:
Not only does this practice reduce redundancy, but it also strengthens your evaluation by integrating real-world data into your conclusions.
There’s a difference between comprehensive and excessive. A comprehensive evaluation should address all relevant areas of suspected disability, but that doesn’t mean every possible test must be administered.
Avoid:
Strategic testing leads to leaner reports, faster turnaround times, and clearer recommendations.
Modern assessment systems offer flexibility to help streamline evaluations while maintaining diagnostic clarity. Look for tools that allow:
The Woodcock-Johnson® V (WJ V), for example, is designed with flexible administration in mind. Evaluators can administer only the tests relevant to the referral concern rather than defaulting to a full battery. The WJ V also offers CHC Narrow Ability and Clinical Clusters that allow you to dig deeper into specific areas like cognitive efficiency, rapid automatic naming, or memory span when warranted. This flexibility helps ensure that testing remains focused and efficient, without compromising the ability to gather meaningful, interpretable data.
Flexible tools like the WJ V support a referral-driven approach, helping you avoid overtesting, reduce student fatigue, and deliver clearer, more focused reports. The goal is always the same: to gather just the right amount of information to answer the referral question and guide next steps for the student.
At the end of every evaluation, your goal is to answer:
Balanced testing doesn’t just result in shorter evaluations, it results in better evaluations. By focusing on actionable results, you’ll provide clearer guidance to IEP teams and help educators develop more effective support plans for students.
As a school psychologist or educational diagnostician, you are a key decision-maker in the special education process. Balancing the need for thoroughness with the demand for efficiency is not easy, but it’s essential.
By anchoring your testing process to a clear referral purpose, leveraging the data you already have, and selecting targeted, flexible assessments, you can conduct more meaningful evaluations in less time. The result?
When you strike the right testing balance, you’re not just meeting a requirement, you’re making a lasting difference in your students’ educational journeys.