Assessment

Assessments are designed to determine the student's abilities and needs in relevant aspects of the curriculum and instruction. Educators need this essential tool to guide day-to-day instruction. The range of assessments may range from classroom assessment practices all the way to district and statewide assessment programs. Regular progress monitoring provides valuable information on teaching effectiveness, and is the basis for informed instructional decisions.

All team members need to monitor progress on an ongoing basis. Data collection must be regular and consistent, and the data collection tools must be individualized to the student's goals. Assessment for effective behavior support consists of comprehensive analysis and ongoing monitoring at both the school and student levels.

School/System Level
Through quantitative and qualitative evaluations, school-wide effective behavior support team members must analyze data to determine both the strengths and needs specific to their school building. Teams must complete a comprehensive assessment that will typically involve assessing indicators of program quality and performing quantitative data collection. Following the initial assessment, teams develop school-wide effective behavior support plans along with an ongoing data collection system so that progress can be monitored and plans can be adapted as necessary.

Student/Individual Level
Functional behavioral assessment is used when a student's behavior interferes significantly with his or her learning or that of peers. A functional behavioral assessment consists of indirect and direct information-gathering that result in identifying a hypothesis about the function of the behavior, the environmental events, and the consequences that are serving to maintain the behavior. This information provides the basis for developing a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP).  Throughout the baseline and intervention phases the team collects and analyzes the data and makes behavior plan decisions based upon that ongoing data analyses.