PSYCHOEDUCATIONAL EVALUATIONS

I provide psychoeducational evaluations for children, teens, and adults who want to learn more about how they learn. Very often these evaluations are motivated by parents and/or teachers being concerned about a student’s learning.

Families, teachers and schools have found my psychoeducational evaluations to be thorough, detailed, and informative. The typical process for my evaluations includes:

  • A 2-hour intake interview with parents to gain a thorough developmental history of the student. One cannot diagnose learning disabilities in a vacuum, based on testing alone. It is critical to learn about the student, what aspects of their academic and personal/social lives have gone well, and in what ways have they struggled.

  • A systematic review of all of the student’s progress reports, standardized tests at school, and any previous testing.

  • Questionnaire data completed by parents and teachers (the latter with the parents’ consent). These questionnaires typically include the BASC-3 and the BRIEF-2, both completed online. I also have parents fill out a developmental questionnaire, and a questionnaire related to different aspects of students’ academic, social, and emotional lives.

  • Testing of cognitive abilities (either the WISC-V, WAIS-IV, WPPSI-IV, or DAS-2), typically 2 hours in length. Within this battery, there are tests of verbal reasoning, visual-spatial reasoning, “fluid” reasoning (understanding of patterns), working memory, and processing speed.

  • Testing of academic achievement (from the WIAT-4), typically 2 hours in length. Within this battery, there are tests of both timed and untimed:

    • reading of both real and nonsense words

    • letter writing (for younger students), sentence writing and essay writing (for older students)

    • math calculations

    • untimed math word problem solving

  • An additional battery of memory tests (WRAML3), which is extremely helpful to parents, teachers and students, to understand how information is best stored and retrieved by the student. This includes tests of rote memory, narrative memory, visual memory, and assesses the benefit of repetition.

  • “Continuous performance” tests of executive functioning from the NEPSY2. Testing for attention deficits is complex and there is no single “rule in” or “rule out” test for ADHD. However, continuous performance tests are among the best source of information about a student’s ability to sustain attention, inhibit impulsivity, and manage complex performance demands.

  • Additional tests as warranted for aspects of students learning such as reading fluency (GORT-5), phonological processing (CTOPP-2), expressive vs. receptive language (TOLD-4 and CELF-5), social emotional functioning (clinical interview, questionnaire data, Thematic Apperception Test), visual-spatial processing (NEPSY2).

  • 2 hour feedback session with parents in which results are described in detail, including conclusions and recommendations.

  • 30 minute feedback session with student

  • 15-25 page written report for parents, describing the tests, results, and recommendations in great detail. I pride myself on writing reports with as little psychological jargon as possible, so parents can understand the report thoroughly, and have it as a resource throughout their child’s academic life.

  • 15-25 page written report for schools, written in a similar fashion, including diagnoses (when warranted) and recommendations for educators.