Newsletter: Fall 2011
Psychoeducational Testing: What You Should Know

Some of our readers may not be aware that The Yellin Center has been conducting psychoeducational testing batteries for several years.  We thought long and hard before we added these tests to our multi-disciplinary neuropsychological testing.  Because they include IQ testing, we were concerned that they perpetuated the myth that a person’s intellectual “potential” could be represented by a single number or score.  To the contrary, it is now known that “intelligence” is much more complex and dynamic, with a person’s profile of strengths and challenges being a much more accurate way to define his or her educational needs.

But, we are practical folks, and we found that many of the schools with which we work and the students we see needed scores from these tests for entitlement to services under the IDEA or Section 504, or to access testing accommodations.  We include the information these tests provide in our reports and we know that families have found them helpful when dealing with schools and testing organizations. 

So, what are these tests, how do they work, and why do schools and testing organizations want to see them before they provide support or accommodations?

Psychoeducational assessment is divided into two main components: cognitive testing and achievement testing. Achievement tests are geared at measuring one’s skills and knowledge (e.g. reading, writing, and math) that have been developed over time.  Cognitive tests, on the other hand, focus more on one’s mental processes (e.g. forming concepts, holding information in mind, and interpreting visual information) that feed into the acquisition of such academic competencies.  It is important to note, however, that such capacities are not purely innate and can be developed, just as can reading, writing, or math.  While IQ (one of the more well-known cognitive measures) is generally stable over time, so tend to be many other factors, such as familial and educational environment.  The degree to which nature and nurture come into play in cognitive and achievement test results is debatable, but that they are both at play is a generally agreed upon notion.  

A psychoeducational assessment, then, provides a snapshot of a student’s intellectual and academic functioning, both of which are in a continual and dynamic process of evolution.  It does this within the context of national norms, comparing each student’s performance to that of a large sample of same-age peers across the country who took identical tests.  Such a normative comparison requires that these tests always be administered the exact same way, so we are comparing apples to apples.  This is why, unlike in our neurodevelopmental assessments, which are administered in dynamic and unique ways to different students, our psychoeducational assessments are universally administered in rigid accordance with test guidelines.  This is what is meant by “standardized testing.”

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"A psychoeducational assessment provides a snapshot of a student’s intellectual and academic functioning, both of which are in a continual and dynamic process of evolution."

The standardized tests yield subtest scores as well as composite scores derived from a combination of the subtests.  A significant discrepancy between cognitive and achievement composite scores (if sufficiently low) is one indicator of a learning disability.  Despite the limited evidence behind the validity of this discrepancy model, many schools and testing organizations are still using it to determine the presence of a disability and thus eligibility for special education services and accommodations.  From a clinical standpoint, we at The Yellin Center are less concerned about overall scores and discrepancies and more concerned about what these tests tell us about individual strengths and weaknesses.  These findings, combined with the results from our neurodevelopmental assessment, shed light on where a student’s skills stand in relation to one another and in relation to age norms.  With this information, we can give students meaningful feedback about their cognitive and academic functioning as well as strategies to build on areas of strength and remediate or bypass areas of weakness.

Such a qualitative (rather than purely quantitative) approach is relatively new when considering the history of psychoeducational testing, particularly “intelligence” testing.  In 1904, psychologist Alfred Binet was commissioned by the French government to find a way of differentiating, and then separating, those students who needed special education from those who did not.  Working with Theodore Simon, Binet developed the Binet-Simon Scale, which became known as the first intelligence test.  This test yielded a number representing a student’s “mental age,” and students were sorted on this basis.  However, even after creating this test, Alfred Binet never believed that a person’s intelligence was a fixed quantity.  To the contrary, he believed that cognitive abilities and intelligence could be developed. In 1916, Lewis Terman, a psychologist at Stanford University, revised the Binet-Simon Scale and standardized it using a sample of American participants.  This test, which became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, yielded an intelligence quotient (IQ) by dividing the test taker’s mental age by his or her chronological age.  The Stanford-Binet test inspired Robert Yerkes’ development of the Army Alpha and Army Beta tests, which were used to screen and classify World War I army recruits based on their test scores.  One of the people scoring these army tests was David Wechsler, who went on to become chief psychologist at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital and wanted to gain a better understanding of his patients.  In 1949, he developed the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC).  Rather than yielding just one overall score, the WISC provided a verbal IQ and performance IQ score in addition to one composite IQ score.  

The latest revision of the WISC (WISC IV), which is one of the cognitive test batteries we use at The Yellin Center, yields one composite full-scale IQ score as well as four index scores (Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Reasoning, Working Memory, and Processing Speed), all derived from individual subtest scores.  The achievement tests we administer similarly yield subtest scores as well as composite scores.  All of this information, when considered together, helps to elucidate a student’s strengths and weaknesses, and does so in a way that is consistent with standards of school districts and testing organizations.  

--Lindsay Levy, Ed.M.