Assessing Children

This week in class we talked about the importance of assessing children. We learned about a variety of different assessments that can be done to see what a child knows. I am currently taking a class called Observation and Assessment where all we do is talk about different tests and tools used to assess children and the importance of this. Assessing children I think can be a really great thing when it is done the right way with the right tools, but when it isn't I think it can be very damaging to children. We have to make sure we are doing it in the child's native language, that we are avoiding labeling the child and that we are following the assessment procedures in most cases.
I can see why a teacher would use assessments to see what the children have learned so far or what to teach next. I also can see why a teacher would use an assessment to see what areas children are struggling in or if there is a serious problem with a child that may require special services.
This week for our case study we were able to meet as a team to decide if assessments that had been done on a child were fair or not. The background of this little girl really pulled at my heartstrings and I read about how she had been in an abusive home in Mexico when she was younger, then taken to an orphanage where she didn't attend school but instead helped take care of the younger children. She was later adopted to a family in the United States and was tested in 2nd grade, she scored incredibly low for most all school subjects and was really struggling. She was given an aide where she could work one on one and started to improve her letters, sounds of letters and basic writing skills. For me personally I just don't see how you could classify someone as special needs when they first haven't even been in the country for that long. I know that for myself this would be extremely hard and I wouldn't want people testing me and judging me based off my very little experience with the language, culture and the fact that I wasn't familiar with a school setting at all. So I guess from this story my reliability on assessing children changed just a little. In the fact that I know believe that there are circumstances where assessing children isn't appropriate. I also think that judging a child in this situation based off assessments isn't a true determination of if a child has a mental disability.