Psycho-educational Evaluations

A psycho-educational evaluation is an assessment of your child’s cognitive abilities and academic achievement levels. It can also provide specific information about your child’s attentional functioning, executive functioning, and/or social-emotional functioning. A complete evaluation report will yield detailed information about your child’s learning profile and their strengths and weaknesses.

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The cognitive portion of the psycho-educational evaluation will look at your child’s verbal learning skills, nonverbal learning skills, visual motor skills, visual spatial skills, working memory, and processing speed. The academic achievement portion of the evaluation will evaluate your child’s academic skills in the areas of reading, writing and math.

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The psychological evaluation may also include an examination of your child’s executive functioning (their ability to initiate tasks, organization skills, and complete tasks in a timely manner), attentional functioning (can they sustain their attention, are they hyperactive, and do they have impulse control), and social-emotional functioning (are they displaying signs of anxiety, depression, or difficulty with social interactions).

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The assessment tools are school based standardized measures that provide valid and reliable information about your child’s current functioning. The tests yield standard scores and percentiles which determine if your child’s performance is in the Below Average, Average, or Above Average range compared to peers of the same age and/or grade.

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A Complete Psycho-educational Evaluation can include:

• Cognitive Assessment

• Academic Assessments

• Working Memory Assessments

• Processing Speed Assessments

• Social-Emotional Assessments

• Emotional Behavioral Assessments

• Attention Assessment

• Executive Functioning Assessment

• Consultation with the school

 

Why would my child need a Pychoeducational Evaluation?

If your child is struggling in school academically or socially, a complete psycho-educational evaluation can help determine the specific areas of your child’s difficulties. The assessment tools can help establish if the difficulties are a result of a Specific Learning Disability, attentional difficulties, executive functioning difficulties, or social-emotional difficulties.

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If your child has difficulty with reading, math, and/or writing, a psycho-educational evaluation looks closely at each of these academic areas. Using a variety of assessment tools, we can determine the exact nature of your child’s reading difficulties. The evaluation can establish if the reading struggles are a result of comprehension difficulties, reading fluency deficits, or phonological processing weaknesses.

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The testing can also pinpoint the exact areas of mathematical difficulties or why your child struggles with writing. It may be possible that your child does not have a specific learning disability but rather struggles in school because of attentional, social-emotional or executive functioning difficulties.

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A comprehensive assessment will yield detailed information about your child’s strengths and weaknesses. Using this knowledge, the clinician will generate recommendations that can help your child both in school and at home. The clinician may also make a diagnosis based on the data that could include a Specific Learning Disability, Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Depression, and/or Anxiety.