Preventive Maintenance Procedures Flashcards

Which preventive consideration is most critical before administering an achievement battery that was normed more than 15 years ago?

Answer: Evaluate whether content and normative data remain current and representative before selecting the instrument

Outdated norms may not reflect current curriculum standards or population characteristics, making instrument currency a critical validity concern.

A diagnostician is about to administer a visual-motor integration test and notices the student's glasses are missing. The best preventive action is to:

Answer: Postpone the visual-motor subtest until the student has appropriate corrective lenses

Administering a vision-dependent test without corrective lenses risks measuring uncorrected vision rather than the targeted visual-motor construct.

Which preventive step should a diagnostician take when a student's scores cluster near the normative mean but the referral concern is severe?

Answer: Examine whether regression to the mean, practice effects, or test ceilings may be masking true difficulty

Investigating psychometric artifacts like regression to the mean or ceiling effects prevents premature dismissal of legitimate disability concerns.

Before writing eligibility recommendations, which preventive review step best protects against decisions not supported by the data?

Answer: Cross-check each eligibility criterion against specific test scores, observations, and records before writing the conclusion

Explicitly mapping each criterion to specific evidence before writing prevents conclusions that outrun or misrepresent the actual data.

Which preventive measure best reduces the risk of cultural loading bias when interpreting verbal reasoning scores for a recently immigrated student?

Answer: Supplement norm-referenced verbal scores with dynamic assessment and observation of reasoning processes

Dynamic assessment reveals reasoning capacity independent of culturally specific knowledge, reducing the risk of misattributing cultural unfamiliarity to cognitive deficit.

A diagnostician discovers a scoring error on a previously submitted report after the IEP meeting. The most appropriate preventive follow-up is to:

Answer: Issue a written correction, notify the IEP team, and amend the report and any decisions affected by the error

Promptly issuing a written correction and notifying the IEP team ensures eligibility and service decisions are based on accurate data and fulfills ethical obligations.

Which preventive practice best ensures that assessment accommodations provided during testing align with the student's documented instructional accommodations?

Answer: Review the student's current IEP or 504 plan before testing to identify and replicate documented accommodations

Pre-testing review of the IEP or 504 plan ensures accommodations used during assessment match those the student uses during instruction, supporting ecological validity.