Administer Achievement Tests with Success: Part 2-Writing the Report

In this episode of Special Education for Beginners, we continue our three-part series on administering achievement tests by focusing on how to write professional, comprehensive reports based on the data you’ve collected. Writing a well-organized report isn’t just a formality—it’s a critical step in the evaluation process that guides decision-making and sets the foundation for collaboration with your IEP team.

You’ll learn:

• Why writing a clear, professional report is essential for documenting the testing process, guiding decisions, and building trust.
• How to structure your report, including tips for starting with context, reporting results concisely, and adding meaningful observations.
• Strategies for summarizing the test as a whole, identifying patterns, and connecting findings to actionable recommendations.
• Tips for professional writing to ensure your report is clear, approachable, and polished.

If you’re looking for ways to simplify the report-writing process, I’ll also introduce you to a helpful resource that includes templates for crafting polished reports without starting from scratch.

Key Takeaways:

• A professional report provides critical context, highlights strengths and needs, and connects data to real-world implications for the student.
• Use clear subheadings, concise summaries, and thoughtful observations to make your report meaningful and actionable.
• Adding context to scores and summarizing patterns ensures your report is both informative and easy to understand.
• Proofread your report to ensure it’s accurate, clear, and professional.

Resource mentioned in the show:
Achievement Testing Kit

If summarizing results feels overwhelming, don’t worry—I’ve got you covered! I’ve created a resource that includes report templates, tips for organizing your results, and example summaries you can use as a guide. You can download it at www.spedprepacademy.com/templates to make your report writing process smoother and more efficient.


Free Resource:
Don’t forget to get access to a FREE helpful testing checklist that includes two different “quiet” posters to use on your door and a complete checklist of everything you’ll need to gather before the test. You can download it at www.spedprepacademy.com/checklist 

Next Week:
In the final part of this series, we’ll dive into presenting achievement test results confidently in IEP meetings. I’ll share strategies for clear communication, answering questions, and building trust with your team. Make sure to tune in!

Hey special educator…Do you feel like you're just barely keeping your head above water? Like you're stuck in the same old routines, wondering how to make a bigger impact in your classroom? Well, I’ve got something special just for you. I’m excited to offer a unique opportunity to take your teaching to the next level.  I’m ready to step outside my district to offer individualized coaching calls designed to offer person

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:04

Well, hey there, welcome back to Special Education for Beginners. Last week, we kicked off a three-part series on administering achievement tests, and the first part focused on setting up and administering tests professionally. If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I highly recommend starting there, as it lays the foundation for everything we are covering in this series. This week, I want to chat with you about summarizing the results of the tests you give with professionalism. It is a crucial step in the achievement testing process. I want to help you learn how to write professional, comprehensive reports based on the achievement tests that you've administered, and I have a resource that I'll tell you about that includes the templates for those reports, so you don't have to start from scratch every single time. Writing a professional, well-organized report ensures that the data you have worked so hard to collect is presented clearly and effectively for your team. I'm going to give you the structure, the tools and the approach to create reports that highlight the students' strengths, address their areas of need and guide the team in making informed decisions. So let's get started. Hey, special educator, are you overwhelmed by the absurd amount of paperwork on your to-do list? Do you wish you had the skills to build a rock solid team with your staff. Do you find yourself scouring the internet for how to meet the needs of each student on your caseload? Well, hey there. I'm Jennifer Hopper, an award-winning veteran special education teacher and current instructional coach, who has walked in your shoes through each of these challenges and, yes, I have the metaphorical blisters to prove it. I have cried your tears and felt your pain, and now I'm here to support you in the way I wish someone would have been there to support me. Listen in each week as my guests and I dish out practical wisdom to help you handle all the classroom curveballs that are thrown at you and learn how to laugh in spite of the chaos, to celebrate those small yet significant victories that only a special educator can understand. So are you ready? Wipe your tears and put on your superhero cape, because together we are going to learn how to survive and thrive in the ever crazy, completely overwhelming laugh. So you don't cry. Profession of being a special education teacher.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Okay, so I have heard these questions many times. Why do I have to write a report? Can't I just summarize the scores? And those are valid questions from special educators who are feeling overwhelmed by the process of summarizing achievement tests. And just another thing on their to-do list, really process of summarizing achievement tests. And just another thing on their to-do list, really. The truth is, though, writing a professional report isn't just a formality. It is an essential part of the evaluation process.

Speaker 1: 3:37

A well-written report serves several purposes. First, it documents the testing process. Your report provides a record of what was assessed, how it was assessed and the results. This documentation is important for compliance and it ensures that the evaluation can be referenced in the future. The second one is it guides decision making.

Speaker 1: 3:58

The results you summarize in your report play a key role in shaping the student's IEP. Your report is going to highlight strengths, identify areas of need and connect the dots between the data and the actionable steps for the team. Next, it clearly communicates with the team. Next, it communicates clearly with the team, the teachers, the parents, the administrators, the related service providers. They can all rely on your report to understand the student's performance in academics. It's a very important piece of the puzzle and it ensures everyone is on the same page and it sets the foundation for collaboration. And, lastly, it builds credibility. A clear, concise report shows that you understand the student and their needs, which builds trust with parents and confidence in your expertise among your team. So, while it may feel like just another item on your to do list, writing a strong report is one of the most impactful things that you can do as a special educator. And the good news, you don't have to do it alone. I'm going to walk you through the key elements of a professional achievement test report and give you actionable tips to make the process smoother and less intimidating. I'm going to provide you with some sample statements, and then I'm going to share about a resource that can help you easily produce reports in a timely manner.

Speaker 1: 5:11

All right, let's talk about the steps to write this report. The first is to start with context. Every good report begins with a clear background section. This is where you paint a picture of the student and explain why the testing was conducted. Some key elements to include in this section are the purpose of the evaluation Was it an initial evaluation? A re-evaluation? Was it a parent request? Any relevant background information, such as current services that the student is already receiving, any significant diagnoses the student has that might impact testing, like ADHD, or areas of concern identified by teachers or parents. And this is also a place where we're going to give a brief description of the testing conditions, everything that we talked about in the first episode, everything that went on during that testing session, like whether the student appeared cooperative, engaged or fatigued, whether the student was wearing their glasses and any other factors that could have impacted their performance For example, if the student was wearing their glasses and any other factors that could have impacted their performance, for example, if the student had difficulty staying focused, they appeared anxious or they required frequent breaks at the test. Those details need to be provided to give important context for understanding the results. The goal of this section is to give the reader a snapshot of the student's unique situation during the testing process. This will help the team understand not just the scores themselves but the circumstances under which that data was collected, and a clear, thorough background section sets the tone for the rest of the report, giving the audience the context they need to interpret the results accurately and meaningfully.

Speaker 1: 6:44

Next number two is to report the results clearly and concisely. When it comes to the actual results, your goal is to highlight the most relevant information without overwhelming the reader, and here's how to do that. You're going to use subheadings for each domain to organize your data. So if you're giving the Woodcock Johnson you're going to have reading, math, written language as your subheadings. If you're giving the YCAT, you might have general information, math, reading, writing and spoken language. And then for the Bracken you're going to have colors, letters, numbers, shapes and spatial Other achievement tests. I know that there's a lot out there, but those are the three that I mainly give. But you're just going to take your data and break it down into those main pieces and then you're going to focus on key scores such as standard scores and percentiles to give a snapshot of the student's performance.

Speaker 1: 7:41

You don't need to dive into ranges like competence bands or age or grade equivalencies. You might want to do that but I don't get that in depth into my reports and then avoid diving into every subtest unless it's necessary to explain a specific strength or weakness. For example, adrian scored a standard score of a 61 on broad reading, which falls in the first percentile, indicating significant difficulties in reading, comprehension and fluency. But his strongest area was word attack, where he demonstrated an emerging ability to decode unfamiliar words. I pointed out that word attack so that I could have a strength that I could focus on and not everything in my report was negative. So if you need to pull in some of those subtests, that's okay, but I would not report on every single one of them, and so by focusing on the big picture and then just those those few subheadings, you are helping the reader see trends without them getting lost in the weeds, and that's really important. You don't want to give too much information because you're going to lose your audience, and then you're going to want to add that context to the scores.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Test scores are only a part of the story, so it's essential to add your observations and your explanations here that give the numbers meaning. For instance, did the student perform better on untimed tasks? Were there noticeable differences in performance between oral and written tasks, and how did these scores compare to their classroom performance or age, grade level expectations? Sometimes kids just don't test well and their classroom teacher might say that they are able to perform that in the classroom, or the parent may say my child does know this. So being able to report on some of those things is important as well, just in addition to just giving numbers. All right, and the third part is to summarize the test as a whole, and I like to do this as my kind of my conclusion, I guess.

Speaker 1: 9:34

So, once you've provided detailed results for each domain, it's important to step back and summarize the overall findings of that test. This section should provide a big picture view of the student's performance and then highlight key takeaways. So here's how to structure it. You're going to begin by summarizing the student's general performance across all areas. For example, overall, the results of the Woodcock-Johnson 4 indicate that Adrian demonstrates strengths in reading. The struggle significantly in math, particularly in tasks involving problem solving.

Speaker 1: 10:06

You also want to give that overall score of the whole entire achievement test composite score and then you want to compare it. Give it a comparison. You want the parents to be able to compare their child's score with a typical child of that same age. You want to highlight the student's primary strengths and areas of need. You want to identify any patterns's primary strengths and areas of need. You want to identify any patterns or trends in performance that might provide insight into the student's overall learning profile no-transcript. And then you're going to briefly connect the results to potential implications for the classroom. This suggests that Adrian may benefit from targeted interventions in problem solving, as well as accommodations such as dot dot, dot. These strategies could help address challenges while leveraging their strengths and so summarizing the test as a whole, helps the reader understand the broader implications of the data without getting bogged down in individual scores. It gives context to the results and it provides a bridge to the recommendation section, which we're going to talk about next, ensuring that the report is both informative and actionable.

Speaker 1: 11:33

And then the last part is to provide recommendations. The most actionable part of your report is the recommendation section. This is where you connect the dots. You connect the results to specific educational needs. This is where you can suggest services, accommodations or modifications based on the data, and it's not something that has to be provided. Just because you write it in here doesn't mean that the team has to decide on that. You're just using your professional judgment to kind of recommend what you think that the child needs. This is where you're going to highlight strengths that can be leveraged in instruction as well as areas that need targeted support, and you're going to keep your recommendations clear and actionable. For example, you might say, based on Adrian's scores, small group instruction focused on phonics and fluency is recommended. Additionally, he may benefit from extended time on reading assignments and tasks. You might say, based on Adrian's math scores, he shows a need for support with problem solving during his math class. So, whatever your recommendations are, make sure that the team can take action towards these if the team decides.

Speaker 1: 12:43

And then just some extra tips for professional writing. As you are writing your reports, remember to keep the tone professional but approachable. You want it to be able to be easily read by someone who isn't working in the educational field. Don't use a lot of jargon that isn't understandable. But you want to keep it professional, so avoid overly technical language when simpler terms will do.

Speaker 1: 13:09

Instead of saying Adrian scores indicate significant deficits in cognitive processing, sometimes I have to even think of what something like that would mean. Cognitive processing. Sometimes I have to even think of what something like that would mean. So you could say Adrian scores show challenges in processing information quickly, which may impact his ability to keep up with grade level tasks and may indicate he needs extra time on assignments. So all of those words are very understandable even at a lower level. And then my last tip would be to proofread with a big exclamation point. Make sure you are checking your report for clarity, grammar and accuracy. Ensure you haven't used the wrong name in your report. This small step can make a big difference in how your report is received. Okay. So I know that was a lot of information for one episode. And if you are driving or you are not in a place where you can take notes or if summarizing these results feels really overwhelming, don't worry, I've got you covered.

Speaker 1: 14:07

I have created a resource that includes report templates for the Woodcock Johnson, the YCAT and the Bracken. It has tips for organizing your results. I've included example reports that you can use as a guide. I've got posters and cheat sheets. Basically, it's everything you need to help you feel confident and prepared when writing the reports that you will eventually we're going to get to that next week share with parents. If you want the link to that achievement testing kit, just go to spedprepacademycom slash test kit. That's spedprepacademycom slash test kit T-E-S-T-K-I-T. All one word, all right. Next week, in the final part of this series, we're going to talk about presenting test results confidently in IEP meetings. I'll share strategies for answering parent questions, explaining scores clearly and building trust with your team. Catch you next week.