What is a Functional Academic Assessment?

A Functional Academic Assessment is not designed to predict the learning potential of a student like a traditional I.Q. test. In the past a great deal of emphasis has been placed on determining a student’s cognitive ability in order to predict how well they can learn. I.Q. tests do not foretell a child’s potential, instead they give a measurement of the child’s current level of mental skills which can allow us to predict how well they will do in school at this moment. In order to figure out what kind of help is needed you have to look for the cause of the learning problem, not the symptom and you won’t find the cause by looking at an IQ score.

 

The challenge is that measuring a student’s potential for learning does not give us information we can use to know how to teach the student best or how to design remediation activities in order to improve a student’s performance. In some cases knowing a student’s I.Q. can be detrimental because some parents or teachers may develop lower expectations for the student’s achievement.

Another reason a Functional Academic Assessment may be the most beneficial for a student who is struggling is because all of the areas of functioning are examined. Areas that should be covered are visual processing, visualization skills, auditory processing, listening skills, attention/focus, distractibility, large and small motor skills, balance, rhythm, processing speed, reading, word attack skills, memory, and logic, and reasoning skills. If a student has a strong visual memory teaching them to read through sight word or whole word instruction may seem like the logical choice but may not necessarily bring success. Other areas of functioning must be taken into consideration such as which visual memory is strong for a student – letters, words, sentences, numbers, symbols, or pictures. A student may be strong in one memory subcategory and yet very weak in another because different areas of the brain are accessed according the type of memory being used. In order to determine the best teaching method and potential remediation all areas of functioning must be looked at.