A Glossary of Terms for Families
The language of education, special education and psychology can be confusing. Understanding your child’s neuropsychological evaluation can be overwhelming. Sitting in an IEP, CSE or 504 meeting may make you feel like you are in a foreign land. One of my goals is to support families in their understanding of terminology associated with testing, education and learning.
A
Accommodations:
A classroom accommodation changes how a student learns new material. Accommodations can also refer to changes in the administration of an assessment, such as setting, timing, presentation format, response, etc. Accommodations are used to provide equity for students with disabilities. Accommodations must be identified in a student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) or Section 504 plan. Click here for more information from Understood.org.
Achievement Test:
An instrument designed to measure the amount of academic knowledge a student has acquired from instruction. Information from such measures can be compared to a norm group or a specific set of criteria.
ADHD/ADD:
A disorder that includes difficulty staying focused and paying attention, controlling behavior, and hyperactivity. Click here for more information from LDA America. Click here for more information from Understood.org.
Age Equivalent (AE):
A number associated with a student’s skill, ability, knowledge, or achievement expressed as the age in years and months at which most individuals reach the same level.
Auditory Processing Skills:
What our brain uses to make sense of what we hear in the world around us. Click here for more information.
Auditory Attention:
The process that allows a listener to focus on an auditory stimulus (parent or teachers voice, conversation, music) to process and respond to while ignoring irrelevant competing sounds (dishwasher, dog barking, television)
Auditory Discrimination:
The ability to recognize, compare and distinguish between distinct and separate sounds
Auditory Figure-Ground:
The ability to pick out important sounds from a noisy background
Auditory Sequencing:
The ability to understand and recall a series of words
Auditory Memory:
The ability to recall what is heard after a period of time and includes long and short term memory
Auditory Processing Disorder:
The inability to process, interpret and retain what a person hears. Click here for more information.
C
Committee on Special Education (CSE):
In New York, the Committee on Special Education is made up of the student (when appropriate), parents, one regular education teacher, one special education teacher or service coordinator, a district representative, a school psychologist, and others who have specific knowledge of the student. The purpose of the PPT is to review the referral to special education, current evaluations, and information, and to determine if additional information is needed to determine eligibility for special education.
D
Discrepancy:
The discrepancy model is what has often used to identify a learning difficulty by comparing standard scores of compatible measures. Most often, intelligence, or the ability to learn, as measured on an IQ test is compared with achievement, what has been learned. If there is a significant difference, there is evidence that there is an underlying reason for learning challenges. However, there are drawbacks to relying solely on the discrepancy model for identifying students with learning difficulties. Click here for more information.
DSM-V:
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual - V is the manual used by physicians and diagnosticians which provides clear descriptions of diagnostic categories to diagnose, communicate and treat people with specific disorders. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) working in collaboration with other mental health organizations to update the criteria for mental disorders, which includes learning disorders and disabilities, motor skills disorders and communication (language) disorders.
Dyscalculia:
A specific learning disability that affects a person’s ability to understand numbers. Click here for more information from LDA. Click here for more information from Understood.org.
Dysgraphia:
A specific learning disability that affects a person’s ability to write, usually referring to fine motor skills, automatic letter writing (or numbers), and the ability to express thoughts in written form. Click here for more information from IDA. Click here for more information from Understood.org.
Dyslexia:
A specific learning disability that affects reading, not simply related to decoding or letter reversals, and related language-based processing skills. Students with dyslexia may be challenged by one or several of the following areas of weakness: phonological awareness and decoding, recognizing sight words, reading rate, and language comprehension. Click here for more information from IDA. Click here for a Dyslexia Fact Sheet PDF from Understood.org.
Dyspraxia:
A disorder which causes problems with movement and coordination, language, and speech Click here for more information from LDA. Click here for more information from Understood.org.
E
Executive Functioning:
The ability to plan, organize, strategize, attend to details and manage time and space.
Expressive Language Disorder - see Language
G
Grade Equivalent (GE):
A number associated with a student’s skill, ability, knowledge, or achievement expressed as the grade in years and months at which most individuals reach the same level.
I
IDEA:
This is an acronym for the US Department of Educations Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It is a law that makes available a free and appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities and ensures special education and related services to those children.
Individualized Education Program (IEP):
A written statement for a child with a disability that is developed, reviewed and revised annually in a meeting in accordance with IDEA regulations.
L
Language:
The principal method of communication consisting of words used in a structured and conventional way and conveyed by speech, writing or gestures.
Expressive Language Disorder:
The inability to get a message across or to put words together into sentences that make sense when speaking or writing.
Receptive Language Disorder:
The inability to makes meaning of what they hear or read and, because of this, they often do not respond in ways that make sense.
Pragmatics:
refers to the social language skills that are used in daily interactions with others and the CONTEXT of what is being said, how we say it, and our non-verbal communication (eye contact, facial expressions, body language etc.) ... Pragmatic skills are vital for communicating our personal thoughts, ideas and feelings.
Semantics:
refers to the meaning of language and what is being conveyed
Syntax:
refers to the grammatical structure of language
Language Processing Disorder and Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit (Oral/Written):
Learning disabilities that affect an individual’s ability to understand what they hear in spoken language or read in written language. In addition, the ability to express oneself with oral language or written language may be impacted. Click here for more information.
Learning Disability:
A learning disability is due to genetic and/or neurobiological factors that affect one or more cognitive processing related to learning. These processing problems can related to reading, writing, and/or math. A learning disability is diagnosed by looking for a discrepancy between ability and achievement or within an area of academic skill. For example, a student may present with weakness in decoding but have very high language comprehension skills. The term “learning disability” is used by schools and in the legal system.
M
Memory:
The faculty by which the mind stores and recalls information at a later time. It is made up of three primary stages (Encoding, Long-Term, and Recall)
Encoding:
The taking in of information to be held short term.
Long-Term Memory:
The storage of information for long periods which includes:
Episodic Memory: A memory associated with a personal event that has feeling connected with it.
Semantic Memory: Facts and details needed to be recalled. This is the main type of storage for school-related learning.
Recall:
The ability to find information that is stored and retrieve.
Working Memory:
One of the brain’s executive functions, it is a skill that allows us to work with new information while we connect it with other information to store for the short-term or long term.
Modifications:
Modifications in the classroom refer to changes in what is taught or what a student is expected to learn. In testing, modifications refer to changes in testing conditions, procedures, or formatting such that the measure is no longer valid or comparable to assessments administered under standard conditions. Click here for more information.
N
Neuroplasticity:
the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience. Click here more information.
Non-Verbal Learning Disability:
the inability to read and interpret non-verbal cues like facial expressions, body language often accompanied by poor coordination.
P
Percentile Rank:
A term used to compare an individual’s score on a norm-referenced assessment to the scores of other individuals in the same peer group. For example, if a student has a percentile rank of 87, it means they performed better than 87 percent of other students in his or her norm group.
Planning and Placement Team (Process) PPT:
In Connecticut, the Planning and Placement Team is made up of the student (when appropriate), parents, one regular education teacher, one special education teacher or service coordinator, a district representative, a school psychologist, and others who have specific knowledge of the student. The purpose of the PPT is to review the referral to special education, current evaluations, and information, and to determine if additional information is needed to determine eligibility for special education.
Pragmatics - see Language
R
Raw Score:
The actual score, the number correct out of the number possible, on a measurement before being adjusted to a relative position in a test group.
Reading Terminology
Phonics:
Phonics refers to the understanding that sounds in language are represented by symbols (letters)
Automaticity:
Automaticity is the fast, accurate, effortless recognition of words either in isolation or in context.
Decoding:
The ability to apply knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words.
Encoding:
The ability to apply knowledge of letter-sound relationships and sound patterns to correctly write words.
Fluency:
Fluency is determined by a formula of rate + accuracy. Expression (Prosody) is also considered when determining fluency.
Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness:
Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness both refer to the understanding of sounds in spoken language. There is a progression of phonological awareness that begins with the ability to identify words that rhyme, identifying the number of syllables in a spoken word, recognizing words that begin with the same sound when presented orally, or identifying the number of words in a sentence. Phonemic awareness is the highest level skill in phonological awareness. Phonemic awareness involves the ability to produce, isolate, and manipulate sounds in language.
Rate:
The speed at which a student reads recorded in words per minute (WPM) or corrected words per minute (CWPM) which factors in accuracy.
Receptive Language Disorder - see Language
Response to Intervention (RTI):
A practice of providing high-quality instruction and intervention to match a student’s specific needs, learning rate, and level of performance. RTI helps inform educational decisions about the necessity for more intense interventions or as a step in evaluating eligibility for special education.
S
Semantics - see Language
Specific Learning Disability:
The umbrella term “SLD” covers a specific group of learning challenges that affect a child’s ability to read, write, listen, speak, reason, or do math. The following fall into this category: Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dyscalculia, Auditory Processing Disorder, and Nonverbal Learning Disability. The term DOES NOT include learning problems that are a result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, an intellectual disability, emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural or economic disadvantage.
Standard Score:
A score based on a scale with an average score or mean of 100. A standard score allows the comparison of a student's performance across different tests and/or between peers.
Standardized Test:
An assessment (formal) administered to all students with the same directions, same conditions, and scored in the same manner for all students to ensure the comparability of scores. Standardized tests can be norm-referenced and criterion-referenced.
Stanine:
A “standard nine” is a way to scale scores on a nine-point scale. It is used to convert any test score to a single-digit score.
Syntax - see Language
V
Visual Processing Skills:
What our brain uses to make sense of what we see in the world around us.
Visual Closure:
The ability to know what an image or object is when part of the object is missing.
Visual Discrimination:
The ability to recognize the differences and similarities between objects and images based on shape and size.
Visual Figure-Ground:
The ability to find and pick out the important information in a visually busy background.
Visual Memory:
The ability to recall visual information over time and accurately recall a series of shapes or objects in the correct order.
Visual-Motor Integration:
The ability to perceive and reproduce visual images by coordinating eye-hand movements.
Auditory/Visual Integration:
The ability to accurately relate auditory sound with a visual symbol.