Why should my school be using Rapid Screener?

Your school psychologists and behavior specialists are constantly being asked to conduct Psychoeducational Evaluations and Functional Behavior Assessments.  Depending on the specific assessment being conducted, the evaluator will conduct direct observations in the classroom and other environments, give "parent-teacher" questionnaires, collect observable and measureable data, and possibly administer standardized cognitive and academic tests.  Maybe they will interview the parent and/or teacher.

However, suppose there are several people to interview?  How will the evaluator collect comprehensive information about the student from all of these people?  Take the example of a middle school student:  Five or more teachers, perhaps a counselor, and parents to interview.  At just twenty minutes per person this would take over 2.5 hours.  It rarely occurs.

Rapid Screener can help!

Rapid Screener is a social-emotional multi-rater assessment tools.  It's a safe, simple to use, and powerful method for enhancing the quality of nearly any school-based assessment.  Imagine being able to collect useful information from up to ten persons and see how they  view student behavior across settings.  Each rater can print out an instant summary of all oft his or her results in a simple to understand report.   Once all of the identified raters have completed their online interviews, the results are analyzed and summarized in a single easy-to-follow report.

Save Time and Money!

If you have attended an IEP Meeting, you know they can be lengthy, sometimes without reaching conclusions about which behaviors need to be targeted and in what settings.  It's important not to take "shortcuts," but at the same time, teachers' time is best spent teaching and not all parents have the luxury of sitting in a school meeting for half a day.  The Rapid Screener  assessment process insures that everyone who has significant contact with a student has an opportunity to provide input. 

When a parent doesn't understand the results of an assessment, it's difficult for them to follow why the school is proposing certain interventions.  Even worse, they may not understand why a child is denied special education services. is is given a different eligibility than they believed should have been identified.  There is a remedy under IDEIA.  Through Due Process, independent assessment can be requested If a parent disagrees with the results of an evaluation.  They are given names of professionals identified as an IEE (Independent Educational Evaluator).  Once the parent and school agree on a specific individual, that professional conduct an assessment to once again address and assess the student's educational needs.  In some cases this is a perfectly valid request, however in many cases, it results from families not understanding what all of the standard scores, percentiles, correlation coefficients, T-scores, and scales scores mean.  Is a 79 good or bad?  It depends.

In 1999, Investors' Business Daily reported that Due Process cases cost school districts $50,000 to $250,000 per case.  Any school district attorney can tell you that the upper-level costs have risen significant since that time.  Even worse, new services for a student are significantly delayed.  A school district has a couple of months to complete the initial assessment and another month to schedule the meeting.  Repeat this process with an IEE assessment and, before you know it, another school year has passed.

Rapid Screener addresses all of these problems and cuts through all of the "jargon" by discuss a child's behavioral functioning in clear, easy-to-follow terms, with clear tables and charts.

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