Functional Matters in Behavioral Assessment

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Each day, teachers make numerous decisions about students, including how students are managing within the social context of their classrooms. At times, having to make decisions seems to occur on a minute-by-minute basis, or at least on an hourly basis. Judgments are made about students meeting academic performance standards, about how they are achieving, and how their behavior affects their interaction with their classmates. Underlying these judgments is the assumption that the results of what we observe are reliable and valid interpretations of what is occurring. In other words, we hope our inferences are accurate. In recent years measurement specialists have promoted the notion that the …