Dr. Schroder and Dr. Strong give a nice review of the role of educators in assessing students with Autism.  I found the video to be informative, accessible to a wide audience, and applicable to a variety of educators including behavior analysts (which is new to my experience).  So far this has been an overall favorable experience with this video and I would have to recommend it to anyone working in, working towards, or considerring a career that will require the assessment of children with Autism.
Early on in the video Dr. Schroder begins one ongoing theme of the discussion which is the role of teachers when it comes to assessment.  She is very careful to bring light to the staggering differences between diagnosis and assessment and define the intent of the people responsible for each role.  In my experience I have not noticed medical or educational professionals to have a great deal of confusion between the two roles.  However I have encountered various members of the community  that expect educational providers to provide information regarding diagnosis.  For instance I often get asked about whether or not I think a certain child is autistic.  My answer is generally something along the lines of "Honestly if you have concerns get them evaluated.".  For those of you that may be unsure of the differences between diagnosis and educational assessment here's a breakdown of what Dr. Schroder and Dr. Strong spoke about.

  The person making the diagnosis's intent is to determine whether or not the patient has a diagnosis while the person completing an educational assessment intends to determine whether or not the student has symptoms that make it more difficult for them to access the curriculum and in determining so, how to help them access it more efficiently.  Teacher's are not looking for diagnosis, that is the doctor's job.

 We on the other hand want to develop a learner profile of the things the child knows, needs to know, their current levels of performance, and effective interventions in helping them to learn.  We need to gather every smidgen of information that may possibly be useful in educating this child.
According to Dr. Schroder a reason for confusion between the two roles has been the new term educational diagnosis.  Schroder refers to this title as a made up term to describe determining eligibility, a process that is undertaken by members of the IEP team to determine whether or not I child is eligible for special education services.

As Dr. Strong indicated there are a variety of formal assessment tools that can be used.  However she also noted the importance of natural observation in which an educator simply observes the child and how he/ she behaves and interacts with his/ her environment. The following video is an example of a natural observation.

A structured observation is also an important assessment tool.  A structured observation is like a natural observation except that in a structured observation the environment has been manipulated in some way. The following clip is actually of an incidental teaching technique, but it highlights an environmental manipulation (placing desired items out of reach) to elicit a certain behavior (requesting help or item) if the educator were not teaching the correct response and instead waiting to see if it occurred it would be a structured observation.

I absolutely agree with Dr. Strong's opinion that observation is the most important tool in any assessment.  However there are formal assessments that are extremely useful in assessing children with autism.
Dr. Strong notes the importance of observation because there is often times a reliability issue with how the child can perform and how they do perform during the assessment on formalized assessment tools.  The following tools can be used assist with assessments. I included the benefits and limitations of the assessments I had heard of from Dr. Strong's discussion.  I have never administered any of these tests although I have seen them all in student's reports.

ADI-R
Autism Diagnostic Interview- Revised
Pros: Solid support
Cons: Time Consuming















 SCQ
  Social Communication Questionnaire 

Pros: Validity as a screener for children with autism
Cons: Valid for use with children aged four and older














CARS
The Childhood Autism Ratings Scale
Pros: Sufficient Support, Combines observation and interview, their can be more than one observer and more than one grade.
















SRS
Social Responsiveness Scale
High support, provides specific information about social cognition and social motivation.  There is a teacher and parent rating form included
Cons: Best used with older children














DAS-II
Differential Ability Scales
Pros: Useful for evaluating young children








According to Dr. Strong the most important part o the assessment regardless of what tools you use is the assessor.  The educator needs to have skill and expertise in the area of working with children with autism to ensure a valid assessment.  I am in 100% agreement with this statement.  In my opinion the educator has to know what to look for and attend to as far as behaviors go, be good at pulling behavior from the child and ensuring there motivation, and be sensitive to the child's potential skill set.