Using the DESSA With Students Who Have Special Needs or Who Are Receiving Special Education Services

Overview

This article offers guidance for using the DESSA and DESSA-mini with students who have special needs or who are receiving special education services.

Using the DESSA and DESSA-mini With Students Who Have Special Needs or Who Receive Special Education Services

We encourage schools and programs to use the DESSA and DESSA-mini with all students in the school.

Although the DESSA and DESSA-mini measures are not intended to be used as part of a special education eligibility determination, knowledge of a student’s social and emotional strengths and needs can be very helpful in informing an individual education plan (IEP) or other support plans. The DESSA can provide critical information about how the student’s disability is impacting their social and emotional functioning. By identifying specific social and emotional skills that were rated in the strength range, the DESSA assists IEP teams in meeting the requirements of section 300.324 of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which requires educators to consider the strengths of the student when creating the IEP. Similarly, items that were rated in the need for instruction range can be incorporated into the IEP as functional goals. Used in this way, the DESSA can inform the IEP, resulting in student-specific, empirically grounded, data-driven strength and goal statements.

While we promote the use of the DESSA and DESSA-mini with all students, we also caution that educators and staff need to be sensitive to specific situations and not use information gained from the DESSA in ways that would be harmful or detrimental to a student and their family. For instance, if a student with severe disabilities scored entirely in the area of need on the DESSA competencies, the individual interpreting and sharing that information with families should be sensitive to the student’s particular condition. It should be noted that many developmental disabilities do in fact impact social and emotional development and therefore in many cases we would expect to see lower DESSA scores. However as noted above, this information is still valuable as it will likely support goals already identified as well as offering a strength-based method for setting goals. The information gained through the DESSA should be considered one piece of a much larger system of information gathering and assessment. Results should be communicated with families and used to develop comprehensive plans that identify goals and strategies for all the areas of need including those that will promote social and emotional competencies for the student. Additionally, for students who score in the need range across the DESSA competencies, we recommend looking at the individual items to determine the student’s relative strengths and goals. This information, as well as continuous observations, can be very useful in the planning process.