[nobe-l] Woodcock Johnson

[Ashley Bramlett]

Caitlin,

Well, I'm not an educator either, but have considered it. The stress and 
negative attitudes of trying the ed major caused me to change it.
I have a BA though from Marymount university in liberal studies which is my 
combined degree of social sciences and communication.

When you say you are a resource specialist, do you mean you are a special 
education assistant?
Are you assisting in a  low vision resource room? Those don't exist much 
anymore since most blind and low vision kids are fully mainstreamed.
What was your background? Just wanted a sense of what you do.

I have low vision and this question brings back memories. I was administered 
the woodcock johnson.

Unfortunately, I don't have many suggestions for you. I think you are doing 
the right thing
I would also swop duties if I were in your shoes.
I don't see why that cannot be an accommodation. I am glad the union is 
helping and they are looking at an attorney.
I know legally blind teachers of the vision impaired in our school system.
To perform visual functioning testing, they either swop duties or use a 
sighted assistant.

I can understand the resistance to brailling it.
But, you should be able to use a sighted person alongside you to help you 
with visuals such as describing what students do.
Would they allow you to put raised letters on the cards students have to 
see?



This sounds like a tough challenge.
I'm sorry to hear you are not going to be accommodated.
Barriers like this are why its hard to be employed.
I see no reason why you should have to switch jobs since you indicated that 
performing this task is not in the job description.

Keep us posted,
Ashley
-----Original Message----- 
From: Caitlin Hernandez via NOBE-L
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2018 10:02 AM
To: nobe-l at nfbnet.org
Cc: Caitlin Hernandez
Subject: [nobe-l] Woodcock Johnson

Hi All,
I'm a totally blind, Braille-reading, first-year Resource specialist
for fifth and sixth graders in San Francisco. For students' triennial
IEPs, we use an assessment tool called the Woodcock Johnson, and I've
been looking into a way to make this accessible for the past year or
so. We've just heard from the company itself that even Brailling the
test or my administering it alongside a credentialed sighted person
who can assist with the visual bits (students need to do a lot of
silent pointing, for example) is not possible and will compromise the
validity of the test.
Up to this point, I've simply been swapping duties with the other
Resource specialists we have on our K8 campus; I run pull-out groups
for them while they do my assessments. This has worked fine, but the
district is saying that they can't allow this to be an official
accommodation, since it adds job functions to someone else's job.
They're also saying that, since I technically cannot perform an
executive function of the Resource Specialist position, they want me
to move to a general-education classroom next year: something I don't
particularly want to do at this time, and for which I'm not
appropriately credentialed.
I'm doing my homework on all this, and my Union representative is in
the process of getting an attorney. Further, in the job description
for Resource Specialist, it doesn't specify that the teacher must be
capable of administering the Woodcock Johnson. However, I promised to
ask around among my fellow blind teachers to see if anyone has run
into this issue or has another workaround for the Woodcock Johnson, or
any other similar modes of assessment which are largely visual and
unusable for blind educators.
Thanks so much for any advice.

All best,
Caitlin

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