Are You Testing What You Think You're Testing?

The issue of what a child actually knows versus what the child can communicate with speech is a frequent topic that comes up with families, therapists and teachers for our children with speech sound disorders, especially childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). To understand what a child knows, we often use testing, including standardized testing. However, many tests rely on expressive language, especially speech. In this case, we often aren't actually testing only their knowledge, but also their ability to demonstrate this knowledge through speech. This can really muddy the waters and make it difficult to determine what the child knows and what we should be focusing on both in the classroom and in therapy. Read my full guest post on the Bjorem Speech Blog here.