When tests ‘frame’ children : the challenges of providing appropriate education for children with special needs

Decision-making regarding intensive instructional support for children with special needs should build from children’s instructional needs, and not from diagnostic labelling and criteria for funding eligibility. Cognitive referencing, the use of results on intelligence and language quotients to decide children’s academic options and funding eligibility, is established as inappropriate practice yet continues to be used by many education systems. This paper discusses systemic practices in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and then details four cases of children ‘framed’ by their tests, that is, experiencing unwarranted disadvantage due to how they were positioned by their tests and diagnoses. The final section makes recommendations for considerations needed in the improving of Australian education of children with special needs.