Albert H. Brigance had a place deep in his heart for his special education students. When he began his career as a school psychologist in the 1970s, he noticed that assessment tools tended to undervalue his students’ unique development trajectories and instead emphasized what they didn’t know and couldn’t do. Al wanted to change the conversation.
He envisioned an expansion of existing assessments for developmental and academic skills to suit special ed—in-depth skill sequences that would reveal what students did know and could do. Al’s idea became a best-selling reality, and BRIGANCE Special Education was born.
Our Special Education products consist of assessment inventories and instruction materials that focus on a broad array of skills and behaviors in key developmental, academic, and transition domains. They assist professionals with pinpointing Present Level of Performance (PLOP) and with writing accurate, comprehensive, and meaningful IEPs.
Criterion-Referenced Inventories:
Criterion-referenced assessment measures a student’s performance on a defined set of skills over time, evaluating progress solely by comparing the student’s present and past performance. This method is commonly employed when normative or standardized scores are unnecessary.
Norm Referenced Inventories:
Norm-referenced, or standardized, assessment evaluates a student’s performance on a particular set of skills compared to students of the same age or grade. These assessments are standardized and validated on a normative sample. Educators utilize standardized assessment to derive normative scores, including composite scores, percentile ranks, and age equivalents.
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