School OT and PT Assessments When Standardized Tests Don't Fit | MyTherapyWizard

Choosing School-Based Assessments When Standardized Tests Don't Fit

Choosing School-Based Assessments When Standardized Tests Don't Fit (MyTherapyWizard help article card)

Therapists often ask what to use when a standardized test won't work: a 17-year-old who will score zero on the BOT-3 because of the directions, students in 6:1:1 classrooms, or high schoolers in life skills programs. A raw zero tells the team nothing about what the student can do.

✨ Available on: All plans

👥 From the clinician community

Shared in a 30,000-member school-based OT and PT Facebook group. Names are blurred.

🧩 What a defensible school evaluation combines

  • Observation in the student's real routines: classroom, cafeteria, hallway, bus
  • Teacher and parent input on participation
  • Work samples and task performance
  • Standardized tools only where the student can access them as designed, with any changes noted
  • A clear statement of how the findings affect access to education

🪄 In MyTherapyWizard

  1. Start a Guided Evaluation and pick a template by age: Adaptive Participation EC, School-Age 5–13, Functional Life Skills & Transition (11–21), IEP Motor Screening and others can be chosen from.
  2. Enter the child's responses. Use Unable to observe instead of forcing a score, and add therapist notes, if appropriate.
  3. Optional:Send teacher and parent questionnaires (ENGAGE, FPOM, sensory, executive functioning) so their input merges into the report.
  4. Add any standardized results in Assessments.
  5. Review the composite score and band, the domain summary, and strengths and concerns.
Evaluation domain performance summary with structured scoring

💡 Why it matters: every item is scored with the same structured rules, so the next evaluation shows item-level change instead of starting over.

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Clinical protocols built in

MyTherapyWizard is an EMR with clinical protocols built in. Every Guided Evaluation, questionnaire and standardized template follows a structured scoring protocol:

  • The quantitative areas (the items you rate) are scored on the back end with the same defined criteria, rules and performance bands for every client.
  • The qualitative areas (your comments, observations and narratives) go into the report as you wrote them.
  • Once the plan of care is active, its goals populate into your session notes. Each goal gets a Goal Performance Index (GPI) that combines accuracy with the support needed, so 70% independent and 70% with maximum assistance score differently. Each session gets a Session Performance Index (SPI), the average of its GPIs.
  • AI never assigns or changes a score. It only helps put finished results into words, and you approve every line.

Learn more: Understanding Performance Bands · Myth vs. Fact: structured scoring and AI

📚 See other articles in School-Based Practice here.