(1) The school district must provide prior written notice to the parents of a student, in accordance with WAC 392-172A-05010, that describes any evaluation procedures the district proposes to conduct.

(2) In conducting the evaluation, the group of qualified professionals selected by the school district must:

(a) Use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to gather relevant functional, developmental, and academic information about the student, including information provided by the parent, that may assist in determining:

(i) Whether the student is eligible for special education as defined in WAC 392-172A-01175; and

(ii) The content of the student's IEP, including information related to enabling the student to be involved in and progress in the general education curriculum, or for a preschool child, to participate in appropriate activities;

(b) Not use any single measure or assessment as the sole criterion for determining whether a student's eligibility for special education and for determining an appropriate educational program for the student; and

(c) Use technically sound instruments that may assess the relative contribution of cognitive and behavioral factors, in addition to physical or developmental factors.

(3) Each school district must ensure that:

(a) Assessments and other evaluation materials used to assess a student:

(i) Are selected and administered so as not to be discriminatory on a racial or cultural basis;

(ii) Are provided and administered in the student's native language or other mode of communication and in the form most likely to yield accurate information on what the student knows and can do academically, developmentally, and functionally unless it is clearly not feasible to so provide or administer;

(iii) Are used for the purposes for which the assessments or measures are valid and reliable. If properly validated tests are unavailable, each member of the group shall use professional judgment to determine eligibility based on other evidence of the existence of a disability and need for special education. Use of professional judgment shall be documented in the evaluation report;

(iv) Are administered by trained and knowledgeable personnel; and

(v) Are administered in accordance with any instructions provided by the producer of the assessments.

(b) Assessments and other evaluation materials include those tailored to assess specific areas of educational need and not merely those that are designed to provide a single general intelligence quotient.

(c) Assessments are selected and administered so as best to ensure that if an assessment is administered to a student with impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills, the assessment results accurately reflect the student's aptitude or achievement level or whatever other factors the test purports to measure, rather than reflecting the student's impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills (unless those skills are the factors that the test purports to measure).

(d) If necessary as part of a complete assessment, the school district obtains a medical statement or assessment indicating whether there are any other factors that may be affecting the student's educational performance.

(e) The student is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, if appropriate, health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities.

(f) Assessments of students eligible for special education who transfer from one school district to another school district in the same school year are coordinated with those students' prior and subsequent schools, as necessary and as expeditiously as possible, to ensure prompt completion of full evaluations.

(g) In evaluating each student to determine eligibility or continued eligibility for special education service, the evaluation is sufficiently comprehensive to identify all of the student's special education and related services needs, whether or not commonly linked to the disability category in which the student has been classified.

(h) Assessment tools and strategies are used that provide relevant information that directly assists persons in determining the educational needs of the student.