137 Best Practices in Can ’ t Do / Won ’ t

Can’t do/won’t do assessment is a pragmatic procedure grounded in the functional academic assessment literature. It describes two possibilities with regard to child performance. The basic premise of the can’t do/won’t do assessment is that children who are not meeting expectations for successful academic performance in the classroom either cannot (i.e., have a skill deficit) or will not (i.e., have a performance deficit) do the academic work, or perhaps some combination of the two. The distinction is important because the type of intervention that is likely to effectively resolve the academic problem would be different for each cause. Children who cannot do the work that is expected in the classroom are children whose skills are deficient and would most benefit from a skill-building intervention. Children who are not motivated to perform the work would most benefit from an intervention that arranges contingencies to maximize the probability of adequate academic performance. When children are identified as not meeting expected benchmarks or as being at risk for academic failure at Tier 1, the can’t do/won’t do assessment may be conducted at Tier 2 to identify interventions that are likely to effectively remediate poor performance (see also Ikeda, Neeson, & Witt, chapter 5, vol. 2; Kovaleski & Pederson, chapter 6, vol. 2; Tilly, chapter 2, vol. 1 < ). Can’t do/won’t do assessment is a tool that contemporary school psychologists will want to have in their arsenal given the shifting emphasis of school psychologists as systems change agents and instructional consultants. Use of targeted assessment to identify instructional strategies that will enhance academic performance of students school-wide in an efficient and sustainable manner is an expected competency and service for school psychologists now and in the future (see Ysseldyke et al., 2006).