Special educational needs and evaluation

The italian school is dealing with the matter of the evaluation of Special Educational Needs (SED). Since there are no legislative references that indicate which procedures to follow, it is left to the teachers' discretion. Recent ministerial documents, though, suggest to refer to the existing normative on Specific Learning Disturbances, in particular to prepare the PDP, and to use the necessary tools to reach the estimated requisites for the SED. One of the main problems is still that of evaluation. Despite all the debates, even when evaluation is not used in a selective function it is not correctly used in an educational perspective, as a mean to teach, to improve the learning processes more than to penalize the results. In the following work, we aim at indicating some evaluating tools and approaches useful in the delicate assessment activity of teachers, mostly intended in its educational value.