DESSA Kit

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Description

Grades K-8. The Devereux Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA) is a behavior rating scale that assesses skills related to social-emotional competence, resilience, and academic success. It is designed to be completed by parents, teachers, and after school staff.

The DESSA Kit includes:

DESSA Manual
DESSA Norms Reference Card
1 set of DESSA Record Forms (25 paper forms, which are scorable by hand)
Zippered tote bag

Why Should You Use the DESSA?

Assess skills related to social-emotional competence, resilience, and academic success
Measure outcomes of social-emotional learning programs, and compliance with social-emotional learning standards at the child, class, school, and district level
Identify children at risk of developing social-emotional problems
Identify social-emotional strengths and needs for individualized education programs (IEPs)
Enhance teacher practice with unique interpretation tools found only in the DESSA and other Devereux assessments
User-friendly, no special training or certification required

Features

The DESSA is a standardized, strength-based measure of social-emotional competencies of children in Kindergarten through the 8^th grade. Grounded in resilience theory, the DESSA provides user-friendly, practical tools that meet the highest professional standards. With the DESSA, parents, teachers and after school program staff can assess social-emotional skills related to school and life success. Administration time is less than ten minutes.

72-Strength-Based Measures

The 72 strength-based measures comprise 8 scales:

Optimistic Thinking
Relationship Skills
Self-Awareness
Personal Responsibility
Self-Management
Goal-Directed Behavior
Social-Awareness
Decision Making

Character Counts Crosswalk Responsive Classroom Crosswalk Second Step Curriculum Crosswalk

Empirically Sound for All Levels of Intervention

At the universal (Tier I) level:

Assess all children for social-emotional strengths and areas needing further development
Assess the outcomes of social-emotional learning and school-wide positive behavior support programs

At the targeted (Tier II) level:

Identify children at risk
Identify specific social-emotional competencies that need further development

At the indicated (Tier III) level:

Contribute to eligibility determinations
Identify meaningful strength statements for IEPs
Facilitate parent collaboration

Standardization Sample

Nationally normed on 2,500 children, the DESSA continues the tradition of meaningful, practical and empirically sound evaluation of children's strengths established by the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment. Standardization sample (n=2,500) reflects the diversity of children today.

Suggested Products

DESSA Norms Reference Card

DESSA-SSE Record Forms

DESSA-mini Kit

DESSA Record Forms - Set of 25