In schools, assessments typically address a number of distinct purposes;

IEP planning:

This assessments gather information on the students cognitive, social emotional and performance across a wide range of learning domains. The purpose is to identify where a child is performing and what learning goals need to be addressed.

Benchmarking:

Many states have learning standards and mandated testing to compare each child performance to other students according to specific statewide performance standards. These assessment, typically do not give sufficient information for planning purposes.

High Stakes Testing

Again many states have imposed requirements that students pass specific performance tests in order to graduate and/or advance to higher grades.

In general, the purpose of assessment is to obtain valid, meaningful information about a students performance. In order achieve this there are special factors that must be considered when testing a student with a visual impairment.