My thoughts
When it comes to assessing children I am not always in agreeance, but in order to see if a child may need some assistance some observations and assessments may need to be taken. I think a child who stutters may need to be assessed. "According to Bloodstein (1987), in the 1980s we began to treat young children more directly with a combination of parent counseling, increasing the child's feelings of success as a speaker through simple exercises which guaranteed success (reciting nursery rhymes, choral speaking etc) and simple behavior modification techniques (easy, slow speech, controlling length and complexity of utterances etc). (Donna Cooperman, 2014.)" Stutter can become an issue for a child. The children today are extremely mean to each other and we wouldn't want a child to develop low self-esteem because he/she may have a speech problem. If specialists are able to target the issue at an early age their may be a great chance that the stuttering may leave the child or they can learn techniques that can help them to control the issue.
http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad4/papers/cooperman.html
In Asia, they have begun assessing children in their language. This is new to them, but it has been stated that the children are only assessed on what they have been taught, not on what test creators think they should know. This I personally believe is the downfall to the children in United States. The children are tested on what someone think they should know or what they think they should have been taught and not on what they have actually been taught. "While traditional testing is still widely used and serves its prescribed purpose, classroom assessment should align with what students have learned and how they have learned. Because the goal of curriculum is for language use, it is important to require students to apply the newly gained communicative competence to similar but different contexts."
http://asiasociety.org/education/chinese-language initiatives/assessment
Personal thoughts
If you are going to assess children make sure that your purpose for assessing leads to actually helping the child. Always remember to get the parents' consent before assessing a child. As a teacher you may only want to help a child, but the parent can see it as something else. We don't want to label children and we don't want to start an unwanted process that can lead to both problems with the child and their parents. Trying suggesting to the parent what you have notice and let them know ahead of time that you are going to observe the particular behavior and if you continue to see a problem, then maybe further observations and/or an assessment can take place.
