This is just a quick and dirty discussion of the special education eligibility process from the perspective of someone who's been a special ed parent in the system, and is now a special ed professional.
Caveat: What I'm telling you now is reflective of one school district's process, in one particular state. While the general principles of the process hold true, the specifics are affected by where I work and where my kid's gone to school. I also do not work with severely disabled students, but with kids capable of functioning in the general education setting. Therefore I don't have experience with severe autism, mental retardation, or physical disabilities. My caseload includes kids with mild to moderate autism, learning disabilities, ADHD, and mild emotional disturbances.
Additional Caveat: The details also change from year to year. The generalities hold true, for the most part, but the Feds can and do issue procedural rules which affect the process.
With that, let's go take a quick and dirty look at the process, shall we?
The decision for initial eligibility is the first line that any parent must cross with their child before that child receives special education services. For children with more severe disabilities, often this line is met before the child even enters regular school, through Early Intervention processes. For many other children in special education, the parent and child go through this process in early to mid elementary school. Then there are the handful of children who don't get identified until middle school or later.
My son was one of those children identified before his school career started, thanks to recommendations from a preschool speech/language pathologist and the help of a speech path friend who was already working for our school district. He had a severe language deficit with pragmatic (the daily verbal usage) language scores in the bottom 1%. That was enough to get him through the initial eligibility. But I'm rushing into the whole process....
Right now, let's talk about initial evaluations. Re-evaluation is a different process, and usually is not as involved or as detailed as the initial evaluation process.
Normally, what happens in special education initial eligibility is that a parent or teacher starts to notice that there's not something quite right with a child. They're not focusing in class. They lag in reading, while their math is flying right along with the others (or vice versa). Or they're moody and depressed, and don't get along well with the other little kids on the playground. Sometimes a doctor spots the problem, and advises the parent to talk to the school about it.
The first step is to try simple interventions. Perhaps a behavior contract, or a different method of teaching reading. Modify instruction slightly. Provide additional classroom support through peer buddies, one-on-one instruction. Change the student's seating. These processes go through what my building calls a Building Intervention Team (BIT--others may call it something else), run primarily by a counselor or general education teacher. Special ed may advise but at this point, the interventions are for general education techniques and locations.
This first step, called "prereferral interventions," should be a 6-8 week intervention. If it works, then the process goes no further. The team may decide to put the child on a watch list, to see what happens as he or she goes through the school year and matures. In some cases, the prereferral period may be shortened, especially if what we see happening involves some very drastic and problematic behavior. In other cases, the prereferral period may be lengthened. It all depends on the child's response.
Prereferral phases often drive parents nuts. But they're required by the law, and it's part of the entire "Response to Intervention" (RTI) concept now embraced by the current Individuals with Disabilities Educational Improvement Act (IDEIA)of 2004. RTI deserves a diary of its own, and I'm not going to get into it here except to refer to it. If we can remediate a child's performance without resorting to special ed, we're supposed to at least try to do that--which can frustrate parents and dedicated general education teachers.
The second step, if the BIT team determines that the prereferral interventions are not working effectively, is to go to the Student Study Team (SST--called different things in different places). SST is the special education gateway in my district. This team involves the school psychologist, special ed specialists, general ed teachers, and the parents. We look at the results of the BIT team intervention, and discuss/decide whether to process to testing and what that testing is going to look like. Then we issue a permission to test form to the parent, with a description of the tests that we will be using on their child. Once the permission to test form is signed and dated, a 60-day evaluation clock starts (more on this later on).
The disability being considered will affect what the testing is. My team tends to want at least an IQ test--usually a WISC IV (Weschler's Intelligence Scale for Children Version Four) as a baseline. If the child in question does not speak English well, or we suspect serious language issues, then we usually try the Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT). We generally spend less time thinking about a full scale IQ and more time looking at the ratios between the four major subtest scores (Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Reasoning, Working Memory and Processing Speed). It's good to have at least one of those on file.
For emotional disturbance issues, we frequently will use various self-report scales as well as a general screen with the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (parent--four page blue form with a LOT of stuff your child doesn't do, usually) and Teacher Report Form. Some districts use other general psychological/behavioral screens but we use the Achenbach. I actually have grown quite fond of it, when used appropriately. The Achenbach is also a good tool for pinpointing whether we need to look at ADHD issues. For ADHD, we also add a Barkley parent and teacher report form.
Many disabilities--including ADHD--require that the parent obtain a medical statement from a doctor--usually one form or the other affirming a diagnosis. Waiting for the medical statement is one thing that can foul up a 60-day clock. For my district and state, the most common initial eligibilities that don't require a medical statement are Specific Learning Disability and some forms of Communication Disorder. Otherwise, the medical statement is required. The good news, however, is that once you have that statement on file, you don't need to renew it unless the situation has changed somehow.
Autism requires observations, a medical statement and at least one autism rating scale from parents and several teachers, as well as functional communication assessments. It's good to have one IQ on file but is not required.
ADHD is classified as "Other Health Impaired," and requires Achenbach, home and school ADHD rating scales, medical statement, and often WISC IV and an academic test to rule out a learning disability.
Specific Learning Disabilities are the biggest category affected by RTI, and often use a combination of the old discrepancy method and various intervention techniques to qualify a child for services. I'm not entirely convinced of RTI's effectiveness, but there are problems with the discrepancy model as well--specifically for low-cognitive students (IQs in the high 70s/low 80s--mental retardation is not considered until a person's IQ is below 70, coupled with low scores on Adaptive Behavior scales) who are struggling with reading or other academic subjects. Because their IQ is so low, they often do not show a discrepancy, which means that they are considered to be functioning at their capacity. That's frustrating to me. We also use a diagnostic academic test--most frequently the Woodcock Johnson III (WJ III). I administer the WJ III myself, at least 5-10 times a year and work with testing specialists for other students. Some special ed teachers don't like administering the WJ III--I prefer to do it myself if I can because several times my observations of student behavior during testing casts a light on how the student thinks and processes information on the subject in question.
That's probably more than anyone wants to know about the testing phase. Once we have all tests in hand, then the team meets with the parent, the general education teacher(s) and discusses the results. At that time, we make a decision about eligibility. If the decision is yes, then we may or may not proceed to discussing the Individual Education Program for that student at that meeting or postpone it until later. I generally prefer to do both eligibility and IEP at one meeting. Others do not.
At this time, services do not start until a parent has signed a Consent for Initial Placement in special education. Once that's in place--then everything begins.
Re-evaluation of a student's eligibility happens every three years. Depending on the eligibility, we may run all the above-listed tests again, or opt to do only a few of them. It is generally not as complicated as the initial eligibility as often we're just reconfirming that the original disability still continues to exist. Sometimes, after three years of services, we may discern that there may be further eligibilities involved or further issues to rule out. That can make a re-evaluation more complex. But we also are not limited to the three year re-evaluation to take a look at a new eligibility if it appears while we're serving a student.
The eligibility that students most often tend to develop out of, with intervention, is speech therapy, generally the articulation treatments. Sometimes intense intervention will improve the use of language, or the student will mature sufficiently that they demonstrate a greater understanding and usage of language. Minor reading, writing, and math learning disabilities can improve with intervention early on, but those students should be carefully monitored, because often the special education interventions are what has been helping that student to be successful.
Every year, the student's Individual Education Plan is revisited and reevaluated. But that's a subject for another diary, which I'll put up next week.