Timeframe for Initial Evaluation

Specifically, consideration of language, culture, and communication mode means the following:

• If your child has limited English proficiency, materials, and procedures used to assess your child must be selected and administered to ensure that they measure the extent to which your child has a disability and needs special education, rather than measuring your child’s English language skills.

 

This provision in the law is meant to protect children of different racial, cultural, or language backgrounds from misdiagnosis. For example, children’s cultural backgrounds may affect their behavior or test responses in ways that teachers or other personnel do not understand. Similarly, if a child speaks a language other than English or has limited English proficiency, he or she may not understand directions or words on tests and may be unable to answer correctly. As a result, a child may mistakenly appear to be a slow learner or to have a hearing or communication problem.

• If an assessment is not conducted under standard conditions–meaning that some condition of the test has been changed (such as the qualifications of the person giving the test or the method of giving the test)–a description of the extent to which it varied from standard conditions must be included in the evaluation report.

• If your child has impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills, the law requires that tests are selected and administered so as best to ensure that test results accurately reflect his or her aptitude or achievement level (or whatever other factors the test claims to measure), and not merely reflect your child’s impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills (unless the test being used is intended to measure those skills).

 

 

What About Evaluation for Specific Learning Disabilities? --

IDEA’s regulations specify additional procedures required to be used for determining the existence of a specific learning disability. Sections 300.307 through 300.311 spell out what these procedures are. You can learn more by reading Module 11 of NICHCY’s Building the

 

 

Legacy training curriculum on IDEA 2004. --

It’s important to note, though, that IDEA 2004 made dramatic changes in how children who are suspected of having a learning disability are to be evaluated.

• States must not require the use of a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and achievement.

• States must permit the use of a process based on the child’s response to scientific, research-based intervention; and

• States may permit the use of other alternative research-based procedures for determining whether a child has a specific learning disability.

• The team that makes the eligibility determination must include a regular education teacher and at least one person qualified to conduct individual diagnostic examinations of children, such as a school psychologist, speech-language pathologist, or remedial reading teacher.

 

Determining Eligibility --

Parents were not always included in the group that determined their child’s eligibility and, in fact, were often excluded. Since the IDEA Amendments of 1997, parents are to be part of the group that determines their child’s eligibility and are also to be provided a copy of the evaluation report, as well as documentation of the determination of the child’s eligibility.

Some school systems will hold a meeting where they consider only the eligibility of the child for special education and related services. At this meeting, your child’s assessment results should be explained. The specialists who assessed your child will explain what they did, why they used the tests they did, your child’s results on those tests or other evaluation procedures, and what your child’s scores mean when compared to other children of the same age and grade.

It is important to know that the group may not determine that a child is eligible if the determinant factor for making that judgment is the child’s lack of instruction in reading or math or the child’s limited English proficiency. The child must otherwise meet the law’s definition of a “child with a disability”–meaning that he or she has one of the disabilities listed in the law and, because of that disability, needs special education and related services.

If the evaluation results indicate that your child meets the definition of one or more of the disabilities listed under IDEA and needs special education and related services, the results will form the basis for developing your child’s IEP.