1. List and explain three instructional decisions that are made prior to a student being found eligible for special education.

The Decision Whether or Not There is Unrecognized Problems

The federal state has passed policies and procedures to make sure the needs of the children requiring special education are met. The policy is also been referred to as child find and it involves identifying, locating and evaluating the needs of theses children by informing the parents about the services available for them. Local agencies and school district use strategically placed flyers and posters to reach out to parents having children with the unrecognized disabilities for enrollment in special education. As such, schools perform routine check-ups to all children to identify children who are having the unrecognized problems such as visual and hearing problems (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

The Decision Whether Or Not the Student is Making Adequate Progress in Regular Education

The general educators evaluate the progress of students in the performances in relation to their individual goals, classroom, or states. After the evaluation, the educators provide additional assistance to students with difficulties for the achievement of the desired goals. Although the threshold of recognition may vary according to teachers’ skills, in general, the performance rates of the children should be twenty and fifty percent of the rates of other students. With that said, the student can be assessed on the basis of students’ prerequisite skills of learning. A good example from the book is Alex, a student, whose inability to comprehend word seventy percent of words since he has visual problems. Such a student requires special assistance so that he can learn sight vocabularies (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

 

The Decision Whether or Not Student Should be Referred to an Intervention Assistance Team

When teacher are unable to help a student who is having behavioral or academic problems, they should seek assistance from the specialists. The intervention team will intervene by providing a variety of services such as the continuous support or the short-term consultations (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

2. List and explain three instructional decisions that are made after a student has been found eligible for special education.

The Decision as to What Should be Included in the Students’ IEP

Instructionally, an IEP is a road map of the students’ performing showing how they have progressesd from one level to another. Thus, according to Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997, the IEP team should comprise at least one general education teacher, involvement of parent and the student. In addition, the team should also include a representative of the school administration and a person to interpret the implications of the evaluation results (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

The Decision as to The Least Restrictive Appropriate Environment                                          

The federal puts emphasize on the school setting for the children with disabilities to be within the vicinity of their homes, as well as the non-disabled peers to be within the maximum extent appropriate. Special classes in separate schooling can lead to severity of the nature of the disability due to the lack of supplementary aids and services such as recess, lunch and assemblies (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

 

 

 

The Decision as to Whether Of Not the Instructional Program is Effective or Not

Instructional Education Program (IEP) should be effective for children with disabilities. As such, IDEA mandates an annual statement report to be provided the parents with the performance progress of the children with disabilities (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Chapter 27: Making Eligibility Decisions

3. List and define each disability recognized by the IDEA.

Autism

Children suffering from this type of disability have problem with verbal and non-verbal communication. Autism is a developmental disability that affects the social interaction of children especially those at the age of three and four (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Mental Retardation

Children suffering from mental retardation have a sub-average level of intelligence that later affects their education performances (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Specific Learning Disability

Children having this type of disability exhibit one or more disorders in their basic psychological functions which are mainly involved in the child’s ability of understanding of language. In addition, children with the disability have the problem of imperfect inability to read, spelling or failing to do mathematical calculations (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Emotional Disturbance

Children suffering from the emotional disturbance have a conditional characteristic that lasts for long duration and which affects their educational performances. Some of the characteristics emanate from the inability to interact with other children and teachers, leading to the emotional disturbance (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Traumatic Brain Injury

Children who suffer from brain injury as a result of damage by external physical force develop partial or full impairment on the psychosocial functions, reducing their educational performances (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Speech or Language Impairment

Speech or language impairment is a problem in children that makes them to stutter or to have voice impairment which affects their learning process (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Visual Impairment

Children with this problem have poor vision, sometimes even with eye-correction problem, and adversely affects their learning process (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Deafness and Hearing Problem

Deafness disability is so severe that it affects the child in processing the linguistic information. Children with this disability have a problem in hearing, with or without amplification (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Orthopedic Impairment

Orthopedic impairment adversely affects the child’s educational performance and is caused by congenital anomaly, a form of impairment that is caused by diseases such as poliomyelitis (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Other Health Impairments

Children with other health impairments have limited strength, alertness and vitality that result in limited performance within the educational environment (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

 

Deaf Blindness

Deaf blindness results to simultaneous hearing and visual impairments, a set of impairments that causes severe developments in the child’s learning process. The Impairment is so severe that it even becomes very difficult to be accommodated by the special educational programs for either the deaf or the blind (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Multiple Disabilities

Multiple disabilities refers to simultaneous impairments such as mental retardation, blindness and orthopedic impairment, a combination of which leads to severe problems to the children with the disability when they are in schools (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Developmental Delay

IDEA state that developmental delay for children between the age of 3 and 9 results to problems such as developmental delays in cognitive functions, physical development or emotional development. Delays in such developmental domains cause problems to the children education and thus, they require special attention (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

4. How is the need for special education established?

Besides children having difficult disability problems, they may fail to academic success. As such, this discrepancy can be used to establish the need for the special education. Nevertheless, it is important to note that there are many discrepancies that can lead to the academic failure. As a result, children should take remedial and compensatory activities in order to minimize the discrepancies. When teachers’ interventions fail to work, further assistance should be brought in by special assistance teachers for further interventions. At this stage, the need for special education can be established if the student fails to respond to the validated interventions or when the interventions are too intensive or extensive to be implemented in general education (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

5. What are the responsibilities of the MDT (multidisciplinary team)?

The Multidisciplinary Team carries out the task of recognizing the children with disability problems. The team conducts, assembles, and evaluates information which they use to measure whether or not the students meet the disability conditions that have been established by the IDEA (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

6. What procedural safeguards are guaranteed by the IDEA?

Some of the procedural safeguards provided by the IDEA include parental consent, civil actions, independent educational evaluation, mediation, access to educational files, attorney’s fees and the state’s complaints procedures (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

7. What constitutes a valid assessment under the IDEA?

Some of the valid assessments include determining whether the student has the disability problem and ensuring involvement and progress of the student in the general curriculum. The special educational agencies ensure there is no racial or cultural discrimination for children with the disability problems. The techniques employed should be relevant in providing the necessary assistance to individuals determining the education of the students with disabilities (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Chapter 28: Making Accountability Decisions

8. What legal requirements for state and school district assessment and accountability systems are specified in NCLB and IDEA 2004?

The reauthorization of IDEA in 1997 law challenged the states to teach all students using same high standards. The law also required schools to be responsible towards ensuring all students were taught using the same high standards. In addition, the 1997 IDEA law introduced alternate assessments which aimed to evaluate the students’ progress in an annual reporting. The NCLB included the state to establish a system for assessment and accountability of the annual reports of performance of all students in reading, mathematics and sciences. In the year 2003, the US department introduced alternate assessment standards for measuring the performance of the students. The law required the states, individuals and school districts to know how much of the information is used to make accountability decisions (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

9. What is the difference between content and achievement standards? Why is there a current movement toward the development of common core state standards?

The academic content standards are sets of specific-knowledge and skills which the school should teach the students, showing what the students need to know and also what they are able to do. On the other hand, academic achievement standards are statements of proficiency with which the students show they have understood the standards of the academic content. However, there has been the need to move toward common core standards because the state not only wants to measure performance of the students, but also the performances of the students in the individual groups (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

10. What is an alternate assessment and why is it important?

Alternate assessments are achievement standards awhich vary in complexity from the grade-level achievement. In addition, the achievement standards apply to the general education but within the common core state standards, it permits the state to give attention to children with the most significant cognitive disabilities (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

 

11. State two important considerations in assessment for purposes of making accountability decisions.

One of the considerations is that the one accessing the data should interpret the information properly to avoid making poor judgments which can cause harm to the students. Secondly, people should recognize that students should not be evaluated using the same level of tests. It is good that students should be tested using diverse formats (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Chapter 29: Collaborative Decision-Making

12. Describe four characteristics of effective school teams.

Hard-Shared Goals and Purpose

Conflicts occur when the team members disagree on the purpose of their activities. An effective should have purpose well articulated with the team functions and all members to participate in achievement of the goals (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Articulation of The Roles and Functions of All Members

Team composition requires balancing of the need of each individual such as using team facilitators who should communicate the organizational procedures and the goals they want to achieve (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Listening to and Respecting Contributions from Every Member

Some teams tend toward the groupthink mentality which leads inaccurate group decision-making process. It is imperative that those with minority opinion be given a chance to contribute in order to enable proper functioning of the group (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

 

 

 

Balance in Structure and Flexibility During Team Meetings

The group facilitators should create a framework that will allow a chance for all the members to table their findings so as to avoid leaving out important facts (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

13. Name and describe the functions of four types of teams commonly formed in school settings.

School-wide Assistance Teams

In order to manage the large amount of students’ data, educational professionals are formed to analyze and interpret the data on students across all districts. The assistance team serves the purpose of informing the school on planning and allocation of resources (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Problem-solving Team

These types of teams are formed to help individuals and small groups to find solutions to problems experienced by students in the general education classrooms (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Child Study Team

These teams are set up to examine specific difficulties a child is experiencing and they tend to focus more on the traits contributing to the difficulties and not the instructional variables (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Multidisciplinary Teams

Theses teams are formed when the child has been selected for the special education evaluation. Their function is to identify whether a child has a disability problem in relation to the standards by the IDEA (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

14. What are some potential barriers to communicating effectively about assessment with parents? What are some ways to overcome these barriers?

Some of the problems which can limit parents’ understanding of the assessment information include language barriers, lack of scheduled time to participate in school meetings and Intimidation by the school professionals. In addition, parents develop strong emotional reactions especially when their children fail in academic performance, which leads to subjective decision-making process. However, there are various strategies the administration can use to overcome these problems such as:

Communicating with Parents More Often

Some parents are not informed of the performances of their children until they are called upon for the special education meetings. When this happens, they get into an emotional reaction that leads to unnecessary conflict. As a result, parents should be informed about their children’s performances from the beginning of the enrollment so that they can get involved in case the children performances start declining (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Communicating to Parents about Both The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Child

Some parents will overvalue the child’s strength relative to their weaknesses. Therefore, as a team, both the strengths and the weaknesses of the child should be addressed in order to facilitate creative problem-solving process (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Be Sensitive to Cultural Practices that can Lead to Distortion of the Assessment Information

It is important to understand the cultural background of the students and the educational aspect so that to avoid conflict with the parents when conveying the assessment information. It may even be necessary to understand the language differences of the parents so that one can identify issues which can be cultural in nature (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

15. What are some ways in which assessment information is communicated in written form in schools? What are the rules governing who has access to this information?

Considerable amount of data can be collected and recorded for the purpose of reporting the result to the communities, the states and the federal agencies. Some of the methods used to communicate the assessment information in written form include the school-wide screening. Under the school-wide screening, the school administration can use vision and hearing screening program, and academic screening and monitoring program (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

Apart from collecting and preparing the assessment information, there are three basic principles which are used to govern who has access to this information. First, the retention of the students’ information should be held over a specific period of time. Secondly, parents should be given the right to inspect and amend the pupil’s information. Thirdly, the administration should guarantee that there will be protection against inappropriate snooping of the student’s information (Salvia, Ysseldyke & Bolt, 2013).

References

Salvia, J., Ysseldyke, J.E., & Bolt, S. (2013).Assessment in special and inclusive education. 12th Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

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