Chapter 3 – Determining Special Education Eligibility
According to the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act (IDEA; 2004), local education agencies (LEA) must conduct and complete an individualized evaluation of a student before any special education services are provided. This evaluation process can be initiated by the school or a student’s parent or guardian. While a school may refuse to conduct an evaluation after a parent or guardian request, they must do so by providing a “prior written notice” explaining their decision, and parents must be provided their rights, to include appealing the decision. However, if the process is initiated, special education services are determined after a thorough evaluation of a student’s needs. The evaluation process alone does not guarantee special education services, but serves as a way to learn about a student’s strengths and needs.
Evaluation tools should be deliberately selected based on the individual student. These assessments may include tests, rating scales, inventories, questionnaires, observations, or formative assessment sources and target cognitive, adaptive, and/ or language skills (Walker et al., 2021). The evaluation process is critical because accurate evaluation and interpretation of results ensures that students who need specialized instruction not only receive support, but receive the correct support to meet their individualized needs. When testing or interpretation of assessments is invalid, inaccurate outcomes may prevent students from receiving needed services, misidentify services, or unnecessarily identify students and create labels that are potentially stigmatizing or marginalizing. Overidentification may also lead to poorer outcomes for some students, especially if expectations are shifted or lowered in response to misuse or misinterpretation of assessments.
Fortunately, several legal safeguards exist, outlining the eligibility process. The first procedural safeguard to support students during the eligibility process is informed consent. Prior to assessing students for special education, schools must receive informed consent from the students’ parents or guardians. This consent must include a description of the evaluation procedures and should be in the parent or guardian’s preferred language. Consent is voluntary and can be revoked at any time, and consent must be in writing. Without this consent, no student can be assessed for services unless the LEA goes through due process or mediation to override the parent or guardian’s decision (Yell et al., 2022). In Virginia, once the evaluation process has been set in motion with parent or guardian consent, the team, or LEA, has 65 business days to complete all testing and determine eligibility.
The ultimate goal of the evaluation process is to determine if a student has a disability, as outlined in IDEA (2004) and what, if any, services a team might need to support a student through an Individualized Education Program (IEP). Therefore the assessment process, both legally and ethically, should be multidisciplinary, non-discriminatory, and collaborative. Once the evaluation assessments are complete, the team discussion must include required members of an IEP team and must include individuals who can interpret assessment results. Existing data should also be reviewed, and this may include work samples, input from parents or guardians, observations, discipline reports, Response to Intervention (RtI) screening, medical or health records, attendance reports, outside evaluations or reports, report cards, ongoing assessments, or the student’s educational record. All data sources are important since no one source can be used for decision making.
At the eligibility meeting, the IEP team must determine if the student meets specific criteria for a disability. Each disability category criteria is outlined in state and school district documents and based on definitions established in IDEA. Guidance also exists for exclusionary factors that may impact a student’s eligibility for specific disability categories. At the meeting, documentation for eligibility must be provided that indicates the presence of a disability, an adverse impact on educational performance, and the need for specialized instruction. The discussion about these criteria should be documented in the form of notes, to include the final determination about eligibility. Overall, the team should aim for consensus, but when this cannot be reached, all team member’s statements should be documented. It is the responsibility of the school division to make a decision based on regulations and data. At the Virginia state level, the Virginia Department of Education’s Evaluation and Eligibility for Special Education and Related Services Guidance Document is a valuable resource www.doe.virginia.gov.docx (live.com) for understanding the requirements of referral, evaluation, and eligibility.
The case study that follows provides the documentation completed as Amari Clayton’s school team worked through the processes involved in referring a student for evaluation, determining if evaluation was needed, and obtaining parental consent for evaluation. Subsequent documents include the reports generated by various school team members to document assessment outcomes.