Section 4: Specific Learning Disability (SLD) Decision Making

Steps in the Special Education Evaluation Process

The steps required in the process for identifying students with a Specific Learning Disability include the following:

1. Referral for an Evaluation (SST)

Team, which includes parents/guardians, meets to analyze data and determine whether or not to pursue an evaluation (teams can decide to continue interventions, intensify interventions, and/or evaluate patterns of strengths and weaknesses).

2. Comprehensive Evaluation

Varies based on student need.

3. Eligibility Determination Meeting

Team meets to consider eligibility and need for special education.

1. Referral for Evaluation of a Specific Learning Disability

When should a referral occur?

Referral for an evaluation for a Specific Learning Disability should occur when a school team or parent/guardian suspects a student has a disability. Suspicion of a disability should be based on research-based assessment data indicating that a student is not making sufficient progress despite receiving intensive interventions delivered with fidelity, and when their skills are low compared to their same aged peers. Children’s progress should be compared to district norms to help with this decision.

For students who are emerging bilinguals, please refer to Bethel’s CLD Student Data Organizer.

Who should make the referral?

Typically, either the Student Support Team (SST) or parent/guardian makes the referral request. It is not best practice to have individual teachers make referral requests as the referral should be a team process. Parents/guardians may request a referral for an evaluation at any time during the RtIi process. Legally, teams must respond to a parent referral by conducting a Student Support Team (SST) meeting to examine the data and any support provided to the student to determine if a Comprehensive Evaluation is warranted. The interventionist, who was assigned when the student moved to the individualized intervention (SAT) stage, should schedule the SST meeting.

What should be included in the referral?

The interventionist should gather all the existing data documenting the interventions the student has received, including the SIV document, progress monitoring graphs, file review information, SAT form, along with any other classroom or state assessment information that is relevant. The special educator is responsible for the Special Education Referral Form and Prior Notice of Evaluation Consent.

2. SST Meeting

When does a SST Meeting occur?

The SST meeting should be scheduled within 4 weeks’ time of the date of request.

Who should attend the SST Meeting?

All staff that has information relevant to the student should be at the SST Meeting. Typically, the teacher, parents/guardians, special education teacher, school psychologist and/or counselor, principal, and other specialists, depending upon area of concern, should attend.

What decisions are made at the SST Meeting?

Two decisions need to be made at the SST Meeting: 1) The team needs to determine whether or not a student needs to have a Comprehensive Evaluation to determine if the student is eligible to receive special education services, and 2) if a Comprehensive Evaluation needs to be conducted, what assessments need to be given.

These decisions are made by looking at all the data regarding interventions documented at the referral stage, along with additional input from the classroom teacher, parents/guardians, and any other staff who have relevant knowledge about the student. The team uses the data to determine whether the student has low skills compared to their peers, whether the student has made slow progress despite receiving intensive interventions, and whether or not the student may need specially designed instruction to make sufficient progress. If the team decides that a Comprehensive Evaluation should be conducted, the examiner discusses which additional assessments should be administered, if any, and parents/guardians sign the appropriate Consent for Evaluation Form, indicating their agreement or refusal. A Comprehensive Evaluation must be completed within 60 school days.

3. Comprehensive Evaluation for a Specific Learning Disability

What is a Comprehensive Evaluation?

According to the Oregon Administrative Rules (581-015-2000), "evaluation" means procedures used to determine whether the child has a disability, and the nature and extent of the special education and related services that the child needs.

According to OAR (581-015-2110), a district must do the following when conducting an evaluation:

(a) Use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to gather relevant functional, developmental, and academic information about the child, including information provided by the parent that may assist in determining:

• Whether the child is a child with a disability under OAR 581-015-2130 through 581-015-2180; and

• The content of the child's IEP, including information related to enabling the child to be involved in and progress in the general education curriculum (or for a preschool child, to participate in appropriate activities);

(b) Not use any single measure or assessment as the sole criterion for determining whether a child is a child with a disability and for determining an appropriate educational program for the child; and

(c) Use technically sound instruments that may assess the relative contribution of cognitive and behavioral factors, in addition to physical or developmental factors.

The Oregon Administrative Rules (581-015-2110) also indicate that a district must ensure:

(d) The child is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, if appropriate, health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities;

(e) The evaluation is sufficiently comprehensive to identify all of the child's special education and related services needs, whether or not commonly linked to the disability category in which the child has been classified; and

(f) The evaluation includes assessment tools and strategies that provide relevant information that directly assists persons in determining the educational needs of the child.

The Oregon Administrative Rules clearly indicate that a Comprehensive Evaluation for SLD must rely on multiple sources of assessment/information that are useful in determining all of the student’s educational needs. The OARs specify some of the assessments/information (components) that need to be gathered during the evaluation. They also provide examples of optional assessment/information gathering tools that may be used only when there is an indicated need for such assessments/information gathering tools.

What are the components of a Comprehensive Evaluation for SLD regardless of the method (RtIi or PSW)? (Oregon Administrative Rules, 581-015-2170)

1. Academic assessment

2. Review of records

3. Observation (including general education setting)

4. Progress monitoring data

5. Data that demonstrate that before, or as part of, the referral process, the child was provided appropriate instruction in general education settings

6. Data-based documentation of repeated assessments of achievement at reasonable intervals reflecting formal assessment of student progress that is directly linked to instruction.

• RtIi procedures (see below)

• PSW procedures

g. Other:

• If needed, developmental history

• If needed, an assessment of cognition, etc.

• If needed, a medical statement

• Any other assessments to determine impact of disability

*Procedures for conducting a Comprehensive Evaluation using RtIi

(Oregon Administrative Rules, 581-015-2170)

When using a RtIi model the following must also be done:

(A) The type, intensity, and duration of scientific, research-based instructional intervention(s) provided, in accordance with the district’s response to intervention model;

(B) The student’s rate of progress during the instructional intervention(s);

(C) A comparison of the student’s rate of progress to expected rates of progress;

(D) Progress monitoring on a schedule that:

(i) Allows a comparison of the student’s progress to the performance of peers;

(ii) Is appropriate to the student’s age and grade placement;

(iii) Is appropriate to the content monitored; and

(iv) Allows for interpretation of the effectiveness of intervention.

When using a RtIi model for identifying students with SLD, a team must conduct a comprehensive evaluation. Districts and/or schools sometimes mistakenly believe that teams only look at progress monitoring data when conducting a SLD evaluation using RtIi. This is not appropriate practice, nor does it follow federal or state guidelines. Districts must have their school teams conduct “Comprehensive Evaluations” that meet state and federal guidelines and address all areas of suspected disability and identify the student’s educational needs.

Bethel uses a Pattern of Strengths and Weaknesses model to evaluate for special education eligibility in the areas of math and writing. An assessment of cognitive ability is required for an SLD evaluation if the team is considering eligibility in math and/or writing. Please see Special Education Manual.

4. Eligibility Determination

How do you determine if a student is eligible for special education services as a student under the category of SLD using an RtIi model?

To be an eligible student, a team must consider these four primary elements;

(1) have low skills as compared to same aged peers,

(2) make slow progress despite receiving intensive interventions matched to the student’s need, and

(3) have a need for specially designed instruction to make adequate progress. In addition,

(4) any exclusionary factors that could explain the student’s skill level and progress must be ruled out.

What constitutes “significantly” low skills?

Assessments that are reliable and valid indicators of a student’s academic skills can be considered for use to evaluate if a student is demonstrating low skills compared to the student’s same aged peers. When examining if a student has low skills, it is important to also examine the intensity of the intervention support that the student is receiving.

The following assessment types; Curriculum Based Measures, SBAC, Norm Referenced Achievement Tests, and classroom based assessments are provided as examples with guidelines to determine if a student’s skills are significantly low compared to their same aged peers. These guidelines assume that the student has been provided with appropriate core instruction and intensive research based interventions (i.e., 5 times a day for at “least” 30 minutes) with fidelity.

How do you describe low skills in the evaluation report?

A description of the following should be used, indicating that a student has low skills in an evaluation report:

1. Student’s level of performance

– CBMs, SBAC, Standardized assessments (e.g., WJ-IV Ach, WIAT-III, etc.), Core

Program assessments

2. Expected level of performance

– Benchmarks, Local norm, National norm

3. Magnitude of the discrepancy

– Pattern of discrepant scores over time, difference score, percentile rank as compared to average range, etc.

What constitutes slow progress?

To examine whether a student is making slow progress, the team should look at curriculum-based measurement data from research based progress monitoring assessments (e.g., DIBELS) and examine the intensity of the intervention. The team should review the CBM data from all of the student’s previous research based instructional supports (core instruction and interventions- at least 2 interventions should have been provided) and determine if the student’s progress has consistently been slow. Typically, progress monitoring data are evaluated according to the following guidelines for supporting eligibility determination:

· If a student has four consecutive data points below the goal line during their last intervention;

· If the student’s trendline will not meet their goal line in a reasonable amount of time;

· If a student is not making similar or more than expected progress compared to the growth rate of their same aged peers;

· If the student is not making similar or more than expected progress compared to national growth rates (e.g., Fuchs et al, 1993).

How do you describe slow progress in the evaluation report?

For each intervention provided, the evaluation report should describe the following:

• Student rate of progress

• Expected rate of progress

• A description of the intervention

• What intervention strategies resulted in the largest amount of growth

• Fidelity data from observations of instruction

What constitutes an instructional need?

To qualify for special education services, a student also needs to have an instructional need for specially designed instruction (SDI). SDI is defined as the delivery, content, and/or methodology of instruction being intensified or differentiated for a student to make adequate progress.

It is important to examine the intensity of the intervention in relation to the amount of progress that a student is making. If a student is making some progress but can only make the progress with an on-going intensive intervention, then that may support the criteria for having a Specific Learning Disability.

What are exclusionary factors?

The team needs to examine exclusionary factors to determine if the student’s lack of achievement is primarily due to other factors. The following areas must be examined:

a) A visual, hearing, or motor impairment, intellectual disability, emotional disturbance, cultural factors, or environmental or economic disadvantage

b) A lack of appropriate instruction in reading, including the essential components of reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, reading fluency/oral reading skills, and reading comprehension strategies).

c) A lack of appropriate instruction in math.

d) Limited English proficiency.

Teams sometimes have a difficult time determining if appropriate instruction has been provided for the student in the general education setting. Teams can consider the following sources of information to determine if the student was provided with appropriate instruction: CBM benchmark data, core curriculum assessment data, attendance data, progress monitoring data, observations, and interviews with the teacher and parent.