Embedded Files
Brief Overview of the Referral, Assessment, Eligibility, and IEP Process
1. Parent submits a written request for a special education assessment which outlines all concerns and areas of suspected disability.
2. The school psychologist will review the referral and formally respond within 15 days of the receipt of the written request.
3. If appropriate, the school psychologist will present the parent with an Assessment Plan which outlines all areas to be assessed.
4. Parents have 15 days to review the proposed Assessment Plan and determine whether to sign and provide consent.
5. The school has 60 days from the receipt of the signed Assessment Plan to complete the special education assessment.
6. The school will schedule an Individualized Educational Program (IEP) meeting to review the assessment results within the 60-day timeline. The IEP team consists of a school administrator, education specialist, parent, general education teacher, school psychologist, and any other assessor such as an occupational therapist or speech/language pathologist.
7. At the IEP meeting, the assessment team will review the eligibility criteria for the areas of suspected disability and determine if the student requires special education services.
8. If the student requires special education services, the IEP team will develop an IEP. The IEP is a relatively long and detailed document which outlines the student’s individualized education needs. In short, the IEP helps document the type of disability, areas of needs, accommodations, and curriculum modifications.
9. IEP Maintenance:
a. Annual IEP: The IEP team will meet at least once a year to review the child’s progress and make any necessary adjustments to the IEP.
b. Triennial IEP: The IEP team will meet at least once every three years to reevaluate the child’s need for special education and related services.
The 13 Disability Categories of IDEA
Summary of Title 5. California Code of Regulations §3030. Eligibility Criteria
1. AUTISM (AUT)
Autism means a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. Other characteristics often associated with autism are engagement in repetitive activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences. Autism does not apply if a child’s educational performance is adversely affected primarily because the child has an emotional disturbance.
2. DEAF-BLINDNESS (DB)
Deaf-blindness means concomitant hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for children with deafness or children with blindness.
3. DEAFNESS (DF)
Deafness means a hearing impairment that is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
4. EMOTIONAL DISTURBANCE (ED)
Emotional disturbance means a condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s educational performance: (A) An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors. (B) An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers. (C) Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances. (D) A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression. (E) A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems. (F) Emotional disturbance includes schizophrenia. The term does not apply to children who are socially maladjusted.
5. HEARING IMPAIRMENT (HI)
Hearing impairment means an impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance but that is not included under the definition of deafness in this section.
6. INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY (ID)
Mental retardation means significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
7. MULTIPLE DISABILITIES (MD)
Multiple disabilities means concomitant impairments (such as mental retardation-blindness or mental retardation-orthopedic impairment), the combination of which causes such severe educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments. Multiple disabilities does not include deaf-blindness.
8. ORTHOPEDIC IMPAIRMENT (OI)
Orthopedic impairment means a severe orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The term includes impairments caused by a congenital anomaly, impairments caused by disease (e.g., poliomyelitis, bone tuberculosis), and impairments from other causes (e.g., cerebral palsy, amputations, and fractures or burns that cause contractures).
9. OTHER HEALTH IMPAIRMENT (OHI)
Other health impairment means having limited strength, vitality, or alertness, including a heightened alertness to environmental stimuli, that results in limited alertness with respect to the educational environment, that is due to chronic or acute health problems such as asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, sickle cell anemia, and Tourette syndrome and adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
10. SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITY (SLD)
Specific learning disability means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The basic psychological processes include attention, visual processing, auditory processing, sensory-motor skills, cognitive abilities including association, conceptualization and expression. Specific learning disability does not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
11. SPEECH AND LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT (SLI)
Language or speech disorder means an articulation disorder, abnormal voice, fluency disorder, and/or a language disorder, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
12. TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY (TBI)
Traumatic brain injury means an acquired injury to the brain caused by an external physical force, resulting in total or partial functional disability or psychosocial impairment, or both, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. Traumatic brain injury applies to open or closed head injuries resulting in impairments in one or more areas, such as cognition; language; memory; attention; reasoning; abstract thinking; judgment; problem-solving; sensory, perceptual, and motor abilities; psychosocial behavior; physical functions; information processing; and speech. Traumatic brain injury does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital or degenerative, or to brain injuries induced by birth trauma.
13. VISUAL IMPAIRMENT (VI)
Visual impairment including blindness means an impairment in vision that, even with correction, adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The term includes both partial sight and blindness.
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