PARENT FOCUS

Your child is unique! Each child has strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. Our team believes in having high expectations for ALL students. We also believe that identifying the specific educational needs of each student leads to focused and targeted programming with improved student outcomes for learning and life skills. Our team has years of experience in working with individuals from preschool aged children, 2-3 years old to young adult, 22 years old, with low incidence disabilities such as autism, vision loss, hearing loss, communication disabilities, and multiple disabilities.

A referral for testing to the Educational Assessment Team (EAT) comes from the school district where your child would attend school. The school district maintains all responsibility for identification of a student's needs (Child Find) and providing a free and appropriate public education (FAPE).

The EAT can provide additional information on the specific educational needs of your child and the implications those needs may have on the instruction and progress monitoring of your student. We work collaboratively with local school district teams including IEP and ETR teams to evaluate your child's specific abilities and skills. The educational team for the student (IEP, ETR or similar team), including you as the parent/guardian meets to decide what assessments are needed in a planning meeting. The team determines who will conduct each assessment(s) which may include a combination of school district personnel and a professional, may be more than one professional, from the EAT to conduct specialized assessments to address the areas of concern.

If you think your team may be interested in a possible referral, please contact us before your planning meeting at (937) 236-9965 to discuss your needs. We are always happy to talk to families even though the referral itself must be completed by your local school district representative.

If your school team has already completed a multifactored evaluation and there is disagreement about the content or about special education eligibility, Ohio's "A Guide to Parent Rights in Special Education" procedural safeguards outline the Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) process when this disagreement occurs. The MCESC Regional Center Educational Assessment Team is able to provide an unbiased, outside evaluation information to teams who are working to find agreement and direction for individual student programming.