WHAT YOU CAN DO : SPECIAL ED EVALUATIONS
Special education evaluation is a process where a multidisciplinary team of school educators, evaluates a child's abilities, cognitive skills, and achievement or academic skills of children who are struggling. The process begins with parent consent to conduct the evaluation. Consent to evaluate for the parent comes with information about the rights of their child and their family in the process. This includes the ability to:
- stop the evaluation at any time
- serve as a team member of the team and ask questions at any time
- receive the information in their native language
- bring an advocate
- provide information about their child to the team
- have due process under the law if they don't agree on the services offered
- remove the child from special education at any time
- request a meeting at any time
- expect collaboration and delivery of bilingual or ESL services and specially designed instruction & special education-related services (i.e. speech and language services, occupational services, physical therapy, adaptive physical education, interpretation services, assistive technology, etc.)
Once the parents consent, the special education evaluation and eligibility team begins a variety of assessment processes to gather data, information, and student work samples to make a decision as to whether or not the student will need specially designed instruction and other special education services. The school and team have 45 days to complete the process and come together in what they call, a special education eligibility for a disability meet
ing. During the 45-day evaluation process, the different educators will meet with the child and the family. It is important for families to share information about developmental milestones, like when your child began speaking, what language does he speak at home, what kinds of surgeries or health issues (e.g. ear infections, speech delays, etc.) the child may have, and other family information, like what is the composition of your family, who does the child live with, what kind of activities does the child enjoy and your overall vision for your child’s future. Families should also be asked about their life goals for their child, such as your hope to have your child speak their native language, and be bilingual, bi-literate and bi-cultural. Appropriate educational program options (dual language or two-way bilingual programs, one-way bilingual programs, ESL, etc.), should help the child reach the education goals. For families where English is not their home language, the school must provide a translator or interpreter. If your child is bilingual or multilingual, the school should observe the student in different school settings, and tested in his/her home language and English. If the child receives support from a bilingual teacher or an English as a second language teacher, those teachers must also be present and provide feedback about the child’s progress in learning English. In many cases this is not done, and students could appear to have a disability when it is a language difference. Note that even when your child may not be learning to read in your home language, it is important to understand how much home language he/she knows and how he learns at home as a comparison to his/her learning process in the school. This will determine if the challenges are present in the home language and English or just in English. Typically, when children experience difficulties in both languages it may be due to a disability, but often times it is just a matter of how much English vocabulary they understand in the classroom. In this case, bilingual supports would be added and more observations will be done to see the
ATTENDANCE MANDATORY: "If the child receives support from a bilingual teacher or an English as a second language teacher, they must also be present and provide feedback about the child's progress in learning English. Otherwise, students could appear to have a disability when it is a language difference. "
