1. Eligibility Decisions
• Recognized Disabilities
– autism
– mental retardation
– specific learning disability
– emotional disturbance
– traumatic brain injury
– speech or language impairment
– visual impairment
– deafness and hearing impairment
– orthopedic impairments
– other health impairments
– deaf–blindness
– multiple disabilities
– developmental delay

2. Eligibility Decisions
• Procedures for identification of a student with
disability by IDEA
– Group of qualified professions + parent(s)
– Rule outs: lack of appropriate instruction in core
area or limited English proficiency
– Must use information from a variety of sources
– All sources of information must be documented
and considered

3. Autism
• A developmental disability significantly
affecting verbal and nonverbal
communication and social interaction,
generally evident before age 3, that adversely
affects a child’s educational performance
• How autism is diagnosed?

4. Mental Retardation
• A significantly subaverage general intellectual
functioning, existing concurrently with deficits
in adaptive behavior and manifested during
the developmental period, that adversely
affects a child’s educational performance.
• How Mental Retardation is diagnosed?

5. Learning Disability
• Inadequate achievement for the child’s age or
not meeting state-approved grade-level
standards in one or more of the following areas,
when provided with learning experiences and
instruction appropriate for the child’s age or
State-approved grade–level standards: oral
expression, listening comprehension, written
expression, basic reading skills, reading fluency
skills, reading comprehension, mathematics
calculation, [or] mathematics problem
• How is learning disability diagnosed?

6. Emotional Disturbance
• A condition with 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: (1) inability to learn not
explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors; (2)
inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal
relationships with peers and teachers; (3)
inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under
normal circumstances; (4) general pervasive mood of
unhappiness or depression; (5) tendency to develop
physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or
school problems.
• How is emotional disturbance diagnosed?

7. Traumatic Brain Injury
• an acquired injury to the brain caused by an external
physical force, resulting in total or partial functional
disability and/or psychosocial impairment that adversely
affects a child’s educational performance. Traumatic brain
injury includes open or closed head injuries resulting in
impairments in one or more areas (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,
• How is Traumatic Brain Injury diagnosed?

8. Speech or Language Impairment
• A communication disorder, such as stuttering,
impaired articulation, a language impairment,
or a voice impairment, that adversely affects a
child’s educational performance.
• How is Speech or Language Impairment
diagnosed

9. Deafness and Hearing Impairment
• an impairment in hearing so severe that the
child is impaired in processing linguistic
information through hearing, with or without
amplification, and that adversely affects a
child’s educational performance
• How is deafness and hearing impairment
diagnosed?

10. Orthopedic Impairment
• An orthopedic impairment severely affects a
child’s educational performance. The term
includes impairments caused by a congenital
anomaly, by disease (such as poliomyelitis and
bone tuberculosis), and from other causes
(such as cerebral palsy, amputations, and
fractures or burns that cause contractures)
• How are orthopedic impairments diagnosed?

11. Visual Impairment
• An impairment in vision that, even with
correction, adversely affects a child’s
educational performance. The term includes
both partial sight and blindness.
• How is visual impairment diagnosed?

12. Other Health Impairments
• 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 (i) 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 (ii) adversely affects a child’s
educational performance
• How are other health impairments diagnosed?

13. Deaf-Blindness
• 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
• How is deaf-blindness diagnosed?

14. Multiple Disabilities
• 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. The term does not include deaf–
blindness.
• How are multiple disabilities diagnosed?

15. Developmental Delay
• Children, ages of 3 and 9 years, who (1)need
special education and (2) are experiencing
developmental delays, in one or more of the
following areas: physical development, cognitive
development, communication development,
social or emotional development, or adaptive
development
• How are developmental delays diagnosed?

16. Establishing the Need for Special
Education
• Student fails to meet expectations – academic
or behavioral
• With remedial or compensatory education,
student still fails to meet expectations OR
• Student meets expectations, but the
interventions are too intensive or extensive
for general education to provide

17. Multidisciplinary Team
• Team composition
• Team responsibilities

18. Determining Eligibility
• Procedural Safeguards
– Independent evaluation, prior written notice, consent, access to
records, due process and appeal, attorney fees, complaint
procedures
• Valid Assessments
– Does student have a disability
– Student’s involvement in the general curriculum
– Assessment is not racially or culturally discriminatory
– Assessments administered in child’s native language
– Valid for the specific student
– Assesses specific areas of educational need
– Relevant to the diagnostic process

19. Team Process
• Process to be followed by the team
– Review existing data
– Gather new data
– Determine if child has a disability
– Write evaluation report

20. Problems in Determining Eligibility
• Special education is NOT for students who
would benefit from it; it is for students with
disabilities who need it.
• Federal and state definitions of disability are
imprecise.
• Disabilities are not discrete. Students
frequently have more than one in varying
degrees.
• Parents have label preferences