Competence and Confidence Partners
in Policymaking (C2P2): Family
Leadership for Inclusive Education in
Non-Traditional Settings
February 2015: Understanding Evaluations: What Do the Results
Mean for Your Child? with PRESENTER Annemarie Clarke,
Corporate Officer, SPIN
TRANSCRIPT
^B00:00:31
>> Good evening. Welcome to Competence and Confidence Partnership
in Policymaking Family Leadership for Inclusive Education in NonTraditional Settings. Or as we call it, fondly C2P2FL. My name is Cathy
Roccia-Meier. I am the project coordinator for this program. We are going
to have our understanding evaluations training tonight. What do the results
mean for my child? With Annemarie Clark, PhD, corporate officer from
SPIN. A little information about C2P2 Family Leadership. It of course is
brought to you by the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University. And our
funding comes from the Pennsylvania Developmental Disability Council.
Just some little basics about our program. It is designed to support
families, and inclusive education in nontraditional settings, which include
home schools, cyber charter schools, charter schools, private schools, and
parochial schools. Of course all of our sessions have relevance to all
individuals with disabilities. A little more information. We also, our project
includes online leadership development training which is what you're
participating now. We also offer free one-on-one parent consultant support
from our trained parent consultants with PEAC, online resources, and we
are having an upcoming live session in the spring of 2015. Here are a list
of just some of the available archives that we have, webinars that we have
archived on our site. If you look at the bottom you can see the address that
you can't go to. You can always Google it, Institute on Disabilities at
Temple University. We are under Programs for Family Leadership. And
you can see all of the past webinars that we've had over the last few years.
In addition to the webinars, the PowerPoints, other supporting materials are
available at that location. And as you can see we've had several different
topics as well. Additionally, our next save the dates is our next is our next
webinar Wednesday which is the same date in March, March 18th. At this
time we are going to be doing a session on cyber safety. It's going to be a
really interesting, exciting session for all of our families. We're also adding
a new component to this program. As you see we have an email address
listed there cybersafetyC2P2FL @templeuniversity.edu. And we are going
to be taking your questions up until March 17th. So at any point throughout
the next month. Please send us your question. Whatever your area of
concern is thoughts or interests. We're going to collect them and answer
them online at the next session. It will also help guide our session to make
sure you're getting the most out of the session and the information that you
really need. And we are following up this year with our live event a
transitions forum at Visions for Equality in Philadelphia, May 9th. It's going
to be on secondary transitions. So if you have a child in middle school, late
elementary school, and onward this is the session for you. You're going to
get information on what you need to do to start preparing your child when
they're younger, as well as what you need to do when they get older and
when you want them to move forward. We will be taking applications for
this session and space will be limited. It will give you a great opportunity to
hear presenters as well as network with other families. So a little more
details about the components of this program. We mentioned our one on
one parent consultant program. This is through the Pennsylvania
Education for All Coalition that we collaborate with. Our parent consultants
will be matched with you to help you, assist you with any of your needs.
And some of the support that can be offered is in person, over the phone,
or over email. There is a link listed here that you can go to to complete the
form and request a parent consultant. Additionally, if you have any
questions you can always as I mentioned before, go to our website and you
can scroll through it to get to this location as well. And some of the ways
that, excuse me. Some of the ways that PEAC consultants can assist you
are listed here. Whether it be getting resources and support,
understanding your rights, going over your IEP, individualized education
plan or evaluation report, suggesting strategies attending IEP meetings.
Pretty much anything you need, we can help you support. We also have
online resources. We have a Facebook page, which is a closed group.
Again, the link is listed here and you can always reach this to our main
website. You will be accepted within a few days, and we do keep it as a
closed room so that we can comfortably speak about whatever we would
like to discuss. We hope you will join our Facebook page. We are hoping
to build a robust community of families for discussions. And some basic
housekeeping items. If you go to the Q&A box and you have a question
about tonight's topics. This is where you are going to type in your
questions. You click the question mark symbol at the top right of your
screen to open the Q&A box. And then you type your question. However,
if you have a technical question. If you're having difficulty and you need
support, you will go to the chat box at the lower portion of your screen,
select the name tech help in the menu. So again it is Q&A for questions for
our presenter and for technical support. It's the chat box. And again
tonight's webinar is understanding evaluations. What do the results mean
for my child's with Annemarie Clarke. I just want to remind everyone that at
the end of the session you are going to be asked to do a brief evaluation on
tonight's webinar. We greatly appreciate if you take the time to complete
this evaluation at helps us know what we need to do to move forward. If
you stay on your webinar as soon as the program closes your website
should go right to this survey. You will not be able to click on the survey in
the screen. It will automatically take you there. Additionally, after the
session we will be emailing everyone with information about the session,
including notice that the PowerPoint will be upgraded to the website as well
as the archive webinar and other documents that relate to this session. So
again, we are now going to move into Annmarie Clarke. And a little bit
about Annemarie. She is the Corporate Officer for Behavioral and
Developmental Services at SPIN, where she oversees SPIN's Philadelphia
Autism Center for Excellence. She is a licensed psychologist and a
certified school psychologist, with extensive experience working with young
children and families, particularly those impacted by autism. She obtained
her masters in counseling psychology from LaSalle University and a
doctorate in school psychology for Temple University. She taught in the
graduate psychology programs at La Salle University and Philadelphia
College of Osteopathic Medicine for almost 20 years. She served as
Commission Member on the Mayor's Blue Ribbon Commission on
Children's Behavioral Health in 2006 and 7. And currently serves on the
leadership committee for the Philadelphia Autism Project. I hope you enjoy
her fabulous presentation.
>> Cathy thank you so much for that nice introduction. Hi everybody. I'm
glad to be spending some time with you this evening. And hoping to help
you understand evaluations that your children may be receiving in different
venues. Our goals for this evening, we have about four of them, basically
what I wanted to try and do is provide an overview of different types of
evaluations that your child may be receiving. Consider how we could use
those different evaluations together more effectively, perhaps. And look at
how the results of the evaluations may link to interventions and services for
your children through either the educational system or the behavioral health
system perhaps. And then answer any questions you have about using
evaluations to support success in school and beyond for your child. So I
wanted to start with a few terms because I know over the time that I've
worked with families different terms get banded about in terms of what
exactly is an evaluation or what is an assessment. So essentially
measurement I wanted to start with. That's the basic process where we're
trying to figure out the different dimensions of an attribute. And really, if
you think about a ruler as a measurement right we're using a ruler to try to
measure the length of something and length is the attribute of an object.
So the length of a table. The length of a chair. Something like that. And in
psychology or education we also use measurement. We are using different
tools to measure different attributes that children or adolescents may be
experiencing such as reading level, math levels, and things like that.
^M00:10:05
An assessment is building on different measurement and it's a process
really, where we're gathering information to monitor progress or make
decisions about a child. And it certainly includes tests and measurements,
but it also would include observations, interviews, and things like that.
Evaluation is a piece that builds on that and sort of integrates with it and
essentially that's a process where we are looking to determine whether the
person meets any preset criteria. And that could be in this case, what we
are evaluating in schools. We are evaluating often to see if the child meets
the preset criteria for eligibility for special education or perhaps in the
behavioral health community, or the medical community. We may be
evaluating to determine whether the child meets the criteria for a particular
diagnostic assignment. So essentially, with that evaluation we're looking at
the evaluation essentially as the most complex process. We're trying to
figure out whether again as I said that child is eligible for a particular
diagnosis, or particular educational classification through the evaluation.
And related to that, then we're trying to make a determination of what kind
of services and supports would promote that child's success either within
the educational environment, or with some sort of related service that could
promote success in the educational environment. I wanted to highlight for
the listeners different types of evaluations. Because one of the things that
is important to remember when we look at evaluations is that when they are
obtained from different settings or different sort of venues such as medical
evaluation versus a behavioral health evaluation, they have different
mandates assigned to them. And we are going to talk about that in a little
bit. But basically I think for children. The three types of evaluations overall,
could be a medical evaluation a behavioral health evaluation, and an
educational evaluation. With those three primary types of evaluations
providing different information that could be useful, and could be integrated
in order to better understand a child's developmental picture and again
then make some decisions about what is useful for them within the school.
The medical evaluations if we wanted to start there are completed by a
physical health provider. So this could be a physician, such as a
pediatrician or a pediatric specialist, like a pediatric neurologist. A
developmental pediatrician or other pediatric subspecialty. It could also
include other medical providers like audiology, speech pathology,
occupational therapy, and so forth. A medical evaluation, it's important to
remember results in the assignments of a medical diagnosis if that's
appropriate. And the reason why I think it's important to talk about that is,
we are going to look at some places where medical evaluations overlap
with behavioral health evaluations and where those two diagnostic buckets
overlap a little bit. And then some places where they're very separate.
Some medical diagnoses that a child can receive or an adolescent can
receive may help qualify a student for special education eligibility. You
know, and that could be in the case of hearing impairment, a student with a
medical diagnosis of paralysis or some sort of medical diagnosis, of
traumatic brain injury, centralized auditory processing disorder or autism.
Related to that when we see a child has had an initial medical evaluation
the frequency of evaluation or excuse me up re-evaluation or a follow-up
evaluation is always determined by that medical provider. They may ask
the family to come back in six months, in a year. But basically that
physician, that medical doctor is responsible for prescribing the course of
treatment and intervention, and sometimes they will do that in conjunction
with other specialists or allied health providers. So most of us have been to
a primary care physician who then may refer us to a specialist. So again,
in the case of a child who is having some difficulty learning. You may start
with your primary care pediatrician. They may refer you perhaps to a
pediatric neurologist for some sort of neurological evaluation. They may
also then refer you to an occupational therapy or a speech therapy
evaluation. Sometimes those evaluations will then come back and inform a
course of treatment. Sometimes that could include medication or it could
include the provision of other sorts of "medically based therapy" like OT or
speech therapy. And that's done outside of the school setting. So I think
that's important to think about. And obviously the families are very, very
important there. As well as other parties along with the medical provider in
determining the course of treatment that will come with that evaluation. On
the behavioral health evaluation, this is a very, very common evaluation
that is received by many students with learning differences or behavioral
differences within the school setting. A behavioral health evaluation must
be completed by a licensed behavioral health provider. And that is typically
a licensed medical doctor or a psychiatrist, right. A psychiatrist is a
physician with a specialty and psychiatric medicine. So they would be an
MD. Or a licensed psychologist who would typically be a PhD or something
that you may see on evaluation reports that will say Psy.d, which is a psy d
degree. That's a doctorate in psychology. So a different type of clinical
doctoral licensed degree in psychology. And occasionally you might see
some license psychologist that have an EdD after their name. But the
licensed piece is the critical part here. And again I'm going to differentiate
that a little bit more when we get in to talk about school evaluations
because in order for a behavioral health evaluation to be acceptable. The
person has to be licensed in the state in which they're providing service.
That evaluation will result possibly if it is appropriate and the assignment of
a behavioral health diagnosis. There is some overlap between what's
considered a medical diagnosis and a behavioral health or physical health.
Let me restart out over there again. There is overlap in some areas
between what is considered a behavioral health diagnosis than a medical
diagnosis. And two good examples of that are autism and attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Children can receive those diagnoses
and either a medical community like a developmental pediatrician or a
developmental neurologist pediatric neurologist office. But they can also
receive those diagnoses from a licensed psychologist. Where that
diagnosis is first rendered isn't necessarily critically important as long as an
appropriate diagnosis is rendered. But the eligibility for treatment that
comes after that may be different in the medical community versus the
behavioral health community. So the course of treatment that each system
would prescribe for that child could be very, very different. And as is the
case for the medical diagnosis a behavioral health diagnosis may also help
to qualify a student for special education eligibility in conjunction with some
other factors. When you have a behavioral health evaluation, the schedule
for reevaluation required to assess the ongoing appropriateness of the
behavioral health treatment is established really by the insurance carrier.
The medical insurance carrier. So they will tell the providers that are
issuing those evaluations. How often they want them redone. Whether it's
on an annual basis. A six-month evaluation or review but basically the
insurance company kind of sets the tone or the schedule for when those reevaluations need to be done to establish the necessity of those services.
And as with most things, the determination of that is something that families
have a right to appeal or to request some reconsideration for. A couple of
things that I wanted to sort of zero in on particularly for folks and nontraditional school setting is one of the most common types of behavioral
health evaluations that parents look for for their children are evaluations
when the child has behavioral disruptions that interfering with his or her
ability to access their education. So that is typically when people seek
evaluation for Wrap-around or BHRS, which stands for Behavioral Health
Rehabilitation Services. In order for those services to be approved for a
student, the clinician and the family need to establish what is called medical
necessity for those services. Which means that the clinician needs to the
licensed clinician to be able to demonstrate some sort of higher level of
need, which is typically a health and safety threat for the child within the
school environment, if that level of care is not provided. Wrap-around
services are considered a higher level of care.
^M00:20:01
They need a prior authorization. And the evaluation is that piece that seeks
the prior authorization. The evaluation launches the bed for an
authorization of this higher level of care, medical service for this child on
the behavioral health insurance path. So that's I think the key thing to
remember there that behavioral health services are provided based on
establishing a standard of medical necessity. And I think sometimes that
gets a little confusing for families that I've heard from over the years about
what constitutes that. And that's something certainly we can discuss in
more detail with questions that people have them. Within the umbrella of
behavioral health rehabilitation services or Wrap-around services, there are
three distinct services that students can be made eligible for. One would
be a behavioral specialist consultant who would develop and oversee the
implementation of a specific behavior intervention plan that emerges from
the evaluation. So for example if a child is having a lot of difficulty with
maintaining their attention in a classroom without behavioral disruption. So
maybe they're having behavioral outbursts in the classroom. The behavior
intervention plan would have to target that behavioral goal that's identified
as part of the initial evaluation. The therapeutic staff support or the TSS is
the ongoing one-to-one behavior staff that is charged with the
implementation of that behavior plan and the collection of data that will
support the ongoing monitoring and management of that behavior plan
within the treatment protocol. And then the third service that's available
there is a service called mobile therapy which is provided by a Masters
level therapist who can provide therapy to children or their families together
to address emotional issues that are likely related to some of the problem
behaviors that the child is demonstrating that have established a necessity
for the BHRS service. Within behavioral health evaluations, the clinician
often will use standardized tests for measurement. So we're using
standardized measures to make some determination about the child's
behavior or clinical presentation. In some of, I put some of the test
acronyms here for your review that you might be seeing and reports.
There's something called the BASC-2, which is the Behavior Assessment
System for Children, Second Edition. The CBCL, which is the Child
Behavior Checklist, is often being used in the behavioral health community.
You may also see some depression or anxiety inventory that are being
utilized. The Achenbach Scale is another way that people would refer to
some other behavioral measures. And then, often times if a child has
autism or has a question of whether they have a diagnosis of autism. You
may see that behavioral health evaluation utilizing some autism specific
instruments such as something called the ADOS2 or the Autism Diagnostic
Observation Schedule, Second Edition, or the Social Responsiveness
Scale, the Social Communication Questionnaire. Those are all other types
of instruments that would be more specifically targeted to rule out a
question of a diagnosis of autism. Within the behavioral health evaluation,
the clinician is going to be integrating all the above sources of information
and along with that a patient interview talking to the child or the adolescent.
A parent interview. And wherever possible information from other providers
as well such as input from teachers, input from other professionals within
your child, you know support team, and then they will be coming to a
determination of whether the child meets diagnostic criteria for a particular
diagnosis. And once they determine whether there is a diagnosis applied
to your child within the behavioral health arena. They would be making
recommendations for behavioral health treatment across the whole
continuum of services, from least intensive to most intensive. And then
those recommendations would, of course, the also across environments.
And I think recognizing that there is a continuum of services on the
behavioral health treatment side is an important thing to remember. You
know many of you are probably familiar with the continuum of options on
the IEP side right. So obviously on the education side we are charged with
going from least restrictive to most restrictive and always providing services
in the least restrictive environment. This is sort of the corollary on the
behavioral health treatment side as well. We typically don't jump to a
highly restrictive or intensive progress. Unless we have some data that
suggest that that is necessary, without trying something that could be least
restrictive or intrusive, such as an outpatient service or outpatient group
social skill or something like that. So the full continuum on the behavioral
health site extends from outpatient services which don't require prior
authorization all the way up to inpatient hospitalization or residential
treatment. So essentially we are charged as licensed clinicians with
establishing that standard of medical necessity for each level of care that
we are recommending other than outpatient. So I mentioned this a little bit
earlier but the full evaluation should, a good evaluation. If you're looking at
evaluations that your children have received. Hopefully you are getting
high quality evaluations. That would include a review of prior records, both
behavioral health records and hopefully an integration of some educational
records or any other medical reports that your child may have from medical
specialties that could be relative relevant to behavioral health presentation.
As I mentioned also a clinical interview with the child or adolescent in the
family. Observation of their behavior within the clinic setting. And if we are
able to get information about how that person behaves otherwise. But the
behavioral observation within the clinic setting, you may sometimes see
within the reports refer to as mental status exam. That's a key element that
has to be included in every behavioral health evaluation. And then there
will also be a review of psychosocial history. The family history and this is
important. That would include a review of the family's behavioral health
disorders as well, along with the child or adolescent immunity involvement
or educational history. If they're an older child and perhaps they have a
part-time job. Anything that would be related to occupation social
relationships with friends and siblings, and so forth. I want to go back to
the part where I mentioned that it has to include a review of the family's
behavioral health and educational history as well. And I know that within
my clinical experience. This is an area where I have a lot of questions from
families. "Why are you asking me some questions about myself, my
husband, my aunt, my uncle, when I'm here to be evaluated for my child?"
And I think kind of like we know on the medical health site that when you
have a parent with heart disease or cancer we become much more at risk
for heart disease or cancer as their biological relatives. The same is true
with behavioral health disorders. If you're presenting with a child with a
behavioral health concerns whether it's a developmental disability concerns
like autism or something like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or
depression anxiety. It is critically important that the diagnostician has all
the information about what other people in your family may have struggled
with. Because that helps us to our differential diagnosis in terms of figuring
out what risk factors may be in play for your child. Diagnostically, in terms
of behavioral data. So it gives us a nice framework for interpreting the
behavioral data, the testing data that we are getting. So I would urge
people to be honest and frank when you are participating in a behavioral
health evaluation. And to be as candid as possible with the interviewer and
revealing as much as you can about you know all the things that you know
about the medical history of your family. So I want to switch finally to the
third type of evaluation which would be an educational evaluation.
Educational evaluations are completed by certified school psychologist and
other school personnel. And I think that's important to recognize again how
these personnel may differ in part from a licensed psychologist. Some
school psychologists who are certified are also licensed psychologist. But
they do not have to be. So for this reason with any school setting, for
example, most schools will not be doing an initial diagnosis of autism.
They may be doing and educational classification of that but they may not
be doing the diagnosis because we can't do it within the school setting;
they can assign the medical or the behavioral health diagnosis of autism
unless they have a license. So that is an important thing. I think for
families to recognize and tease apart when they are looking at their
evaluations. Other school personnel such as regular education teachers,
special education teachers, behavioral specialist, or other school based
allied health providers, like occupational therapist, physical therapist, and
speech therapist can also participate within an educational evaluation
depending upon the referral question for that child.
^M00:30:16
An initial evaluation to determine educational eligibility for special education
results in the school evaluation or the educational evaluation determining
whether that child's needs that two-part criteria that make them eligible for
special education services. And I'm hoping most people may be familiar
but I want to just review that because I think that this is very, very
important. A child in order to be eligible for special education, which means
in order to be eligible to have an IEP within a school system, a child's
educational evaluation has to determine that that child has a recognized
educational disability and requires specially designed instruction or special
education services to make progress in the regular education curriculum.
That two-part criteria have to be met. And were going to talk about that
little more in a minute. So the initial evaluation decides whether that child,
or determines excuse me, whether that child meets eligibility criteria for
special education. And then if that child does meet begin eligibility and a
special education course there is a re-evaluation that is required on a
prescribed schedule. And that is every two years. If the educational
classification is intellectual disability or every three years for a student who
is classified under any other educational classification. I wanted again for
folks who may not be fully familiar with what the whole range of educational
disability classifications are. I just wanted to list them here for you and just
briefly explain what they would be. Intellectual disability is a cognitive
disability where a child overall IQ would fall at or below 70. An IQ score of
70 is measured by an IQ test of one kind of another. Serious emotional
disturbance is another educational disability classification that would be for
children with chronic behavioral health, disabilities. It could be for children
with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, other acute behavioral health
disorders, conduct disorder, and so forth. Orthopedic impairment is for
students with physical disabilities. Perhaps students with paralysis or who
require some sort of physical mobility support. Wheelchair, crutches,
things like that. Hearing impairment and deafness I think is fairly selfexplanatory, as well as speech and language, impairment in visual
impairment, including blindness. Autism obviously again I think is really for
any students who have received an autism spectrum diagnosis. That
would be there classification. Traumatic brain injury could be for a student
that has some sort of brain-based injury, whether that would be a prenatal
or an early childhood brain injury. So either a congenital or an acquired
brain injury such as an in utero stroke or God forbid you know a serious fall
gunshot wound something like that. That would result in a traumatic brain
injury. Other health impairment is a broad category within which students
can classify for educational disability if they have a physical or a medical
condition such as, and ADHD falls into this category, that would result in
difficulties accessing their education. Even this could be applied to a
student with a very, very serious physical health condition. Perhaps a
student with sickle cell disease or a student with a chronic health condition
that has significant, significant impact on their ability to access their
education. Also in this category, listing of categories would be students
with specific learning disabilities. So this could be a disorder of written
expression, verbal expression, or mathematics. Death blindness is
something again. I think that is fairly self-explanatory. And then multiple
disabilities is the category for students that may be have more complex
support needs. So these could be students with both autism and an
intellectual disability, and intellectual disability and an orthopedic
impairment, and intellectual disability with a brain injury, traumatic brain
injury, and orthopedic impairment. So on and so forth. So they tend to be
that of students with the most complex support needs. So again, the
educational evaluation can use results from other prior medical or
behavioral health evaluation as appropriate. So an example of this would
be a child may be transitioning to kindergarten, who was recently been
diagnosed by autism, excuse me diagnosed with autism by a
developmental pediatrician and the medical community. The parent could
present to the school with that diagnostic evaluation and the school could
accept that diagnostic evaluation of the child as a person who has been
identified as being autism and not have to reevaluate whether or not the
autism is present. What they would be doing the initial evaluation on would
be integrating that diagnosis and then looking at the full package of what is
the educational meaning of that diagnosis is for that child. Similarly, if you
had a behavioral health diagnosis assigned to your child of something more
serious, a serious psychiatric disorder, or something like that. You could
present that to the school, and the school could accept the evaluation and
to integrate that along with other aspects of an educational evaluation to
figure out what exactly is the right course of special education planning that
would perhaps be necessary for that child. I think the one thing that is
always important for us to remember is the assignment of a diagnosis that
results in a child falling into an educational classification doesn't guarantee
eligibility for special education unless that second criteria, that two-part
criteria, is met. So that's something that we want to pay attention to. I'm
just looking the question that just came in that asks under the specific
learning disability classification does there need to be a specific diagnosis
that you get from a certain specialist. The specific learning disability
diagnosis or classification is typically made by a school psychologist within
the context of a school-based evaluation. So that is something that school
psychologists are acutely well trained to be able to render specific learning
disability diagnosis. So, I hope that answers your question but you don't
necessarily need an outside professional to do that. That educational
classification or diagnosis can be rendered within a school setting. Okay,
so when might a parent request an educational evaluation? And I put this
in here because not knowing who all was going to be on the call we would
want, you know I would want people to be thinking about, gee, if my child is
struggling, how do I know it's time to ask for an evaluation? And I think
these are some of the presenting problems where I would encourage you
to talk to the school about getting an educational evaluation. If the student
is having consistent problems getting along with others. Whether that is
getting along with them, specifically within the school setting or some things
in the community setting that might be carrying over into the school.
Whether they are having difficulty communicating their wants and needs, or
understanding the things that other people are saying to them definitely
want to be asking for an evaluation educationally. If the child appears to
have a lack of interest and age-appropriate activities or a significant
difficulty with ability for age-appropriate activity you would want to be
talking to the school about evaluation. Similarly, resistance, and I would
emphasize that resistance is a pretty big word there. You know the child is
very, very resistant to change. There appears to be a rigidity or an
inflexibility and their tolerance for disruptions in schedule, unexpected
things happening, you may wish to talk to the school about an evaluation
there. Anything seeing or hearing interfering with their ability to
communicate. So if the child you know has gotten a vision evaluation and
they are still having problems in school even with corrective lenses, that
they don't appear to be making sense of the printed word or what the
teacher has on the board for them. You may want to be talking to the
school about that. As I mentioned earlier health problems that are affecting
their educational performance. Which could include as I mentioned earlier
attention problems. And then difficulty performing tasks that require
reading, writing, or math. Or any kind of chronic behavioral or social
problem. So we have a couple other questions coming in here one of them
is would generalized anxiety disorder be considered an otherwise health
impairment? And I think that's a maybe. The answer to that question is
certainly a think it could be because it is a behavioral health diagnosis. I
think some of that would depend on how acute that anxiety disorder would
be for that child.
^M00:40:07
And how much interference that would pose for that child educationally.
Someone asked about the one-on-one consultation is available for people
outside of in other parts of Pennsylvania and I am getting that question
answered with a yes. And then here's another question where someone
says I believe the prior attendees question may have been because you
often see an educational eval identifying a student with eligibility criteria of
an SLD, and yet the schools certified psychologists will not specifically
identify what the SLD may be. I think they should be identifying what the
specific learning disorder may be. I mean, I would if you are receiving any
evaluation that says they've been identified as having a specific learning
disability, you would want to press that school psychologist and that
educational team to highlight for you what that specific disability is.
Because that is going to turn into what sort of recommendations, and we're
going to talk about that in a minute, that you might want to see put in place
to adjust that within the intervention under the category of your IEP. So
again, I would always encourage you to go back and look at that. So
another question's some in asking for how we can get schools to accept
private evaluations after the school evaluations are incomplete. How can
we get?
^E00:41:40
^B00:42:05
Okay the one about outside evaluations, I just muted that temporarily
because I wanted to kind of get a sense of I was having a hard time
reading the question there. Essentially the schools are encouraged to
incorporate outside evaluations. I think the one thing when families go
outside for evaluation. I encourage you to seek an evaluation by someone
who is a certified school psychologist. Those evaluations often translate
better back into a school accepting that evaluation. If you disagree with an
evaluation obviously you could request an independent evaluation for your
district if you don't believe that evaluation captures your child. You can
certainly disagree with that, open a grievance process, and ask for you
know an independent evaluation. The question is will we get a copy of the
PowerPoint. The answer is yes tomorrow. It should be ready tomorrow I'm
being told, on the website. Okay, so when you want to request an
educational evaluation. You can do so at any time. My recommendation
always is to make the evaluation in writing and then again a good school
evaluation should include a review of the students records, including their
attendance and report cards right, because if a kid is missing school 65%
of the time that may be one of the reasons that they're having some
difficulty in school. So you will often see that referenced in a good school
evaluation. It should also include a review of students vision and hearing. I
always want clinically to rule out any difficulties with vision and hearing. So
the school may ask you or you know encourage you to get that checked
through your medical provider to make sure that there aren't any things
there that could be negatively contributing to the students' performance. If
there are outside evaluations school evaluation should include those. I
would encourage you to persist with at least their review and integration of
that information into a school evaluation because in my professional
opinion that makes those evaluations much, much stronger. Also will
include some curriculum-based assessments to determine how that student
is doing on school grade-appropriate performance standards within the
core academic subject. Additionally, a school evaluation will include
instruments that measure performance in the areas where the concerns
have been raised. So again if the concern is about how well the student
may be reading or writing, whether they're able to listen in school, you're
probably going to see an evaluation that's focused more on some kind of
ability or IQ measure. Some academic achievement measures. Some
processing measures like visual processing, auditory, or sensory
processing measures as opposed to a student that's having more of a
behavioral problem where there is no concern. You know, suppose
learning is great, all the grades are great. It appears to be much more of a
behavioral or an emotional issue. The educational evaluation may arc
more in that direction. You will also see sometimes for some students,
some evaluation of motor skills. Fine motor which will be the small muscle
ordination of the hands and so forth. And gross motor sort of walking
physically sort of walking physically accessing the school environment.
The school evaluation should also include systematic observation of the
student's behavior in the classroom and or the areas where the student is
displaying difficulty. So you want to get an idea eyes on that kid to see
what the difficulty is presenting itself. And at this point, if there's a
significant behavior component to it, the school evaluation may also include
a functional behavior assessment if the behavior is interfering with the
academic progress. So a question's just come in and says is it possible
that, for example, if the first of the two-part criteria is met by a diagnosis of
development or speech delay due to Down syndrome, the second part
could be denied because the child technically could "Still make progress
without special ed." I'm going to talk about that in a couple examples in a
few minutes if you could be patient with me. I think we're going to get there
in a minute. All right. And then the last part of the evaluation should be
input certainly from the parent and the student, if the student is able to give
input. School evaluation reports are going to result in an ER which is
something you might hear, an evaluation report being presented to you.
That evaluation report should focus not only on the areas of need of your
child, but their skills and their strengths as well. And that individualized
pattern of skills, strengths, and needs for the child should be what drives
the determination about individual services and the supports that he or she
is going to need. And then I also wanted to put that the evaluation, make
sure everybody is aware, that an evaluation has to be completed within 60
calendar days of the written request and the signing of the permission to
evaluate for the child. So that educational evaluation report will come to a
conclusion and state whether the child has a disability, educational
disability, and whether that child has been found to be in need of special
education services. So the evaluation report may state which goes back to
this last question, that your child isn't eligible and doesn't need special
education services. There are times when a student may have a medical
diagnosis. I mean the example that we've given with Down syndrome, it's
more than likely that that student is going, in the case of a student
diagnosed with Down syndrome, to be found to not or excuse me, it's more
than likely that that student is going to be found eligible for special
education. Given the nature typically of what we see with a Down
syndrome diagnosis. It is possible, however, and I'll give you case years,
and years, and years ago. For example, worked with a younger student
that was transitioning to school that I had in in utero stroke and was born
with some motor impairment. But had compensated so early in life that
even though this young child had this well-documented medical diagnosis
of an in utero stroke and a hemiparesis. She was not in need special
education services because she wasn't having impact in her ability to learn
within the educational environment. There were no documented cognitive
delays, achievement delays, and the motor delays had been so well
compensated for because this is how this kid accommodated in her life
early on that there wasn't really any classification made eligible for the
physical disability. So the report is going to tell you whether or not the child
is eligible. And start to lead into recommendations for the type of service
that your child will need. You receive a copy of the evaluation report and a
written notice that tells you you have the right to disagree and that you can
request an independent evaluation. And just remember that a copy of
those must always be given to you. I have a question that's come in here
let me see if there is two I think we missed one.
^M00:50:04
Okay a child transitioning from preschool to the school district who currently
only receives speech services for a diagnosis of apraxia. The school
district most likely would not do a full MDE and would wait until the school
year began to do an evaluation. I think that this is what happens when we
have students and this is not only in Philadelphia. I can tell you I worked in
my career and other counties that sometimes when students have what are
called "speech only" evaluations. The school district that's receiving them
for kindergarten will transition them with the speech and language services.
There's a term called pended. The IEP would be carried over a beheld
pendant while that student starts kindergarten. So they don't necessarily
do a full evaluation on those students but when they go into kindergarten,
they continue to receive the speech and language services, and are
monitored through that process of special education, and then are very
able to be identified fairly quickly if difficulties with other areas start to
emerge. So that is the process that is followed by many of the school
districts in the region. Okay, so what I have just been told is that many of
you are sending your questions through the chat box as opposed to
through the Q&A box. So just make sure that you use the question and
answer link so that I can see those and it is the question mark icon at the
top of the center of that right column on the screen that you're viewing now.
Okay so I just to make sure that we're able to get and respond to all of the
questions. So, here comes a question. What should I know about the
Woodcock Reading Mastery Test and its use to measure progress and
regression? And its use in identifying IEP goals. Certainly know that
Woodcock tests are extremely well regarded. I have not personally used
the reading mastery test and many, many years. So I have not use the
third edition. What I would encourage you to do is to talk to your school
psychologist, maybe request an appointment with the school psychologist
and asked him to speak with you specifically. I do know in a general sense
that most of reading inventories or reading measurement instruments target
specific areas of deficit. And are able to track progress for students over
time and you know obviously if you're able to track progress. You're also
able to look at regression and how that student's progress is falling out
against the developmentally appropriate norm as they continue to age.
Because sometimes as kids continue to age their scores may flatten out
because their skill level in a particular area may not maintain pace. They
may do well as a younger child but they may not maintain pace as they
continue to get older. So it sometimes looks like their scores flatten out, or
perhaps even decline a little bit. If that's kind of what you're getting at with
that question. Okay, let me just move on to the next. We only have a
couple more I wanted to talk about the terms that you might see in the
evaluation and then certainly we're going to have a good bit of time to
come back and answer the rest of the questions here. So terms that you
might see cognitive ability is something that you might see in an evaluation
report. And perhaps it's easiest to think about this is IQ right. We talk
about IQ a lot, just in general conversation. Cognitive ability measures
what we should overall expect of a child that they should be able to do
right. So if I have an average IQ I should be able to achieve an average
level within school. If I have a gifted IQ we would expect basically my
achievement within school to be in the gifted range. If I have an IQ that
falls in the below average or the intellectual disability range. My
achievement should aligned with that. I think it's important to remember
about IQ though is that it's not a single score. It's basically a measure of
several different specific abilities that get combined and those abilities
typically fall on most of the cognitive ability measures into two bigger
bucket of sort of verbal and linguistic abilities and then nonverbal or visualspatial abilities. Those are sort of the two broadest categories that most
common test would measure and when students have a lot of what we
would call scatter, which means their individual subtest scores on those
different measures vary a lot. The overall score, often times is not the best
score to use. It's less meaningful if there is a lot of scatter. And then if
that's the case, it's important to look at the scattered pattern or the score
profile for that student when you are thinking about services support that
would be appropriate for them. And I would encourage you; I'm going to
say this as a school psychologist myself. If you are a parent and you have
questions about your child's data or your results ask for an appointment try
to go to the school psychologist and talk with them about the report and ask
them to answer your questions. I would love to believe that they're going to
be very interested in doing that with you. So achievement levels. When
you see achievement test scores or excuse me achievement test results on
your evaluation report that's going to be talking about how the student is
performing on an individually administered standardized test that would be
measuring things like reading, writing, spelling, and math. We're going to
be looking at those scores on the standardized test in relationship to how
the child is actually doing in the school curriculum. Both in terms of how
their grades are on the school curriculum. How they're doing in schoolbased standardized achievement tests. And essentially what we're looking
to figure out here is do things line up. You know when I give the
individualized test is it pretty similar if we're lucky, to how the child is doing
in school. You know a child that's really struggling in school might be
struggling and obtain some lower scores on the achievement tests, and
then also their standardized you know PSSA scores or things like that may
be falling in a difficult area to there. So we look for what we call mutually
confirming data. Are multiple data points falling together and giving us a
good picture of the student. The differences between the cognitive ability in
the achievement measure sometimes may, if there are big differences, that
may be an indicator of a learning disability. And the school psychologist in
the educational team hopefully would be probing a little more deeply into
that to identify it. Within achievement level test results you may see the
following terms here things that talk about the basic skill levels of particular
subjects. And that could be essentially how well is the child doing in
spelling. How well can they read individual words? Decoding is a term
which looks at how well can the student breakdown sounds when they're
meeting new words. So for example the word cat can the student decode
that I know what the sound of a C is, what the sound of an A is, what the
sound of a T is and can they put that together and figure out that that is the
word cat. Fluency is how well the student able and the applies obviously
both in math and in areas of reading, how smoothly are you able to move
through or how fluently is the student able to move through the reading of
basic words or the completion of math problems. It has to, gives us a good
picture of how well that student is able to access educational reading that
they're doing. And then comprehension overall is does the student
understand what they're being asked to read in reading for what they're
being asked to perhaps play and more math problems or some higher
order math problems. And if you can think about it, as a continuum. If
you're having difficulty with basic skills you are likely going to be having
difficulty with decoding. If you are not breaking down words well or math
well, you're probably are going to be having some fluency issues. Think
about people that you know who perhaps read very slowly, or read very
discontinuously. They typically have a hard time remembering or
understanding what they are reading. So these things kind of build one off
the other and sometimes can lead to a more a greater picture of the overall
problem. But by looking at it and these four different levels and helps give
us, gives the school a good picture of where things are breaking down and
where we may want to target intervention and put some services and
supports in. Other evaluations or terms that you may see is we may be
looking at some evaluations for adaptive functioning for students. So, how
well do those students do with activities of daily living such as eating,
dressing, toileting, protecting themselves in the community.
^M01:00:00
Do they understand the rules of safety in the community? And so forth.
That often times to be more referenced in student with more complex
disabilities like intellectual disabilities, students with autism, students with
multiple disabilities. Other terms you might come across in an evaluation is
the term of working memory, which is basically when somebody learns
something or you hear something are you able to hold that in your memory
long enough to transfer that into long-term memory and then be able to
come back and access it. So essentially we're looking at that both verbally
and pictorially for a person. Because obviously if we can't store things in
short-term memory, and transfer them into long-term memory were going to
have difficulty remembering, learning, and building on that meaningfully for
more complex tasks and education settings. So that's a term that you'll
often see referenced in educational reports. And then particularly we're
also going to see for older students things about transition assessments
being referenced. So what interests, skills, strengths and areas of need.
Do we have to take into consideration for this student as we plan for life
after high school? You know are they verbal, are they able to communicate
in writing, today like working with cars, are they good working with their
hands, are they do have difficulties working with people, following multi
step directions. Those types of things are very, very important to weave
into a transition evaluation. The other thing that I wanted to mention here
just to make sure that everybody is clear is that all of us that we are talking
about is not to be confused with the annual homeschool evaluation that is
required by the Pennsylvania Homeschool Law. That evaluation is one that
has to be done on an annual basis, for any of you who are homeschooling
your children and has to be turned into the district in which you reside by
June 30th. The purpose of the evaluation is to verify that the student has
made educational progress, and that the requirements of the Homeschool
Law have been followed, and fulfilled by the parent. You're responsible as
a family member for locating and choosing the evaluator. And they have to
be a certified teacher, or a clinical or a school psychologist conducting the
evaluation. And that evaluation will consist, as it says there of a review of
the portfolio of schoolwork. Some samples of the student's work,
attendance logs, instructional logs, and an interview with the child. So
once evaluation report is done we will then be moving, obviously, to an IEP
or an individualized education report. Obviously the evaluation report
should be driving directly into what's recommended in the IEP. So that IEP
has to include a description of the type of support environment that the
student needs. Whether it's a learning support environment, an emotional
support environment, for a life skill support which tends to be for those
students who have the greatest need to learn functional, vocational, and
academic skills, that are going to help them to be independent later.
Emotional support obviously for kids with serious emotional issues and
then learning support for students with issues in learning in areas of
reading, writing, math, or written expression, spoken expression. Also then
could be looking at educational placement for students that are specifically
blind and visually impaired, or deaf or hearing impaired. And then speech
language supports could run a gamut again depending on what the level of
severity of that student as to perhaps some speech therapy, some picture
exchange system, to may be some sort of more sophisticated system of
augmented communication that might be needed. And then again you
could also see some environments for physical support for students that
might have some more complex functional motor skills that need support
within the school environment. You know autistic support for students with
more complex needs related to their autism diagnosis. And then students
who could go into an area of multiple disabilities support that would require,
again as we had indicated earlier, supports over multiple areas such as
cognitive functioning, physical functioning, and maybe some behavioral or
emotional pieces there as well. The IEP should also list other allied health
services or other support that might be needed for that student. And I have
listed a few of them here like FM system, a computer, extra time on testing,
preferred seating within the classroom. There are a number of
accommodations that could come in there. And the IEP should also
stipulate whether or not that student needs criteria for an extended school
year based on their perceived need for extended school year to prevent
regression. And that is very sort of prescriptive. And again, I would
encourage you to talk with your school psychologist and your education
support team if you have concerns about whether an extended school year
program would be appropriate for your child. Okay, so I wanted to talk here
about a few examples. And I sort of eluded to this one earlier. A student
could be diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder by a developmental
pediatrician. That diagnosis could then be accepted perhaps by the school
and used as the first part of the special education classification. The
education team would then be evaluating that child within the school
environment and figuring out what that child needs to be successful within
the school. Do they need a particular class size, a student-teacher ratio,
what kind of accommodations might they need based on behavior or
language support needs. What types of supports might they need related
to their restricted areas of interest or stereotypic behavior. And then they
are going to be making the determination around all of those things as to
whether or not that child meets the second prong of the criteria for special
education. At that point, the family may if there are some serious behaviors
such as elopement, some serious health and safety risks, head banging,
others self-injurious behaviors, serious aggressive behaviors perhaps that
may be interfering with that child's ability to be successful within the school.
The parents may also want to seek out a behavioral health evaluation to
see if they can establish a case with the clinician for the medical necessity
of Wrap-around services or other behavioral health services within the
school environment. So that is one example I would put out there. The
second one could be for a student that is diagnosed outside by a medical
evaluation or a behavioral health evaluation with attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder, primarily inattentive type. Perhaps that child is
prescribed a medication course by the psychiatrist to target their symptoms
of ADHD and the child responds favorably to the medication. Their
symptoms reduce. They do fairly well when they're on the medication. But
the parent comes to the school and asks for an educational evaluation
based on the diagnosis of ADHD. What we may find that student if there
are no other related learning issues or other things that are complicating
the situation the educational evaluation may determine that the student
doesn't meet the second part of that criteria for special education.
However, that student is likely eligible for the development of a 504 plan,
which is an accommodation plan that students who don't qualify for special
education can receive if they have other health impairments or can't meet
the second prong of the criteria that makes medical or excuse me makes
special education services are needed for the. So that the second example
there. The third one I wanted to give you as if the student is acting out
behaviorally in the school and the parent has a question about what is
causing that behavior acting out. One of the things that we know is that
sometimes students will act out behaviorally in school because it's easier
than acknowledging that they are having difficulties learning the
information. And sometimes we find that that can be particularly more so
the case when it's boys right. It's easier to be a tough boy in school than it
is to be a boy who can't read, or a boy who can't do math. So the parent
could ask for an educational evaluation to make sure that there are no
learning differences that could be causing or contributing, I don't want to
say causing but contributing to that student acting out behaviorally within
the school. And lo and behold that educational evaluation might render a
diagnosis of a specific learning disability. And then the IEP would be
developed for the student with a diagnosis or excuse me an educational
classification of a specific learning disability.
^M01:09:55
But then there could be a behavioral support plan written and behavioral
intervention written within the IEP that would be able to target that student's
challenging behavior which might maybe happen and the subjects that he
or she has the most difficulty with. So those are the examples that I have
excuse me, I apologize my voice. I'm very happy to answer any other
questions that people may have. I think I may take a look and see what
else is scrolling down here. Okay, here's another couple of questions
coming in from chat. Is it better to track scores on grade-based or agebased scores? That's a good question.
^E01:10:46
^B01:10:51
Standardized scores for students are best looked at when they are age
equivalent. Grade equivalents are not usually the best indicators for
students. So I would always encourage you to look at age-based scores.
These standardized scores based on age-based criteria is what you would
want your school psychologist to be doing. Another question is, is a
nonverbal IQ test any less reliable than a regular IQ test? No. But I think
you know all different tests and this is where you want to make sure. And
again, I want to trust in the educational in me and the school psychology
community here to know that when we're selecting tests, we would be
ideally selecting tests with good reliability. Whether it is verbal or nonverbal
IQ test. The decision to go with a verbal or nonverbal IQ test is going to be
made by that school psychologist based on their determination of where
they think they can get the best read on that child's overall ability.
Obviously, we have a child with very limited verbalization who isn't
necessarily able to give us a lot of verbal communication. It is going to be
an unfair assessment to rely on a heavily verbal IQ test. If that student is
able to respond and "Talk to us" through other nonverbal means, I think we
would want to be doing that and actually getting a better picture of that
student. So here's another question which is does prompting play a role in
test scores? For example on WIAT3 testing below average in three areas
and needing questions reread, explained, and prompting while testing.
Would that affect results or is it still considered normal. What I can tell you
and I don't want to limit this to specifically the WIAT, but all standardized
tests have specific protocols for what the evaluator is allowed to query and
what they're not. Whether they're allowed to reread the question, or
whether they're not. Whether if they reread the question multiple times
whether that impacts the score or not. So that is part of the standardized
test administration. Sometimes, as school psychologist will make the
determination to do what we call testing the limits. If we think, for example,
that a student is not able and our professional evaluation opinion to perform
optimally on say a time to test. What we may do is give that test, and a
timed modality. But then do what's called testing of the limits or a
nonstandard administration of the test to get a sense of how that student is
responding when he or she is not operating under the standardized test
instruction. They should be reporting both of those administrations
separately. And again, I think if you have questions about that I would urge
you to schedule an appointment with the school psychologist and asked
them to walk you through the administration and the results of those test
scores. Here is another question that says what can be done want to
incorporate in independent educational evaluation? I mean, essentially,
that is where you would exercise your due process rights. You would want
to disagree with that decision. You would want to request mediation, then
request due process hearing, and kind of go up through your procedural
safeguards hierarchy. And I think certainly that would be one of the places
where the consulting could be helpful to you. And I would encourage you
to reach out to that through the other aspect of this program. Could I
repeat the two-pronged criteria for special education? And so essentially
you have to meet diagnostic criteria for one of those identified educational
disability classifications that we talked about earlier. Let me see if I go
back and put that slide up. So, prong one is you have to be able to be
identified as falling into one of these educational disability buckets if you
will. And then the second prong is there has to be a determination by the
educational team that you need special education supports in order to
make progress in the regular education curriculum. That you can't make
progress with just an accommodation that could come with a 504 plan or
something like that. That you're profile is such that you would require
special education support services in order to be able to access your
education. And again, I think of your questions about that I would
encourage you to talk to somebody on the consulting part of this project,
because they could have a more in-depth one-on-one discussion with you
about that. So here's another one. What about evaluations from an
agency such as CMU, which I'm not familiar with, or the equivalent or are
we limiting this discussion to school-related evaluations? Or can these be
helpful to the homeschooler. I apologize, but I'm not sure if I totally
understand that question. If you want to try to send me something
clarifying before we get off I think I could get back to that. Here's another
one. It says a middle school student with ADHD and having problems
making friends and getting along with others, what evaluations would be
the best to identify key issues and how it can be addressed. I mean, I think
I mean that's a very layered issue. I guess I would want first to make sure
that the ADHD diagnosis is appropriate for that student. You know,
anytime I see a parent raising a question about a student, excuse me,
having difficulty making friends, keeping friends, getting along with others.
Certainly the autism slide pops up for me, or a spectrum slide parts up for
me. Is it more related to anxiety depression. I think the first step I would
suggest is that you seek out some kind of behavioral health evaluation and
you know talk about what the presenting symptoms are that your child is
having. Are they anxious about meeting new people so they withdrawal, do
they feel sad and irritable, which could be signs of depression. Irritability or
anger can also, in children, be signs of depression. I would want to make
sure that parents know that. That depression in children doesn't look like
depression in adults looks. Children with depression are often overactive,
irritable, and sometimes just difficult to engage behaviorally or socially. So
you want to get those two things ruled out just to make sure that there isn't
something else going on and that we're targeting the right type of treatment
for that person on the right type of intervention. So this says for a child with
hearing impairment if only a 504 plan is recommended by the school, but
they're showing slow learning, should an educational evaluation be
pursued. I think here again, my suggestion to you as a parent would be if
you feel your child is falling behind educationally, you always have the right
to request an educational evaluation and writing and the school is required
to do that for you. So I would encourage you to advocate for your child for
that if that is something that you feel is a problem for the child. You know, I
think I would want to you know some of that might be influenced by how old
the child is, you know how new they are to the education environment, and
whether they've been given time within that school setting to make
adequate progress and to adjust and accommodate. But I think all things
being equal, if you still have concerns I would encourage you to talk to the
school and request an evaluation and writing.
^M01:20:02
So here's a question that says is there anywhere that parents can get a
comprehensive list of testing protocols that can be used for testing your
child.
^E01:20:11
^B01:20:17
There is an exhaustive list. I mean, literally. There are thousands. You
could overwhelm yourself with. I would think of what tests are out there. I
think it's difficult sometimes even for us as psychologists to keep up with
every test that is published. It is a large, large industry. And you know,
most school districts have a pretty wide range of protocols and a pretty
wide range of assessment instruments that they have available for their
school psychologist to use. I think you now again I know I keep referring to
go back to the school psychologist but I would love for you all to see them
as a resource. If you have a question about things I would love for you to
be able to request an appointment and go in to talk to them about you kid.
What your concerns are what types of things and what, ask them for
recommendations of what they think would best measure areas of difficulty
that you think your child is having. Because truthfully there are thousands
and thousands of instruments that are out there. And I think your best
decision is always going to be to get the evaluation done by someone who
is competent with that instrument for measuring that task. That's really a
good recommendation I would think. So here's another question that says
do schools have to be "state approved" for RTI, which is response to
intervention. I had a district use process other than RTI and we were not
allowed to identify the student eligible for special education because they
did not have state approved RTI process in place. The student was not
eligible via the discrepancies in test scores, but could have been eligible for
a specific learning disability because the student didn't do well when
intervention were put into place. Again, I think the implementation of
response to intervention protocol should be fairly consistent. You know
what constitutes tier 1 intervention in a tier 2 intervention. And you know I
think within the parameters of this discussion today it's going to be hard to
drill into that. But what I might suggest is that you go back to the school
and ask them what was in that district constitutes a tier 1 intervention.
What constitutes a tier 2 intervention? And what the school district would
use as criteria for determining the student eligible based on their
discrepancy model.
>> So thank you everyone. We are going to still continue to take more
questions. At this time we are going to be turning off the recording. So if
you have any private questions that you did not want expressed and
recorded, this is the time to add them to the Q&A box. So again, thank you
and we will begin.