TERMS O-R
OBJECTIVE: A specific skill, development, ability, or change within the goal area
which the student is expected to achieve.
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY: Related service; includes therapy to remediate fine
motor skills and/or the identification of adapted ways of accomplishing activities
of daily living when a student’s disabilities preclude doing those tasks in typical
ways (e.g. modifying clothing so a person with weakness in his hands can dress
himself/herself).
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPIST (OT): A professional who evaluates and
determines purposeful activities to facilitate improvement of a student’s physical,
fine motor, sensory motor and self care functioning within the school environment.
This may include adaptation of equipment.
ORTHOPEDICALLY IMPAIRED: Corresponds to “orthopedically handicapped”
and means a disability characterized by a severe orthopedic impairment that
adversely affects a student’s educational performance. The term includes
malformation, malfunction or loss of bones, muscle or tissue. A medical
assessment documenting the orthopedic condition is required.
OTHER HEALTH IMPAIRMENT: corresponds “chronically ill” and means a
disability characterized by having limited strength, vitality or alertness, including a
heightened alertness with respect to the educational environment, due to chronic or
acute health problems, such as attention deficit disorder or attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder, a heart condition, tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, nephritis,
asthma, sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, epilepsy, lead poisoning, leukemia,
diabetes or any other medical condition, such as Tourette Syndrome, that adversely
affects a student’s educational performance. A medical assessment documenting
the health problem is required.
PARAPROFESSIONALS: Trained assistants who work with a classroom teacher
in the education process.
PARENT: Parent, guardian, or surrogate parent; may include grandparent or
stepparent with whom a child lives, and foster parent.
PERCENTILE: A type of measurement that compares a person’s performance to
the performance of others of the same age or in the same grade by ranking the
score. A percentile score means the individual performed that test as well as or
better than equal or lower percentiles.
PERCEPTION: Ability to process and comprehend information one receives via
the senses.
PERCEPTUAL-MOTOR DISORDER: A sensory perception deficiency receiving,
processing or responding to sensory information about one’s environment, in turn
causing problems with comprehension, memory and the perceptual motor skills
needed to read, write and master arithmetic.
PERCEPTUAL SKILLS: The ability to select, organize, and understand
information coming in through the sense. (hearing, seeing, touching, smelling,
tasting)
PHYSICAL THERAPY: Related service; includes therapy to remediate gross
motor skills.
PHYSICAL THERAPIST (PT): A professional who assesses and treats a student
to improve his level of functioning, mainly in the area of mobility and walking
skills, within the school environment.
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT: Any stimulus or event that occurs after a desired
behavior has been exhibited and increases the possibility of that behavior
occurring in the future.
PRAGMATICS: Language system concerned with functional language use,
including the ability to engage in a conversation through appropriate use of
nonverbal behaviors such as maintaining eye contact and taking turns speaking
and listening to others.
PRAXIS PLANNING: Ability to plan and execute tasks requiring motor skills.
PRESCHOOL CHILD WITH A DISABILITY: Corresponds to preschool
handicapped and means a child between the ages of three and five experiencing
developmental delay, as measured by appropriate diagnostic instruments and
procedures, in one or more of the areas i through v below, and requires special
education and related services. When utilizing a standardized assessment or
criterion-referenced measure to determine eligibility, a developmental delay shall
mean a 33 percent delay in one developmental area, or a 25 percent delay in two
or more developmental areas.
• Physical, including gross motor, fine motor and sensory (vision and hearing);
• Cognitive;
• Communication;
• Social, and emotional; and
• Apaptive
PRIOR WRITTEN NOTICE: Required written notice to parents when school
proposes to initiate or change, or refuses to initiate or change, the identification,
evaluation, or educational placement of the child.
PROCEDURAL WRITTEN NOTICE: Requirement that schools provide full
easily understood explanation of procedural safeguards that describe parent’s right
to an independent educational evaluation, to examine records, to request mediation
and due process.
PROMPTING: Instructional technique in which a cue --- visual, auditory or
physical --- is presented in order to facilitate successful completion of a task or
performance of a behavior.
PROPRIOCEPTIVE SENSE: a student’s subconscious awareness of body
position, either when in motion or still.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION: The portion of a child’s overall special
education evaluation that tests general aptitudes and abilities, eye-hand
coordination, social skills, emotional development and thinking skills.
PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICES: Related service; includes administering
psychological and educational tests, interpreting test results, interpreting child
behavior related to learning.
PSYCHOLOGIST: A professional trained to administer psychological tests,
interpret results, recommend eligibility and develop programs/services for
students.
REEVALUATION: Periodic evaluation of a student already identified as IDEA
eligible.
REFERRAL: A formal notification to the local school made by a family, a teacher
or other professional, that a child is experiencing educational difficulties which
may require a full special education evaluation.
REGRESSION-RECOUPMENT: The amount of loss of skills a child experiences
over an instructional break and the amount of time it takes him/her to recover the
lost skills.
RELATED SERVICES: Services that are necessary for child to benefit from
special education; includes speech-language services, psychological services,
physical and occupational therapy, early identification and assessment, counseling,
orientation and mobility services, school health services, social work services,
parent counseling and training.
RELIABILITY OF TESTS: Refers to how consistently a test yields similar results
across time, raters, and items. If a particular test is given at several different times
to different students and is administered and scored by different people, and if the
test questions do not change, the test is reliable if the raters basically agree on the
scores of the test takers.
REMEDIATION: An educational program designed to teach children to overcome
some deficit or disability through education and training.
RESOURCE ROOM: A classroom program designed for students who require a
part of their instructional day in special education in areas such as language arts
and mathematics.