Guidelines for Speech & Language
Programs
Determining Eligibility for Special Education
Speech and Language Services under IDEA
(CSDE, Revised 2008)
A Professional Development Tutorial
This tutorial presents the essential content
relevant to the changes in CSDE’s Guidelines
for Speech and Language Programs (2008)
Learner Outcomes for SLPs
Connecticut school SLPs will adjust their clinical practice
to be consistent with the re-authorization of IDEA 2004
by:
 Considering their role in delivering early intervening
services;
 Examining their special education referral, evaluation, and
eligibility decision-making process, particularly as it relates
to CLD students; and
 Implementing the procedures in the Guidelines with
fidelity.
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Learner Outcomes for Administrators
and Other Members of the PPT
Participants will gain an awareness of the changes
in the delivery of speech and language services in
schools consistent with the re-authorization of
IDEA 2004 by:
Utilizing the expertise of speech-language
pathologists in implementing early intervening
services;
Providing resources relative to the delivery of
comprehensive speech and language assessment and
intervention services; and
Considering the needs of Culturally-Linguistically
Diverse (CLD) students and the expertise speechlanguage pathologists can offer school teams.
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Original Guidelines (1999) were a working draft
2008 Guidelines are:
Consistent with IDEA 2004
Reflect feedback and recommendations
“Early Intervening Services” replaces “early
intervention process”
Supplemental Resource Packet – a companion to
the Guidelines
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Placement of students in the Least Restrictive
Environment (LRE)
“To the maximum extent appropriate, children with
disabilities… are educated with children who are not
disabled, and special classes, separate schooling, or
other removal of children with disabilities from the
regular educational environment occurs only when the
nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that
education in regular classes with the use of
supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved
satisfactorily.”
Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, § 612(a)(5)(A), 20
U.S.C. § 1412.
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Guidelines should be used systematically
Guidelines should be implemented with
fidelity
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Early Intervening Services
No “pre-referral” language
For CLD students, the importance of input from a
professional with expertise in typical
communication development, including second
language acquisition, to differentiate culturallinguistic differences from disorders
Timelines – how long should early intervening
strategies be implemented?
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Early Intervening Services
Examining racial or ethnic disproportionality
Aligning of early intervening services with
SRBI/RtI
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Reflection and Conversation
What are my school/district’s procedures for providing
speech and language early intervening services? How
is my district implementing SRBI (CT’s Framework for
RtI)?
Are sufficient options available in general education to
support the development of students’ communication
skills?
How can I/we support the communication
development of children who have had limited
exposure to communication building experiences?
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Basic Premises and Rationale
Although no changes were made to this
section of the Guidelines, consider “jigsawing”
the nine critical premises and discuss their
ramifications within the context of the policy
and practices of your school or district.
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The Special Education
Evaluation Process
Over-reliance on standardized assessment
procedures in the assessment process
Limited use of assessments that reduce
evaluation bias when evaluating CLD students
Insufficient documentation of educational
impact
A narrow view of communication based on a
verbal-performance discrepancy approach
(i.e., cognitive referencing)
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IDEA 2004 and CT Statute Designate Speech and
Language Services as either:
Special Education – primary or sole disability in
speech and language; requires specially designed
instruction; adverse educational effect must be
documented; or a
Related Service – speech and language issues
secondary to another disability; required to assist
the child in benefitting from his or her special
education services.
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The Speech & Language Eligibility
Evaluation
Times or Circumstances that Require an
Evaluation or Re-evaluation
1. before the initial provision of special
education and related services;
2. not more than once a year (unless the
parents and district agree), but at least every
three years;
(cont.)
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3. if the school district determines that the child’s
educational and related services needs, including
improved academic and functional performance,
warrant a re-evaluation;
4. the child’s parent or teacher requests a reevaluation; or
5. before determining that a child no longer has a
disability, except when termination of eligibility is
due to graduation with a regular high school
diploma or the student exceeds age eligibility for
a free appropriate public education.
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Planning the Evaluation or Re-Evaluation
Legal Considerations
“A standard battery of assessments for all referred
children violates IDEA’s focus on the individual
child.”
“It is important to note that there is no specific
requirement to use standardized tests to
determine a child’s eligibility for speech and
language services as special education or a
related service.”
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Legal Considerations (cont.)
“School districts must ensure that assessment
tools and other evaluation materials used to
assess a child are selected and administered:
• so as to be nondiscriminatory on a racial or
cultural basis;
• in the child’s native language or other mode of
communication and in the form most likely to yield
accurate information on what the child knows and
can do academically, developmentally and
functionally, unless it is clearly not feasible to do
so…”
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Assessment Procedures and Instruments
“… adequate sampling of a child’s speech and
language cannot be accomplished by a single
test or a single test session.”
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Case Histories, Interviews, Rating
Scales, Self-Evaluations
Multiple Perspectives
Parents
Teachers
Other school personnel
The student
His/her peers
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Quantitative Measures
Standardized Norm-Referenced Tests
“… these tests may help define impairment, but
not disability since disability ‘is defined
relative to difficulty in meeting contextual
demands’” (Nelson, 1995, p. 409).
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Examining Bias in Standardized Speech
and Language Tests for English
Language Learners
What is the test assessing? How is this
communication skill manifested in the student’s
cultural group?
Has the test been translated?
Has the test been normed on the sample
population representative of the student you are
evaluating?
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Modifying Testing Procedures
To accommodate certain populations (age, disability)
To create a more culturally relevant assessment
process
“When tests are modified in any way, modifications
should be reported and test norms cannot be
applied, as they are no longer valid.”
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Descriptive (Qualitative) Assessments
Provide a more realistic picture of how a child
naturally uses his or her communication skills
in everyday situations and the potential
impact of speech-language deficits in those
settings
Observation
Information comprehension probes
Speech-language sampling
Curriculum-based assessment
Dynamic assessment
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English Language Learners
“Over the past five years, the number of ELL
students also identified as special education
students increased by 67.4 percent. Quite
distinct from this trend, the number of nonELL special education students fell by 8.7
percent. As a result of these opposite trends,
ELL students’ share of the special education
student subpopulation grew from 3.3 percent
to 5.9 percent.”
- CSDE Data Bulletin, July 2008
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Implementing the Guidelines
English Language Learners
Collect information: Distinguish language
dominance (the language the child uses most
frequently in a given situation) from language
proficiency (the skill with which the child
communicates in a given situation)
Seek to determine the teacher’s understanding of
typical second language acquisition
Review history of other services
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Interpreting and Reporting Assessment
Results
Language and Cognition
“Language problems co-occur with weaknesses in
other symbolic skills too frequently to be
coincidental but with insufficient predictability for
cognitive factors to be considered central to the
disorder” (Nelson, 1993, p. 97).
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Language and Cognition
“The stability of the language-cognitive
relationship varies over time.”
“While the constructs measured on language
and intelligence tests share variance in the
verbal domain, the extent of that relationship
varies greatly from test to test” (Secord,
1992).
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Language and Cognition (cont.)
“There are no pure tests of either verbal or
nonverbal ability” (Sattler, 1988).
“Intelligence measures are not a meaningful gauge
of whether a child may benefit from language
services.”
“IDEA does not require determination of a
significant discrepancy between intellectual
ability and achievement for a child to be identified
with a speech-language disability.”
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Language and Cognition (cont.)
“The position of these guidelines is that
determining eligibility for special education
speech and language services should not be
made on the basis of a discrepancy between
language and cognitive measures. However,
appropriate cognitive assessment may be used
to supplement or support the findings of the
speech-language evaluation.”
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Applying the Eligibility Criteria
Fluency Measurement Options
Additional detail to analyze the frequency of
stuttering
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Determination of Eligibility
Documentation forms have not changed
Questions regarding speech-language
disability as the primary disability vs. a related
service?
Who does what? How can we most efficiently
and effectively intervene for students with
speech-language disabilities?
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Special Education Speech-Language
Evaluation and Re-evaluation Reports
New to the Revised Guidelines
Reflect feedback from Connecticut SLPs
How will the questions and checkpoints on this
report form assist you in drawing conclusions
about students and offering recommendations
to the PPT?
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Feedback
Your feedback is welcome.
Please direct it to Donna Merritt,
SERC Consultant at merritt@ctserc.org
Thank you!
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