A Professional Development Tutorial

1. Guidelines for Speech & Language ProgramsDetermining Eligibility for Special Education Speech and Language Services under IDEA (CSDE, Revised 2008) A Professional Development Tutorial

2. 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.

3. 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 speech-language pathologists can offer school teams.

4. 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

5. 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 onlywhen the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and servicescannot be achieved satisfactorily.” Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, § 612(a)(5)(A), 20 U.S.C. § 1412.

6. Guidelines should be used systematically • Guidelines should be implemented with fidelity

7. 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 cultural-linguistic differences from disorders • Timelines – how long should early intervening strategies be implemented?

8. Early Intervening Services • Examining racial or ethnic disproportionality • Aligning of early intervening services with SRBI/RtI

9. 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?

10. 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.

11. 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)

12. 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.

13. The Speech & Language Eligibility Evaluation Times or Circumstances that Require an Evaluation or Re-evaluation • before the initial provision of special education and related services; • not more than once a year (unless the parents and district agree), but at least every three years; (cont.)

14. 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 re-evaluation; 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.

15. 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.”

16. 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…”

17. 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.”

18. Case Histories, Interviews, Rating Scales, Self-Evaluations Multiple Perspectives • Parents • Teachers • Other school personnel • The student • His/her peers

19. 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).

20. 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?

21. 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.”

22. 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

23. 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 non-ELL 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

24. Implementing the Guidelines English Language Learners • Collect information: Distinguish languagedominance(the language the child uses most frequently in a given situation) from languageproficiency(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

25. 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).

26. 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).

27. 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.”

28. 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.”

29. Applying the Eligibility Criteria Fluency Measurement Options Additional detail to analyze the frequency of stuttering

30. 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?

31. 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?

32. Feedback Your feedback is welcome. Please direct it to Donna Merritt, SERC Consultant at merritt@ctserc.org Thank you!