Evaluations
"In order to fulfill their IDEA obligations to conduct a thorough child find process, public school districts engaged in a variety of child find activities, including outreach to private schools, distribution of informational brochures, and providing information on Web sites." - U.S. Department of Education. Many child find activities yield candidates for evaluation. "To
conduct a special education evaluation, the district must decide whether to
evaluate a student, and then get permission or consent from the student’s
parent to perform the evaluation." - Office of the Education Ombudsman.The evaluation, which the school provides at no cost to the student or family, occurs at the prompting of 3 basic steps. These steps consist of:
"The special education evaluation has two purposes: 1) to determine eligibility for services, and 2) to identify the needs and strengths of the student so that an individualized education program can be developed. The fact that the district must evaluate in ALL areas of suspected disability is a crucial, important point. Sometimes a student will have problems in more than one area. A district might stop the evaluation once a student is found eligible for special education in one area. If the evaluation has dealt with only one area, there might not be enough information about all of the student’s needs when it comes time to develop the individualized program." - Office of Education Ombudsman
- Someone makes a request that the student be evaluated.
- The district decides that an evaluation is necessary.
- Consent to evaluate is given to the district [by the parent or guardian of the child].
"The special education evaluation has two purposes: 1) to determine eligibility for services, and 2) to identify the needs and strengths of the student so that an individualized education program can be developed. The fact that the district must evaluate in ALL areas of suspected disability is a crucial, important point. Sometimes a student will have problems in more than one area. A district might stop the evaluation once a student is found eligible for special education in one area. If the evaluation has dealt with only one area, there might not be enough information about all of the student’s needs when it comes time to develop the individualized program." - Office of Education Ombudsman
In order to get the best results to form the most appropriate education for a child with a disability, the district may evaluate a child in several areas, such as:
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Parents and teachers of an evaluated student have the ability and responsibility to make sure the evaluation is comprehensive and effectively identifies the child's learning needs, therefore allowing for an applicable IEP to be created.
Evaluations protect the rights of children with disabilities as they allow students the opportunity to learn in ways that benefit them while acknowledging the difficulties a student may face and continuing to help the child learn and prosper. Also, School Districts are responsible for providing evaluations to students, free of cost.