Regulatory Recommendations Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) P.L. 108-446
The Learning Disabilities Association (LDA), a volunteer organization representing more than 24,000 individuals with learning disabilities, their families, and the professionals who serve them, has carefully reviewed P.L. 108-446 and the IDEA regulations currently in force. LDA works to ensure that children with learning disabilities are properly identified and receive the services they need to be successful in school and to meet their post-school goals. The following regulatory recommendations reflect those concerns.
Specific Recommendations on the IDEA Regulations:
I. Evaluating Children for Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD)
IEP Team Composition: LDA supports provisions of the law that reduce the underidentification, over-identification and misidentification of children with specific learning disabilities. In order to accomplish this, LDA believes that the regulations should specify the members of the team that identifies a child suspected of having a learning disability and determines that child's eligibility for special education and related services. The team must include the child's parents, a special education teacher with expertise in learning disabilities, the child's general education teacher, and other professionals, such as a school psychologist, a speech-language pathologist, a reading teacher, or an educational therapist.
IEP Team Members' Qualifications: LDA recommends that the regulations also state what qualifications team members must possess, so that they are able to accurately identify a child with a specific learning disability. Collectively, the team should be qualified to conduct and interpret individual diagnostic assessments in the areas of cognition, speech and language, academic achievement, and social development. Also, team members must be qualified to develop appropriate recommendations based on the assessment data and to deliver specially designed instruction and services based on the individual needs of the child.
Use of Research-Based Interventions in the Evaluation Process: If scientific, research-based interventions have been used with the child, those data may be used as part of the evaluation process. LDA supports regulatory clarification that a scientific, research-based intervention process must include:
- High quality, research-based instruction and behavioral supports;
- A focus on individual student needs;
- Collaboration in developing, implementing and monitoring interventions;
- Documentation of monitoring of student performance and progress;
- Documentation of parent involvement; and
- Documentation that the evaluation timelines have been observed.
Discrepancy between Achievement and Ability: P.L. 108-446 eliminates the requirement that a severe discrepancy between achievement and ability must exist to identify a child as having a specific learning disability. LDA supports clarification in the regulations that
- State and local regulations may still require the use of a discrepancy between achievement and ability
- The local school district may consider other discrepant (intra-individual) variations.
- The team may identify relevant patterns of strengths and weaknesses.
- The team may find children eligible for special education and related services under the category of SLD even if they are advancing from grade to grade.
II. Transition
In order to implement appropriately the transition requirements, LDA believes the regulations should clarify that transition services are a coordinated set of activities that
- Should be designed with an outcome-oriented process.
- Promote self-advocacy and successful movement from school to post-school activities.
- Should include, if appropriate, the acquisition of academic skills and knowledge.
- Must include necessary documentation for access to post-secondary opportunities.
- Should include, if appropriate, acquisition of daily living skills and a functional vocational evaluation.
- Should include, if appropriate, vocational/career placement through work-study.
The regulations also should require the state education agency (SEA) to assure coordination of transition services and personnel among providers of general education, special education, vocational rehabilitation, and post-secondary education.
III. Accountability
LDA supports the increased emphasis on accountability and positive outcomes for students with learning disabilities. LDA believes that SEAs must ensure that local school districts are held accountable for students with disabilities. Since students with disabilities must be included in state and district assessment programs aligned with the general curriculum and must receive appropriate accommodations and modifications in the administration of those assessments, the regulations should require that
- SEAs develop, disseminate information on, and promote the use of appropriate accommodations, modifications, and universally designed assessments.
- General and special education teachers are trained in how to administer assessments, including appropriate use of accommodations and modifications.
Clarification is also needed [Section 612)(a)(16)] regarding students for whom progress will be measured using out of level testing.
IV. State Administration
LDA recommends clarification of the requirement that states identify in writing state rules, regulations, and policies not required by the IDEA, so that states are not discouraged from continuing to provide additional services beyond those required by federal law.
V. Public Information
LDA supports a requirement in regulations that the following information be made public:
- The list of requirements that will be waived under the paperwork reduction pilot [Section 609).
- Reports on the multi-year IEP demonstration [Section 614(d)(5)].
VI. Early Intervening Services
LDA believes regulations should specify a time limitation on how long a student must receive early intervening services under Section 613(f) before evaluation for special education will be considered, so that provision of FAPE is not delayed or denied.
VII. Special Rules for Eligibility Determinations
LDA requests that "lack of appropriate instruction in reading" [Section 614(b)(5)] be clarified in the regulations.
VIII. Discipline Provisions
LDA requests that
- The regulations include a definition of "School personnel" [Section 615(k)(1)(A), (B)].
- The regulations clarify who represents the "local education agency" and who determines the "relevant members" of the IEP team when a manifestation determination is required [Section 615(k)(1)(A), (B)].
IX. Parent Participation
LDA requests that the regulations clarify that agreement by parents to provisions such as the following is voluntary:
- Excusal of an IEP team member from attendance;
- Alternative means of participation in IEP meetings;
- Not convening an IEP meeting to amend or modify current IEP;
- Development of a multi-year, rather than an annual, IEP;
- Agreeing to a Resolution Session prior to initiating due process.
- Agreeing to arbitration instead of other approaches to due process.
X. LDA would like to reiterate its support for and hope that regulations will reinforce and ensure implementation of the following:
- Monitoring focused on improving educational results and functional outcomes of students with disabilities and provisions enforcing states' adherence to performance plans for improved implementation of the IDEA.
- The requirement that all special education teachers meet the definition of "highly qualified" by the end of the 2005-2006 school year.
Areas of Special Concern to the Learning Disabilities Association (LDA)
1. The vital contribution of a genuinely comprehensive evaluation as part of determining the identification/eligibility of learning disabilities and informing instructional interventions needs to be addressed clearly and expansively so that it is recognized as a key process of equal value with data from an RTI process. IDEA 2004 regulatory language should ensure that such evaluations do not remain as a vague choice within the larger context of IDEA by:
a. Providing a clear description or definition of comprehensive evaluation, including a variety of measurement types, including standardized, normed, non-standardized, criterion-referenced, and observational assessment tools that have been shown to meet standards of reliability and validity.
b. Providing guidance about the breadth of a comprehensive evaluation, including cognitive, speech and language, academic achievement, and social development areas.
c. Recognizing the importance of many data sources to a comprehensive evaluation, including data from individualized assessment tools, group achievement tests, curriculum based measures, Responsiveness to Intervention, portfolios, observations in several environments, and parent/family/teacher interviews.
2. Some professionals continue to be express the opinion that under IDEA 2004, identification and eligibility decisions are to be based on clinical judgment of criterion referenced and qualitative data by a multidisciplinary team, to the exclusion of any standardized or normative assessment tool that could suggest measurement of factors that might relate to lack of academic progress. If this approach is allowed to dominate the regulatory language of IDEA 2004, the negative effects on educational outcomes for students with LD can be expected to include:
a. A lack of highly qualified professionals who possess the required competencies of clinical judgment to contribute to the identification/eligibility decision.
b. Continued, or increased, mis-identification of LD due to inability to document patterns of strength and weakness, intra-individual variations, or discrepancies between achievement and ability.
c. A lack of consistency in identification and eligibility determinations across different teams, localities, and states due to exclusive dependence on nonstandardized data.
d. Reduction in the number of students meeting general curriculum graduation goals and achievement accountability requirements of NCLB due to the lack of standardized achievement data to inform teachers about individual student progress toward meeting those goals and requirements.
3. There is a tendency for some administrators, education professionals, and parents to assume that a Responsiveness to Intervention (RTI) process is the mandated and only alternative to the severe ability/achievement discrepancy, which can no longer be required. If this impression is allowed to dominate the regulatory language of IDEA 2004, the negative effects on educational outcomes for students with LD can be expected to include:
a. Hasty adoption and implementation of state or locally-developed RTI processes because there is a lack of an agreed-upon, clear definition or description of required or possible structure and components even where it appears to have been successful in reducing special education referrals.
b. A lack of scientific, research, or evidence base for state or locally-developed RTI processes that therefore, may not improve identification/eligibility for LD nor increase positive educational outcomes.
c. The possibility history will be repeated as past reliance on an IQ/Achievement Discrepancy Formula, which over time has raised questions about its effectiveness, is replaced by RTI processes that are hastily adopted and implemented without sufficient research evidence that it has either similar or improved effectiveness.
d. Confusion about the relationship between RTI and IDEA processes, especially with regard to the level and guarantee of parent involvement, the duration of interventions, and the point in RTI at which "referral," as defined by IDEA formally occurs, may leave parents/families more dependent upon their own proactive initiative than the mandates of IDEA as they seek to partner with schools to enhance their child's academic and life success.
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