What happens during an evaluation?
Evaluating your child means more than the school just giving your child a test or two. The school must evaluate your child in all the areas where your child may be affected by the possible disability. This may include looking at your child’s health, vision, hearing, social and emotional well-being, general intelligence, performance in school, and how well your child communicates with others and uses his or her body. The evaluation must be complete enough (full and individual) to identify all of your child’s needs for special education and related services. Evaluating your child appropriately will give you and the school a lot of information about your child. This information will help you and the school: • decide if your child has a disability; and • design instruction for your child. The evaluation process involves several steps. These are listed below. Reviewing existing information. A group of people, including you, begins by looking at the information the school already has about y
Evaluating your child means more than the school just giving your child a test or two. The school must evaluate your child in all the areas where your child may be affected by the possible disability. This may include looking at your child’s health, vision, hearing, social and emotional well-being, general intelligence, performance in school, and how well your child communicates with others and uses his or her body. The evaluation must be complete enough (full and individual) to identify all of your child’s needs for special education and related services. Evaluating your child appropriately will give you and the school a lot of information about your child. This information will help you and the school: • decide if your child has a disability; and • design instruction for your child. [return to top] The evaluation process involves several steps. These are listed below. Reviewing existing information. A group of people, including you, begins by looking at the information the school alr
The school must evaluate your child in all the areas where your child may be affected by the possible disability: health, vision, hearing, social and emotional well-being, general intelligence, performance in school, and how well your child communicates with others and uses his or her body. The evaluation must be complete enough to identify all of your child’s needs for special education and related services. An appropriate evaluation will give you and the school a lot of information about your child. This information will help you and the school to determine if your child has a disability and then design instruction based on your child’s special needs. The evaluation has been completed, now what? If your child is found not to be eligible for special education, it must be in writing, an explanation given, and you must be given information about what to do if you disagree with the evaluation and want to challenge district’s decision. Most states also have a Parent Training and Informati
The evaluation consists of two or more Multidisciplinary Evaluation Team (MET) members collecting information to help make a recommendation for special education eligibility. Members may include teachers, school psychologists, speech pathologists, social workers, parents, consultants, or occupational and physical therapists. This may include some of all of the following: Review of records, work samples, interview with staff, medical history including vision and hearing, questionnaires with parents, staff and/or student, and formal assessments. Outside evaluations provided by parents will also be considered. The goal is to get a picture of the “whole child”.
