Toad-ally Exceptional Learners

The Framework

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that special education evaluations be sufficiently comprehensive to make eligibility decisions and identify the student’s educational needs, whether or not commonly linked to the disability category in which the student has been classified (34 CFR 300.304). Comprehensive evaluations are conducted in a culturally and linguistically responsive manner; non-discriminatory for students of all cultural, racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and other backgrounds. When conducting special education evaluations, IEP teams must follow all procedural and substantive evaluation requirements specified in IDEA.

The BIG Ideas

Special education evaluations must be sufficiently comprehensive for IEP teams to determine special education eligibility or continuing eligibility and to identify the educational needs of the student, whether or not commonly linked to the student’s identified disability category(ies).
A comprehensive evaluation is a process, not an event. IEP team participants work together to explore, problem-solve, and make decisions about eligibility for special education services. If found eligible, the IEP team uses information gathered during the evaluation to collectively develop the content of the student’s IEP.
A comprehensive special education evaluation actively engages the family throughout the evaluation process.
Comprehensive evaluations are first and foremost “needs focused” on identifying academic and functional skill areas affected by the student’s disability, rather than “label focused” on identifying a disability category label which may or may not, accurately infer student need.
Developmentally and educationally relevant questions about instruction, curriculum, environment, as well as the student, guide the evaluation. Such questions are especially helpful during the review of existing data to determine what if any, additional information is needed.
Asking clarifying questions throughout the evaluation helps the team explore educational concerns as well as student strengths and needs such as barriers to and conditions that support student learning, and important skills the student needs to develop or improve.
Culturally responsive problem-solving and data-based decision-making using current, valid, and reliable (i.e. accurate) assessment data and information is critical to conducting a comprehensive evaluation.
Assessment tools and strategies used to collect additional information must be linguistically and culturally sensitive and must provide accurate and useful data about the student’s academic, developmental, and functional skills.
Data and other information used during the evaluation process is collected through multiple means including review, interview, observation, and testing; as well as across domains of learning including instruction, curriculum, environment, and learner.
Individuals who collect and interpret assessment data and other information during an evaluation must be appropriately skilled in test administration and other data collection methods. This includes understanding how systemic, racial, and other types of bias may influence data collection and interpretation, and how individual student characteristics may influence results.
Assessment data and other information gathered over time and across environments help the team understand and make evaluation decisions about the nature and effects of a student’s disability on their education.
Comprehensive evaluations must provide information relevant to making decisions about how to educate the student. A comprehensive evaluation provides the foundation for developing an IEP that promotes student access, engagement, and progress in age or grade-level general education curriculum, instruction, and other activities, and environments.

The Balcony View

Comprehensive evaluations must provide information relevant to making decisions about how to educate the student so they can access, engage, and make meaningful progress toward meeting age and grade level standards. Assessment and collection of additional information play a central role during the evaluation and subsequently in IEP development and reviewing student progress.

A comprehensive evaluation takes into account Career Readiness, a growing awareness of the relationship between evaluation and IEP development, and the need for information about how special education evaluations and reevaluations can be made more useful for IEP development.

The 2017 US Supreme Court Endrew F. case also brought renewed attention to the importance of knowing whether a student's IEP is sufficient to enable a student with a disability to make progress “appropriate in light of their circumstances.” Finally, updated guidance, including results of statewide procedural compliance self-assessment, IDEA complaints addressing whether evaluations are sufficiently comprehensive, and continuing disproportionate disability identification, placement, and discipline in student groups who traditionally are not equitably served.

A comprehensive evaluation responds to stakeholders’ requests for more information and reinforces that every public school student graduates ready for further education, the workplace, and the community.

It seeks to ensure a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) for every student protected under IDEA. It guides IEP teams in planning and conducting special education evaluations that explicitly address state and federal requirements to conduct comprehensive evaluations that help IEP teams to determine eligibility, and thoroughly and clearly identify student needs.

Planning and Conducting a Comprehensive Special Education Evaluation

An Individualized Education Program (IEP) is the key to addressing a student’s disability-related needs. It describes annual goals and the supports and services a student must receive so they can access, engage, and make progress in general education.

A well-developed IEP is a vehicle to ensure that a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) is provided to students protected under IDEA. A comprehensive special education evaluation provides the foundation for effective IEP development.

A comprehensive special education evaluation is conducted by a student’s IEP team appointed by the district. The IEP team must include the parent as a required participant and essential partner in decision-making. Special Education evaluation is a collaborative IEP team responsibility. During the evaluation process, the team collectively gathers relevant information and uses it to make accurate and individualized decisions about a student’s eligibility or continuing eligibility, effects of disability, areas of strength, and academic and functional needs.

Data and other information used to make evaluation decisions come from a variety of sources and environments, often extending beyond the IEP team. Guided by educationally relevant questions, both existing and new information is compiled or collected, analyzed, integrated, and summarized by the IEP team to provide a comprehensive picture of the student’s educational strengths and needs.

A comprehensive special education evaluation is grounded in a culturally responsive problem-solving model in which potential systemic, racial, and other bias is addressed, and hypotheses about the nature and extent of the student’s disability are generated and explored.

Conducting a comprehensive special education evaluation requires planning. Each team has its own methods for planning and conducting comprehensive special education evaluations with guidance from the state and district.

Why RIOT/ICEL Matrix?

The RIOT/ICEL model comes from Jim Wright and is one way to look at RTI/MTSS. RIOT is the top horizontal row of the table and includes four potential sources of student information: Review, Interview, Observation, and Test. Teams should attempt to collect information from a range of sources.

ICEL is the left column of the table that includes key areas of learning to be assessed: Instruction, Curriuclum, Environment, and Learner. A common mistake that teams often make is to assume that student learning problems exist in the learner and underestimate the degree to which what the classroom teacher is providing in class ie., accommodations, curriculum, and environmental influences that impact the student's academic performance. The model ensures no rock is left unturned.

The matrix is an assessment guide to help teams efficiently to decide what relevant information to collect on student academic performance and behavior and also how to organize that information to identify probable reasons why the student is not experiencing academic or behavioral success.

The matrix is not itself a data collection instrument. Instead, it is an organizing framework that increases teams' confidence both in the quality of the data that they collect and the findings that emerge from the data.

An editable RIOT/ICEL form is below for you--just click the picture. Be on the lookout for a blog post sharing how I use this model with grade-level teams. The object of this model is to remove bias, it is a good way to look at multi-lingual students (ELL or ESL). It can be a great way to have collegial conversations about students.

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