Special Education Acronyms
IDEA
What is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)?
A parent of a child, a school district, a public agency, other persons knowledgeable about the child initiate a request for an initial evaluation to determine if the student is eligible for special education.
What is a referral?
This strategy helps students understand expectations by pairing spoken directions with pictures, schedules, or symbols.
What is visual supports?
A developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction.
What is Autism Spectrum Disorder?
Key teaching strategies, interventions, and programs that are supported by high-quality, rigorous research.
What are evidence based strategies?
ADA
What is Americans With Disabilities Act
This is required in order to assess and/or implement an IEP.
What is parent consent?
This technique reduces cognitive load by breaking large or complex tasks into smaller, more manageable steps.
What is chunking information?
Significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior
What is Intellectual Disability?
These classroom supports—such as adapted seating, extended time, or calculator use—help students access learning without changing the instructional content itself.
What are accommodations?
FAPE
What is free and appropriate public education
In Washington state, if an evaluation is needed, the district has how many days from the date of written consent to complete it and determine eligibility
What is 35 school days?
This approach uses classmates as models, tutors, or partners to support learning and social interaction within the general education setting.
What is peer mediated instruction
Simultaneous impairments the combination of which causes such severe educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments.
What is multiple disabilities?
This school wide data-based decision making framework focuses on teaching and reinforcing positive behaviors to create predictable, supportive environments for all students.
What is positive behavior interventions and supports?
IEP
What is Individualized Education Program?
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects a students right to this.
What is a student's right to confidentiality?
This strategy prepares students for new material by introducing key vocabulary, background knowledge, or skills before the full lesson begins.
What is pre-teaching
Having limited strength, vitality or alertness including a heightened alertness to environmental stimuli that results in limited alertness with respect to the education environment that a) is due to a chronic or acute health problems b) adversely affects a child's education performance.
What is other health impairment (OHI)?
An essential component of the MTSS which refers to conducting ongoing assessments to examine and document the impact of your instructional practices on student learning and the effectiveness of your teaching practices and instructional program.
What is Progress Monitoring?
LRE
What is Least Restrictive Environment?
Often used to teach multi-step functional or academic skills, this method involves demonstrating each step while the student imitates.
What is modeling?
(A) An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors. (B) An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers. (C) Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.
What is Emotional Disturbance?
This principle of IDEA states that schools must use a variety of assessment tools and cannot rely on a single test to determine eligibility for special education.
What is nondiscriminatory evaluation?