Assessment and Planning for Students with Severe Disabilities
Students with severe disabilities will need to learn these skills for two broad purposes. One is to learn functional academic skills that will allow them to engage in the functional activities. The second purpose for academic learning is participation in the general curriculum. For this purpose, the student will pursue these skills within the same curriculum framework as that of his or her same-age peers without disabilities.
What are Academic Skills?
This type of planning is ongoing, but takes place in a more documented and methodological manner, and is documented within a student's IEP when the student reaches the age of 14. Goals of this type address student and family visions, and are developed for the purpose of supporting the student reach a level of independence once they have graduated.
What is Post Secondary Transition Planning
Persons in this category of Severe Disabiliites have both hearing and visual impairments that together cause severe communication and developmental delays, and their educational needs typically extend beyond those of persons who are either only deaf or only blind.
What is Deaf-Blindness?
Infants and toddlers, birth through age 2, with disabilities and their families receive early intervention services under this part of the IDEA.
What is IDEA, Part C?
...a condition in which the development of typical abilities is both adversely and substantially affected across multiple domains.
What is a Severe Disability
Individuals with severe disabilities will require these skills to operate in various environments and participate in important life activities. These skills will enable them to reduce their dependence on others and become more independent in their daily lives. Planning in this area should focus on identifying skills for participation in home, school, and community environments.
Placement in the regular classroom with supports is the presumed placement under IDEA. In addition, research has shown that this type of learning environment for students with severe disabilities can be beneficial to learning outcomes (e.g., Fisher and Meyer, 2002; Foreman, Arthur-Kelly, and Pascoe, 2004; McDonnell et al., 2006; Ryndak, Ward, Alper, Montgomery, and Storch, 2010). Therefore, adequate planning of this type of learning environment is crucial for success and is of paramount importance.
What is Inclusion?
A syndrome that is defined by four criteria: abnormal facial features (e.g., smooth ridge between nose and upper lip); lower-than-average height, weight, or both; central nervous system problems (e.g., small head size, hyperactiv-ity and problems with attention, poor coordination); and prenatal alcohol exposure (although confirmation is not required to make a diagnosis).
What is Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?
Children and youth ages 3 through 21 receive special education and related services under this part of the IDEA.
What is IDEA, Part B?
A developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. Other characteristics often associated with with this disability are engagement in repetitive activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences.
What is Autism?
It is important to plan for students with severe disabilities to acquire this skills to the extent possible, because those who are in more control of their own lives tend to have more satisfactory lives (Schalock, 2004; Wehmeyer & Abery, 2013). However, this skill usually requires specific instruction for many students to acquire it, and therefore planning is required.
Self-injurious actions, aggressive actions, and inappropriate actions that contribute to sub-stantial stress within families, rejection by peers, and social isolation, as well as very negative interactions and experiences in school.
What are Challenging Behaviors
Learning Characteristics and Abilities
Personal-Social Characteristics
Physical Characteristics
What are the Key Characteristics of Persons with Disabilities?
This section of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 states: “No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States… shall, solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance….”
What is Section 504?
Concomitant hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for children with deafness or children with blindness
What is Deaf-Blindness
Students with severe disabilities often need therapeutic support to participate in school and to achieve successful learning outcomes. Therefore, consideration should be given to providing speech/ language therapy (including the use of augmentative or alternative communication), physical therapy, occupational therapy, and others of these supports, and adequate planning should occur so these can be integrated into daily activities.
What are Related Services?
A non-aversive, comprehensive orientation form of addressing challenging behaviors that is considered to be a more ethical way to address behavior change. This type of behavior support stresses the importance of creating supportive learning environments, the use of functional behavior assessments, the adoption of non-aversive interventions, and the provision of individualized instruction and supports.
What are Positive Behavior and Interventions Support?
A student with this syndrome may be somewhat smaller in size than average and have slower physical, motor, language, and cognitive development than their peers. Although most children with with this syndrome have an intellectual disability, some do not. Certain physical features are characteristic of the syndrome and can be used for clinical diagnosis. These characteristics usually include a flattening of the back of the head; slanting eyelids; small folds of skin at the inner corners of the eyes; depressed nasal bridge; smaller ears, mouth, hands, and feet; and decreased muscle tone.
What is Downs Syndrome?
On November 29, 1975, President Gerald Ford signed into law this act (Public Law 94-142), now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In adopting this landmark civil rights measure,
Congress opened public school doors for millions of children with disabilities and laid the foundation of the country’s commitment to ensuring that children with disabilities have opportunities to develop their talents, share their gifts, and contribute to their communities.
What is the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142)?
Significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
What is an Intellectual Disability?
This type of plan, such as IEPs, are necessary for legal compliance but, more important, to have a comprehensive roadmap of what a student should learn at a given time in his or her life.
What are Long Term Plans?
These are not long term plans, and include such things as instructional plans. These plans are necessary to provide day-to-day learning activities
What are Short-Term Plans?
Individuals classified in this category, in addition to having an intellectual disability, have at least one additional sensory or physical disability. For example, a student may have a significant cognitive impairment, a visual impair-ment, a hearing impairment, and/or a physical disability such as cerebral palsy. Almost all students served under this category would fall under the umbrella term severe disabilities.
What are Multiple Disabilities?
The four purposes of this act (1975) were:
What is the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142)?
Concomitant impairments (such as intellectual disability-blindness or intellectual disability-orthopedic impair-ment), the combination of which causes such severe educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments. This category does not include deaf-blindness
What is Multiple Disabilities?