Lesson 1 Flashcards
WHO ARE EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN?
It includes children who experience difficulties in learning as well as those whose performance is so advanced that modifications in curriculum and instructions are necessary to help them fulfill their potential.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IMPAIRMENT, DISABILITY & HANDICAP
Impairment refers to the loss or reduced function of a particular body part or organ.
Disability refers to when an impairment limits a person’s ability to perform certain tasks.
Handicap refers to a problem or a disadvantage a person with disability or impairment encounters when interacting with the environment. A disability may pose a handicap in one environment but not in another.
Define the term “At Risk”
Refers to children who are considered to have a greater than usual chance of developing a disability. The term is also used to refer to students who are experiencing significant learning or behavioral problems in the regular classroom and are therefore at risk of being diagnosed with a disability.
Why are exceptional children labeled and classified?
To minimize the labelling in such ways that it exclude people with disabilities from the activities and privileges of everyday life.
To give proper protective responses in which peers are more accepting of the atypical behavior of a child with disabilities.
Labeling helps make exceptional children’s special needs more visible to the policy makers ad the public.
Labeling and Eligibility for Special Education
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) – to receive special education and related services, a child must be identified as having a disability and, in most cases, further classified into categories, such as learning disabilities or orthopedic impairments.
RA 9442 – Persons with Disabilities (PWD) Act in the Philippines. It is an act amending RA 7277, otherwise known as the Magna Carta for Persons with Disability and for other Purposes.
Possible Benefits of Labeling and Classification
Labeling recognizes meaningful differences in learning or behavior and is a first and necessary step in responding responsibly to those differences.
A disability label can provide access to accommodations and services not available to people without the label.
Classification helps practitioners and researchers communicate with one another and classify and evaluate research findings.
Labels enable disability-specific advocacy groups to promote specific and spur legislative actions.
Labeling helps make exceptional children’s special needs more visible to policy makers and the public.
Possible Disadvantages of Labeling and Classification
It highlights what a person cannot do rather than what a person can be capable of doing.
Labels may stigmatize the child and lead peers to reject or ridicule the labeled child.
Teachers may held low expectations for a labeled student and treat her differentially as a result. Such differential treatment could impede the rate at which a child learns new skills and contribute to a level of performance consistent with the label’s prediction.
Labels may negatively affect the child’s self-esteem.
Disability labels are often misused as explanatory constructs.
A disproportionate number of children from some racial or ethnic backgrounds have been assigned disability labels.
Classifying exceptional children requires the expenditure of a great amount of money and professional and student time that might be better spent delivering and evaluating the effects of intervention for struggling students.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
In 1975, Congress passed Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. This piece of legislation completely changed the face of the education in this country. Congress has reauthorized and amended PL 94-142 fives times.
The 1990 amendments renamed the law the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The most recent reauthorization of IDEA, PL 108-466, is titled The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004.
The Purpose of IDEA
- (A) to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free and appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living; (B) to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities and parents of such children are protected; and (C) to assist states, localities, educational services agencies, and federal agencies to provide for the education of all children with disabilities.
- To assist states in the implementation of a statewide, comprehensive, coordinated, multidisciplinary, interagency system of early intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families.
- To ensure that educators and parents have the necessary tools to improve educational results for children with disabilities by supporting system improvement activities; dissemination, and support; and technology development and media services; and
4.To assess, and ensure the effectiveness of, efforts to educate children with disabilities.
Major Principles of IDEA
- Zero Reject – Schools must educate all children with disabilities. No children with disabilities may be excluded from a free public education, regardless of the nature or severity of the disability. Each state’s education agency is responsible for locating, identifying, and evaluating all children with disabilities or suspected of having disabilities, from birth to age 21 years. This requirement of IDEA is called the child find system.
- Nondiscriminatory Evaluation – schools must use nonbiased, multifactored methods of evaluation to determine whether a child has a disability and, if so, whether the child needs specially designed instruction to benefit from education. All tests must be administered in the child’s native language, and identification and placement decisions cannot be made on the basis of a single test score.
- Free appropriate public education – all children with disabilities, regardless of the type or severity of their disability, shall receive a FAPE. This education must be provided at public expense – that is, without cost to the child’s family. An Individualized Education Program (IEP) must be developed and implemented to meet the unique needs of each student with a disability.
- Least Restrictive Environment– IDEA requires (a) schools to educate students with disabilities with children without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate and (b) that students with disabilities be removed to separate settings only when the nature or severity of their disabilities is such that they cannot benefit from instruction in a regular classroom with supplementary aid and services.
- Procedural Safeguards– schools must follow an extensive set of procedures to safeguard and protect the rights and interests of children with disabilities and their parents. Parent consent must be obtained for initial and all subsequent evaluations and placement decisions. Schools must maintain confidentiality of all records pertaining to a child with disabilities and make those records available to the parent.
- Parent participation and shared decision making– schools must collaborate with parents and students with disabilities in the planning and implementation of special education related services. The parents’ input and wishes must be considered in the determining IEP goals, related-services needs, and placement decisions.
Types of related services that students with disabilities may need to benefit from special education:
Audiology
Counseling Services
Early Identification and Assessment
Interpreting Services
Medical Services
Occupational Therapy
Orientation and Mobility Services
Parent Counseling and Training
Physical Therapy
Psychological Services
Recreation
Rehabilitative Counseling Services
School Health Services and School Nurse Services
Social Work Services
Speech-Language Pathology Services
Transportation
Exception
