24. Special Education Overidentification: Deafness

Early identification can raise the same issues a autism in that eligibility criteria change throughout the first eight years of life.  Medical conditions must be translated into learning descriptions and predictions.  

23. Special Education Overidentification: Deaf-Blindness

Initial identification of deaf-blind school children likely occurs before school and entails medical assessment.  It is highly probable that special education is required for these children given the double jeopardy of two sensory outages.  Intellectual deficits for lack of sensory input can occur. Long-term placement issues for  more involved children might be more critical. Least [...]

22. Special Education Overidentification 2011: Multiple Disabilities

“…means concomitant [simultaneous] impairments (such as mental retardation-blindness, mental retardation-orthopedic impairment, etc.), the combination of which causes such severe educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in a special education program solely for one of the impairments. The term does not include deaf-blindness.”

21. Special Education Overidentification 2011: Orthopedic Impairment

“…means a severe orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The term includes impairments caused by a congenital anomaly, impairments caused by disease (e.g., poliomyelitis, bone tuberculosis), and impairments from other causes (e.g.,cerebral palsy, amputations, and fractures or burns that cause contractures). Categories of Disability under IDEA Law No immediate information is available for [...]

20. Special Education Overidentification 2011: Vision Impairment Including Blindness

Vision impairments vary widely by types and degrees of  disability, with and without clear medical signs.  Scattered reports give emphasis to under-identification of disabled children who have reading problems.  School screening does not catch all children with sight problems, and busy teachers do not always see the connections between vision problems and learning tasks requiring detection [...]

19. Special Education Overidentification 2011: Emotional Disturbance

The category emotional disturbance requires a significant degree of clinical judgment and therefore misidentification is invited.  The child’s educational performance must be affected for special education placement. HHence a gifted child who acts out may be incorrectly placed in special education. Boys are at risk for false placement.  Both their learning styles and emotional styles [...]

18. Special Education Overidentification 2011: Hearing Impairment

Mild hearing loss is not always detected.  Ear infections can cause variable transient hearing loss coming and going over the school year. Schools screen for hearing problems but some go undetected. There are periodic ear infections reducing alertness and learning ability. Follow-up audiology is not carried out. Poor hearing-aid maintenance lets the hearing problem impact [...]

17. Special Education Overidentification 2011: Autism

The school identification rate for autism has increased in recent years.  From this observation one can say the condition was under-identified.  One can also say it is heading toward over-identification rate.  More data are needed. According to the Center for Public Education, autism as a category has grown fast and now it “accounts for around [...]

16. Special Education Overidentification 2011: Developmental Delay

Developmental delay is an all-encompassing preschool dragnet for children who present a wide spectrum of biological, sensory-neural, linguistic and social symptoms suggesting disability.  Their conditions evolve and later at the school age where the general education curriculum is introduced to them and learning issues are pinpointed their special education placements are refined into one of several [...]

15. Special Education Overidentification 2011: Intellectual Disability (Mental Retardation)

After Rosa’s Law, the category of mental retardation was changed to “Intellectual Disability.”  From the beginning of the civil rights movement for the handicapped, mental retardation has been a controversial category for special education placements.  From the beginning it was the category for placement carrying with it high stigma and often used as a place [...]