Definitions
Accommodations
“are intended to help your child work around the disability and demonstrate what they have learned. Accommodations do not change a test or assignment in a significant way.” “States must allow accommodations in test materials and procedures, scheduling, and setting.”
Examples:
Tutoring
Extra time
Taking tests in a quiet room
Tape recording class lectures
Providing a scribe
Allowing word processing rather than handwriting assignments
Functional Needs
include daily living activities – social skills, mobility skills, employment skills, and skills that increase your child’s independence
Least Restrictive Environment
schools are required to educate children with disabilities in regular education classes with children who are not disabled ‘to the maximum extent possible’
“The law does not require every student to be placed in the regular classroom, regardless of the child’s abilities and needs. If a child does not learn in the regular education classroom, this is not an appropriate placement for that child.”
“To remove him from a placement where he is doing well is likely to damage him”.
Placements are on a spectrum: regular classes, special classes, special schools, home instruction, instruction in hospitals and institutions
If a child attends a private school, “the district is responsible for ensuring that the private school implements the IEP.”
(20 USC §1412(a)(5)
Modifications
“change the nature of an assignment or test. They make the assignment or test easier.”
Examples:
Shorter, modified assignments
Omitting higher level math facts
Simplified tasks
Reduced number of concepts taught
Related services
services your child needs to benefit from special education
Examples:
speech language therapy
occupational therapy
nursing services
counselling services
parent and teacher training
Special education
“specially designed instruction, at no cost the parents to meet the unique needs of a child with a disability”; specially designed instruction includes adapting the content, methodology, or delivery of instruction
Supplementary aids and services
services and supports your child receives in general education classes and other settings so your child can be educated with children who are not disabled
Examples:
noise-cancelling headphones
enlarged text
weighted vest
eyeglasses
hearing aids
assistive technologies
Wright, Peter W. Wrightslaw: All about IEPs. Harbor House Law Press/Jan, 2010.