Information for Parents/Informacion para Padres

The first step in providing effective programs for all students is to support teachers in the general education classroom so that more students can enjoy success in those classes. While the Fountain Hills Unified School District offers a range of special education services based on a partnership between general and special education professionals, the partnership begins with all teachers (general and special education), working together to expand the range of effective practice in the general education class. This collaboration results in greater progress for children because it helps assure the proper coordination of standards-based instruction delivered in the context of differentiated instructional practices. Even in those cases where special education services are required, in the vast majority of cases students receiving such support continue to receive a substantial portion of their instruction with their general education peers. Therefore, collaboration among teaching professionals is critical to the success of students whether they receive special education services or not.

Establishing a wider range of differentiated instructional practices in the general education classroom through training and support in order to better meet the learning needs of today’s students.

Increasing the intensity of instruction for students in the general education class and thereby reducing the amount of time students are out of the classroom and in special education settings.

Maintaining a focus on general education grade level standards and classroom behavioral expectations through peer modeling and the use of grade appropriate instructional materials.

Keeping students with special needs in touch with the general education experience while providing them with additional supports and accommodations as needed.

Providing more opportunities for general and special education staff to work together to problem solve, attempt interventions, and collect data on student responses to those interventions.

Expanding intervention supports for those students evidencing the need for additional support, but are not otherwise eligible for special education services.

The Fountain Hills Unified School District model for students with special needs is designed to accommodate a continuum of service levels while seeking to identify a level of intervention that provides the least restrictive, most appropriate educational approach for individual students. This may consist of accommodated assignments in general education classrooms, placement in out of district day school settings or any service alternative in between. The success of our efforts is dependent upon shared teaching responsibility and parent partnerships. We understand that all students in our schools are the teaching responsibility of all educators, and that parents are the most knowledgeable team members with regard to their child. The professional staff contributes their knowledge based on years of experience and training to that provided by the parents so that the team, working together, can develop the effective interventions. Should this process lead to the identification of a student as eligible for special education services, this fact does not signal the end of teacher to teacher or teacher to parent collaboration. Instead, it ushers in a new and heightened level of collaboration, which is necessary to increase instructional differentiation and intensity.  

The U.S. Office of Special Education Programs defines Child Find as “a continuous process of public awareness activities, screening and evaluation designed to locate, identify, and refer as early as possible all young children with disabilities and their families who are in need of Early Intervention Program (Part C) or Preschool Special Education (Part B/619) services of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) “ The Fountain Hills Unified School District seeks all children with disabilities residing in the school district, including students who are homeless or wards of the state, or children with disabilities attending private schools within the district, regardless of the severity of their disability.  Included are children who may be children with disabilities and in need of special education, even though they are advancing from grade to grade, highly mobile children, or migrant children. 

There is no single way that students suspected of having disabilities come to the attention of evaluation staff. For students having no documented history of disability, the process often starts with the student support team (SST). When it is noted by the parents and/or by the student’s general education teacher that the student is having substantial difficulties in meeting particular academic or behavioral demands, the first step is often for parents and the classroom teacher to meet and conference to come up with home/school interventions. This could include a plan for more frequent communication, adjustment in assignments and/or homework, or other approaches to working together to support the student. If such efforts have been made by the teacher and parents but do not resolve the difficulties the next step may be to refer the student to the Student Support Team. This is a team of educators at each school having diverse backgrounds and experiences in teaching children. This group, including the parents, meets to develop strategies for the general education class to help the student be more successful. The SST should not be a hurdle that we must “go through." It is, in fact, a process designed to resolve concerns by assisting the teacher in expanding the range of effective teaching in the classroom.

The team may also recommend additional help such as Title 1, small group reading sessions, various accommodations in the classroom or other approaches that have proven successful with other students. An important part of these intervention ideas is the collection of student progress data, and the use of these data to make on-going adjustments. In many cases, these strategies do result in improved performance. This is because most children having difficulties in school are not disabled. Instead, the cause of their learning challenges stem from such factors as lack of exposure to the language of instruction, normal developmental variation in skill areas, inconsistent schooling (as when families are frequently transferred), poor instruction in the early grades, a history of exposure to widely divergent teaching methods and materials or other reasons not related to a disability. By developing, implementing over a reasonable amount of time, and evaluating general education strategies, the school staff and parents on the SST determine whether these approaches are sufficient, or whether more formal evaluation is necessary to determine if a disability exists. While no strategy will immediately solve long-standing difficulties, after several weeks of implementation and data collection, some trends should be evident. These data go to the SST and used to decide to either keep implementing them because they are working, modify them to make them more effective, or refer the student for disability testing. 

Some parents and teachers feel that the SST process and the implementation of different strategies in the general education class simply delay the provision of special education services. This conclusion may stem from a misunderstanding of the legal protections afforded to school age children and the fact that the SST is designed to make adjustments in the general education class to address concerns without labeling a student as disabled. This is desirable because labeling students as disabled can have serious potential consequences, well documented in the research literature. These may include the social stigma that often comes with identification, social and instructional separation from peers, lowered academic expectations, and impaired self-esteem. While such negative impacts are not experienced by every student and are never intended, efforts to avoid them must be part of the planning process should an eligibility evaluation be necessary.

It is in recognition of these and other potential risks that the Individuals with Disabilities Act requires a number of safeguards to protect children from either being inappropriately identified as disabled or denied services when they are in fact eligible. These safeguards include mandated parent involvement in each step of the process, the participation of general education teachers who are familiar with the grade level content, normal sequence of instruction, and the typical range of skills found among general education students. This process also requires the involvement of state credentialed evaluation specialists and special educators using valid and reliable assessment for determining eligibility. Parents also receive a written set of procedural safeguards informing them of their rights, including the right to be fully informed, the right to request a district evaluation or an independent evaluation at district expense if they disagree with the district evaluation. Parents also have the right to refuse evaluation or even rescind special education services at any time. These and other rights appear more fully described in the procedural safeguard document, based on the requirement of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) and its regulations.

Some believe that accommodations are only for particular students and therefore these adjustments add to instructional planning time while only benefiting one or two students out of the whole class. Some also feel that the implementation of accommodations takes too much classroom instructional time or tends to unfairly advantage some students at the expense of others. This last observation may be based on the perception that accommodations result in students being treated “unequally”. However, as can be seen in the examples cited pre

The Student Support Team in Action:

When a student is perceived by the parents or teachers to be performing far below other students at his or her grade level, parents and teachers must make an effort to determine ways to help the student be more successful. As noted previously, this generally begins with the student support team and includes discussions regarding what is working instructionally, what is not, what the team has tried, and what data they have collected to determine how well current efforts are working. Using these data, the team, including the parent, attempt to build on successful approaches and come up with different ways to alter instruction that has not been working. These alterations are instructional in nature. Discussions of medical interventions or the use of medication are clearly beyond the scope of the SST process and thus does not have a place in these discussions. Many accommodations commonly found in individual education plans are appropriate to try as part of an SST recommended intervention. Several examples include:

• teach a skill to mastery before assigning homework practice in that skill
• alter quiz and test formats so they align with the specific knowledge being assessed
• point out similarities and differences to help students identify important attributes of new skills, concepts or information
• provide guided practice opportunities, monitor responses, and give specific and timely feedback
• provide direct instruction for new skills and for concept learning
• provide advance organizers and/or graphic organizers
•  use manipulatives for both demonstrating new learning and for practicing  related skills

Note:

An effective student support team is one that develops an intervention plan that supports not only improvement in the learning of the student brought to the team but many other students as well by enhancing the overall effectiveness of instruction in the classroom. This can only happen when SST planning focuses on the improvement of instructional efficacy through the incremental addition of effective practices and when those practices are measured in terms of effectiveness. These intervention measurement data are critical for a number of reasons. Perhaps first among these is the way data on student response to instruction can lead to changes in the instructional variables that are under the control of the teacher. The evaluation of interventions and use of data to modify them also takes the focus of f of the student as “the problem”. Instead of having the child under the SST microscope, it is the intervention or instructional method that is examined and changed based on student response data. Also, data regarding particular interventions lead to additional intervention planning and new ideas. Finally, a record of a student’s response to different strategies and instructional approaches is important to the decision about beginning a formal evaluation process. This process overall is at the heart of “response to intervention” or RtI. 

viously, accommodations are often nothing more than research proven teaching practices that support the learning of all students. This understanding has led some school districts to re-conceptualize the Student Support Team — and as a result, come to see it as an instructional support team. This changes the focus from “fixing the student” to one of enhancing the overall effectiveness of instruction, which in turn benefits all students. 

Some believe that accommodations are only for particular students and therefore these adjustments add to instructional planning time while only benefiting one or two students out of the whole class. Some also feel that the implementation of accommodations takes too much classroom instructional time or tends to unfairly advantage some students at the expense of others. This last observation may be based on the perception that accommodations result in students being treated “unequally”. However, as can be seen in the examples cited previously, accommodations are often nothing more than research proven teaching practices that support the learning of all students. This understanding has led some school districts to re-conceptualize the Student Support Team — and as a result, come to see it as an instructional support team. This changes the focus from “fixing the student” to one of enhancing the overall effectiveness of instruction, which in turn benefits all students. 

While the problem solving processes described previously are good practices for supporting success for nearly all students in the general education classroom, some students may continue to experience significant difficulty. Such situations sometime call for a multi-disciplinary evaluation to determine whether a student is having learning difficulty due to a disability. Such evaluations require parent informed consent completed within 60 calendar days of that signed request. Evaluations include an examination of previous and current records of educational progress, school history, relevant medical and family history information, a review of any previous testing and any other data helpful in understanding the difficulties the student is experiencing. In addition to the review of all the existing data, district evaluation staff performs additional testing and class observations to gather all required information. Within 60 days, a multidisciplinary team including the parents, teachers, and evaluation staff meet to decide whether the student is disabled as defined by federal and state education statutes. If this determination is made, an individual education plan (IEP) must be developed for the student to address that disability within an additional 30 days. Finally, once developed, the IEP must be implemented within 15 days of the completion of the IEP, unless it falls after the end of the current school year. The IEP team consists of the parents, a general education teacher, a special education teacher, evaluation staff, administrators, and when appropriate, the student. Both the school and the parents can request others at the meeting as well.

Students may qualify for services in one of more of the following areas:

Speech/Language Impairment Emotional Disability Hearing Impairment  Mild, Moderate or Severe Mental Retardation Specific Learning Disability Preschool Speech-Language Delay Multiple Disabilities with/without Severe Sensory Impairment

Other Health Impairments Orthopedic Impairment Visual Impairment Traumatic Brain Injury Preschool Severe Delay Preschool Moderate Delay Autism

Related services such as occupational therapy, physical therapy, assistive technology, as well as other related services are also provided to those students determined to require those services in order to benefit from their special education program.

Parents or other interested parties are encouraged to contact the Office of Special Education Programs at 480-664-5018 to obtain additional information or assistance.