PSY 304 Exam 1 Study Guide Flashcards

Exceptional Children

- Children who differ from the norm to such an extent that they require an individualized

  program of special education and related services to fully benefit from education

- Children who are an exception from the average, both above and below

- Gifted and talented students

- Not just kids with disabilities

Impairment

- A loss or reduced function of a particular body part or organ

- Something that is physically wrong

- People with an impairment have a disability

Disability

- Exists when impairment limits ability to perform certain tasks

Handicap

- Problem/disadvantage from a disability encountered when interacting with environment

- Situation or environment specific

- Can go away- can have it in one place and not another

At-risk

- Greater than usual chance of developing a disability

Person-first language

- Always put the person before the disability/label

- A child with autism spectrum disorder

- Avoid more offensive terms like: high or low functioning, mental retardation (use

intellectual disability (ID) or cognitive impairment (CI)), and emotionally disturbed (use

emotionally impaired)

What is special education (4 elements/defining features)? What else must you have to make

sure you are providing special education effectively and ethically?

-Individually planned, intensive, goal-directed, specialized instruction and intervention

- Research/evidence based methods

- Guided by student performance

What percent of school-age children are receiving special education services?

- 13% of the school-aged population

3 general trends, and some of the things contributing to these trends

1) Twice as many males than females qualify for special education

a) Visibility, societal expectations, genetics, boys develop language slower

2) The number of students receiving special education is continuously growing

a) Less stigma, changing and broadening definitions, better and earlier diagnosis

3) The number of students with ASD is 10x higher than 10 years ago

a) Public awareness, male > female, broadening definitions, better and earlier

   diagnosis

Benefits and disadvantages of labeling/classifying

Benefits:

- Accurate data

- Helpful to determine what services each child needs

- Recognizes meaningful differences in learning or behavior

- Provides access to accommodations and services

- Helps practitioners and researchers communicate with one another and classify/evaluate

research findings- common language to discuss children

- Leads to more acceptance by peers

- Makes children’s needs more visible to policy makers and public

- Provides basis for funding and resources

Disadvantages:

- Ignore the child’s strengths and focus on disability

- May stigmatize and lead to peer rejection or bullying

- May cause others to have inaccurate expectations

- May negatively affect self-esteem- self fulfilling prophecy

- Often misunderstood or misused terms

- Diminishes appreciation of uniqueness

- Requires money/time that might be better spent delivering intervention

Historical foundations (see basic timeline from lectures)

- Early 1900s: taking students away from their families and putting them in separate

facilities

- 1920s-1950s: allowed but not popular; segregation; special ed. pretty much nonexistent

- 1950s: parents of students with disabilities becoming much more vocal, arguing for

change; researchers become interested

- Civil rights movement made any type of segregation in schools illegal

- 1975: first special ed law passed- Education for All Handicap Children Act (EAHCA);

federal law that said all public schools have to provide special ed services

- Foundational law

- In 1990 the law became Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

- 2001: No Child Left Behind (NCLB)

- Changed to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015

EAHCA/IDEA/IDEIA (including the principles below and why the 1975 law was important)

- Zero reject, free and appropriate public education (FAPE), nondiscriminatory evaluation,

IEPs, least restrictive environment

- Procedural safeguards: parental consent, confidentiality, timelines, paperwork, due

process hearing

- EAHCA was the first law that required all schools to provide special education

Zero reject (and child find)

- Schools must educate all students with disabilities

- Child find: each state is responsible for locating, identifying, and evaluating all children

who are suspected of having a disability

- Schools and pediatricians monitor

FAPE

- Free and Appropriate Public Education

- All children, regardless of disability are entitled to a free education

- IEP must be developed that implements interventions/strategies that are “based on peer-

reviewed research to the extent possible”

- Related services must be provided if the student needs them to attend school

Nondiscriminatory evaluation

- Schools must use a non-biased, multi-methods form of evaluation

- Tests cannot discriminate

- Tests must be given in the child’s native language or mode of communication

Disproportionate representation

- Exists when a group receives special education at a rate significantly higher or lower

than would be expected based on the proportion of the general student population

- A risk ratio is the relative likelihood of a member of a given group to be receiving special

education, compared to members of the general population

- A risk ratio of 1.0 means that the number of students identified with a given

disability matches the proportion of the overall student population represented

- A risk ratio greater than 1.0 indicates overrepresentation; a risk ratio less than 1.0

indicates underrepresentation

- Overrepresented: Native American, African American, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific

Islander

- Underrepresented: Asian American

- Hispanic and white students are generally represented among the special education

population at an overall rate closer to their proportion of the resident school-age

population

Educators have identified three areas as integral to this problem:

1) Cultural differences between teachers, students, and families, which may lead to biased

referrals

2) Inaccurate assessment of students from some cultural or linguistic backgrounds

3) Lack of culturally responsive curriculum and instructional practices

IEP requirements/timeline

- IEP for students with disability- ages 3-21

IEP team must include the following members:

- Parents (or legal guardian)

- General education teacher

- Special education teacher

- District representative (often an administrator)

- An individual who can interpret evaluation results

- Others at the discretion of the parent or school

- The child with a disability whenever appropriate

IEP must include:

- Present level of performance

- Measurable annual goals

- How progress will be measured

- Services needed

- Level of participation in regular education (LRE)

- Accommodations for statewide assessments

- Date services will begin and length of services

- Transition supports (age 16 & up)

Timeline

- IEP lasts 1 year, and assessments are done every 3 years

Least restrictive environment/Inclusive education

- Students must be educated with children without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate

- Must participate in the general education curriculum (not just lunch and recess)

- Spectrum or continuum of services and placements: a range of placement and service options

- The LRE is the setting that is most similar to a regular classroom and that meets the child’s special educational needs

- The IEP team should consider the extent to which the student can effectively be included

into each of three dimensions of school life:

- The general curriculum

- Extracurricular activities

- Other school activities (recess, lunchtime)

- IDEA allows IEP teams to determine if total integration is appropriate in one dimension

and partial integration is appropriate in another dimension

ESSA/NCLB

NCLB:

- General education law; applies to all students

- Focuses on standardized test scores to see which students are falling behind

- Big problem: focused so much on test scores that teachers felt very pressured, and

resulted in some teachers changing their students’ scores

- Reauthorized in 2015; became the Every Student Succeeds Act

ESSA:

- Just signed into law December 2015

- Updated and revised version of NCLB

- Changed the way funding was handed out

- Still includes provisions for accountability for student learning (standardized testing)

- Must include students with disabilities

- Continued emphasis on Research/Evidence-based practices

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

- Extends civil rights to children and adults with disabilities in education, employment, and

various other settings

- States that “no otherwise qualified handicapped individual shall… solely by reason of

their handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be

subject to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial

assistance”

- No person with disabilities may be excluded from a program because of the lack of an

appropriate aid

- Does not provide any federal money to assist people with disabilities

- Architectural accessibility for students, teachers, and others with physical and sensory

impairments is an important feature of Section 504

Current model of service delivery

-Pre-referral → referral → evaluation → label or not? → IEP and placement →

monitor, update, reevaluate

Pre-referral

- Early intervention assistance/student success team

- Helps teachers devise and implement interventions for students who are

experiencing academic or behavioral difficulties in the regular classroom

- Evidence-based interventions and progress monitoring

- Response to intervention

- Student can come to the school’s attention through the results of a screening test that

suggests a possible disability

Referral

- Someone has made a decision to have a child tested for a disability

Evaluation

- Multidisciplinary evaluation team (MET): people with different expertise such as social

workers, speech language pathologists, occupational or physical therapists

- Nondiscriminatory and multi-factored evaluation (testing and other data collection)

- Must have parental consent to test their child

Label or not?

- Does this child have a label? If so, what disability?

- Does the child require special education?

IEP & Placement

- Individualized evaluation program team

- Annual goals, special education services, related services, least restrictive environment,

accommodations, etc.

- IEP team determines the what, how, who, and when of a child’s special education

program

Monitor, Update, Reevaluate

- IEP must be updated each year

- Evaluation must be updated at least one every 3 years

- Ongoing progress monitoring; direct and frequent measurement of student performance

Accommodations

- An adjustment to how a student with a disability is taught or tested

- May include changes to the physical environment, instructional materials, teaching

methods, or testing to help students with disabilities learn

- Accommodations do not change what a student is taught or expected to know

- Some students with mild to moderate disabilities are provided with accommodations

(additional time, large print) when taking district- and statewide tests

- Students with severe disabilities for whom standard academic achievement tests would

be inappropriate can take alternate assessments if their IEP team recommends them

Why is school more effective when parents/families are involved?

- More learning opportunities at home

- Creates a unified front and stability for students- consistency

- Parents are experts on their children- sharing of information

- Student is held accountable

Adjustment process for parents

Includes feelings of:

- Shock, denial, and disbelief

- Anger, guilt, depression, shame, lowered self-esteem, rejection of the child, and

overprotectiveness

- Acceptance, adaptation, and appreciation

Principles of effective communication

- Accept parents’ statements; respect parents’ point of view

- Listen actively; respond to parents with interest and animation

- Question effectively; speak plainly and use open-ended questions

- Encourage; describe and show parents their child’s improving performance

- Stay focused; focus on the child’s educational program and progress

Suggestions for working with culturally diverse families

- Have native speakers for contacting parents

- Have trained interpreters at meetings

- Conduct meetings in family-friendly settings

- Identify and defer to key decision makers in the family

- Recognize and respect diversity

- Make it easy for parents

- Work toward cultural reciprocity

RTI/MTSS (understand the model including all 3 tiers)

- RTI: response to intervention

- MTSS: multi-tiered systems of support

- Tiers refer to how much support a child is receiving

- Tiers don’t have specific locations or places

- Pre-referral step of the current model of service delivery

Tier 1: Primary/Universal Prevention

- 80% of students

- Core instruction

- All students

- Preventative

Tier 2: Secondary/Targeted Prevention

- 15% of students

- Supplemental

- Some students

- Reduce risk

- Small group format

Tier 3: Tertiary/Intensive Intervention

- 5% of students

- Individualized, highly specific

Research (what is the gold standard, why special education research is hard and why we can’t

always do gold standard research)

- Within all 3 tiers, we want to use research-based or evidence-based methods and

interventions

- Positive reinforcement, self-monitoring, repeated reading intervention

- Heavy emphasis on Randomized Control Trials (RCTs)

- The gold standard of research design!!

RCT

- Random selection of participants

- Random assignment to control vs. experimental group

- Control group receives what is standard

- Usually large studies

- Blind or double-blind

- Not a common research design in schools

Why Sp.Ed. research is hard

- Recreating the same study in a different scenario

- Doing large scale studies is almost impossible- specific subset of population

- 12 different disability categories in special education and different identifiable conditions

within each one

- Control groups are nearly impossible in a school-based study

- Parental consent: parents won’t agree for their child to join a study if their student isn’t

going to be in the experimental group

- Low prevalence of certain disorders

- Non-treatment groups are usually not possible (for ethical reasons)

- Researchers can’t control setting-usually done in labs, but these done in school context

What does the MET do? (what is included in a multi-factored evaluation)

- MET team is comprised of people with different expertise such as social workers, speech

language pathologists, occupational or physical therapists, and more

- RIOT:

- Record reviews

- Interviews (with parents)

- Observations

- Testing (areas of)

Eligibility for special education services & how it is different from DSM-diagnosis

- Teacher/parent/team requests an evaluation

- Must have parental consent

- Then, multi-factored assessment done by Multidisciplinary Evaluation Team (MET). this

typically includes

- Record reviews

- Interviews with teachers, parents, and student

- Classroom observations

- Standardized tests and checklists

- Evaluation report/meeting-team reviews testing and assessment information

- Test at least once every 3 years and no more than 1 time a year

What does it mean that a test is standardized?

- Training and administration done

- Norms and scoring

- Technically adequate

- Reliability: ability of a test to produce consistent results

- Validity: ability of a test to measure what it intends to measure

- Only individuals who have been formally trained can administer these tests

- Examiner must follow the standardized protocol (exact wording, exact timing, etc) or the

results are invalid

- Majority of the scores fall between 85 and 115

- Normative sample done

- Issues that may affect reliability: test development, test-giver, test-taker

4 areas of testing- what each measures, and who (which disability categories) it is important for

Intelligence testing

- Intelligence is one’s general ability, global capacity to think rationally, act purposefully,

and deal effectively with the environment, and memory, processing speed, verbal skills

- Intelligence testing focuses on cognitive impairment, specific learning disabilities,

traumatic brain injuries, and asd

Achievement testing

- Dependent on formal learning

- Tests reading and math inventories

- For younger children, tests measure knowledge of colors, letters, shapes, etc.

- Wider range of scores- students can change their scores over time

- Achievement testing focuses on specific learning disabilities, as well as all other

disabilities and impairments

Adaptive behavior testing

- Evaluates how well a child is adapting and functioning compared to other children of the

same age

- Language development, domestic activities, vocational activities, economic activities,

physical development, independent functioning, self-direction, socialization

- Activities with child, as well as questioning of parents and teachers

- Adaptive behavior testing focuses on cognitive impairment, as well as ASD

Behavioral (problem) testing

- Best way to collect data on problem behaviors is through direct observation

- Interviews with parents or teachers

- Standardized behavioral tests: dimensional rating scales

- Checklists for multiple behavioral concerns

- Checklists for behavioral concerns

- Behavioral testing focuses on emotional impairment, as well as ASD, traumatic brain

injury, cognitive impairment, other health impairments

Importance of early intervention

- The earlier intervention begins the better

- Early intervention: a comprehensive system of therapies, educational, nutritional, child

care, and family supports, all designed to reduce the effects of disabilities or prevent the

occurrence of learning and developmental problems

- Research evidence shows that comprehensive, experimentally based early intervention

enhances the development of young children who exhibit delays and helps at-risk children

EAHCA Amendments of 1986

- Extended requirement for free, appropriate education to 3-5 year olds with disabilities

- Offers incentives for states to provide services for children with disabilities or who are

“at-risk” ages birth-2 years

- Michigan program: Early on

Risk factors

In Michigan, “at-risk” means 4+ of the following:

- Atypical development or parent child interaction

- Parent has chronic mental illness or cognitive impairment

- Parent has a drug or alcohol problem

- Parent with history of loss or abuse

- Family medical or genetic history

- Previous death due to SIDS

- Isolation of family

- Parent with chronic illness

- Acute family crisis

- Parent child separation- incarceration, hospitalization, divorce

- Teen mother

- Parent has 4+ preschool age children

- Poverty

- Parent has less than a 9th grade education, unemployment, single parent

- Lack of stable residence

- No health care/insurance

- No prenatal care

- Prenatal substance abuse

- Problems during pregnancy/childbirth

- Asphyxia during childbirth

- Low birthweight

- Small-for-age baby

- Extreme irritability in infant

- Repeated accidents

- Chronic ear infections

Research on early intervention (for 4 studies we discussed in class)

Generally, research focuses in 2 areas:

1) First generation research

a) Does early intervention make a difference?

2) Second generation research

a) What factors make early intervention more or less effective for particular

     children

IEP vs. IFSP services

Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP)

- 0-3 year olds are served through an IFSP

Includes:

- Level of development in all areas

- Family’s resources, priorities, and needs

- Measurable outcomes

- Statement of measurable results or outcomes expected to be achieved for the infant or

toddler and the family

- Early intervention services and environments

- Steps to preschool transition

Individualized Education Plan (IEP)

Preschool IEP:

- Eligibility category: often early childhood developmental delay (ECDD), 6% of special ed

population

- More suggestions/info for parents

- Home-based, center-based or combined options

- No requirements on length of school day

School-age IEP:

- All types of eligibility categories

- More suggestions/info for teachers

- School-based

- Requirements for length of school day

Advantages/disadvantages of home-based vs. center-based programming

Home-based

Advantages

- The student receives undivided attention and care in their most familiar environment

- Other family members are given more opportunities to interact with the student during

instruction

- It is more likely for the activities being used to be individualized and well-suited for the

student

- Parents and guardians feel involved and active in their child’s education

- Helps to avoid feelings of guilt and anger

- More cost efficient

Disadvantages

- Not all families are able to allocate so much time to their child throughout the day

- Not all family members make good or efficient teachers

- Students in home-based programs may not receive as wide of a range of services as

they might be exposed to in a center-based program

- The student does not receive as many options for socialization

Center-based

Advantages

- A team of specialists from different fields can directly observe each child

- The opportunity to integrate and to interact with other typically developing peers

- Parents can feel more support by working with professionals and other parents at the

center

Disadvantages

- Expense for transportation

- The cost and maintenance of the center itself

- Possibly less parent involvement than a home-based center

- Depending on the center/school, there may be a lack of integration with typically

developing students which can make the transition to general education challenging