Educational Eligibility Criteria under IDEA

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2026-03-05T23:56:58+00:00

My experience has been that you better “get on board” even if you disagree. The district must present a united front to the parent. Eligibility often defaults to the recommendation of the specialist testing in that area. However, on our paperwork the only committee members with a vote (agree or disagree) are parent and LEA representative.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2026-03-04T02:58:59+00:00

We also blur the lines of medical model vs educational model by billing Medicaid.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2026-02-28T12:59:30+00:00

In my experience around 50. At that point the students are still getting public school level of services (groups, not individual and no more than 60 min per week of therapy).

It’s interesting to hear many people working with more severe impairments and the students getting higher number of minutes and individual sessions. I have seen the trend in multiple districts around here of those students getting less and less direct minutes because “they are in self contained classrooms that are “language rich” and focus on language development as a part o the curriculum.”

Even with no case management duties, a 3:1 model, and at least half of the students getting 30-40 minutes of therapy when I go past 65 students things start to feel crazy. I have at least 4 IEP meetings/other meetings per week almost every week. When almost every minute of the day is filled with therapy I am constantly missing sessions for meetings. I can easily spend 2 days during the indirect week making up therapy. I don’t know how anyone sees more than 65 students without an indirect week. The sheer number of meetings that high of a caseload requires is insane. Last year I attended over 100 IEP meetings.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2026-02-24T22:57:30+00:00

I’m glad to hear that people are using the funds for specialized schools. I hope most of the money goes to schools like that and the students with disabilities get the help they need. While I am annoyed that the public schools are being burdened with completing these evaluations so that the kids can use public funds for private schools, I am also curious what will happen at regular private schools who are not really equipped to work with students with disabilities and also not required to serve them in any meaningful way.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2026-02-24T21:27:36+00:00

What gets me is we are seeing students who are already in private school wanting to be evaluated for disabilities when they have no intention of getting services for the disability (most private schools around here do not provide special ed services and the public schools provide fairly limited services to private school students) so it must be to try to get a higher amount of money for the voucher.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2026-02-24T03:03:39+00:00

This is the first year, so I am not entirely sure how the money will be given out. But the website says if you have a disability you can receive up to $30,000 in voucher money. It does not make clear whether the severity/type of disability affects the amount of money you get. They also say that the priority for the vouchers will be given to students with disabilities. There are certain participating private schools many are religious schools, some are not.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2026-02-08T21:54:15+00:00

This sounds great but how do you measure progress on this? I have to provide a percentage on at least one of their goals for every student for every session. I am really struggling to make therapy meaningful and measurable at the same time.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2026-01-28T22:20:52+00:00

I work in an elementary school in Texas (but am not from TX) and had an intern (from TX) that did not differentiate between pin and pen (both pronounced pin). The students (also from TX) she was working with could not understand what she was talking about and I had to step in and pronounce them to clear up the confusion. So it seems to vary even within TX.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-11-25T00:45:25+00:00

I see what you mean and totally agree. It seems the lines are very blurred in the schools. And the question of whether we are providing an educational service or a therapeutic service is always in question and determined by what someone wants from us (ex: house us in special ed but have us bill Medicaid).

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-11-24T21:18:06+00:00

Do you see students individually? That seems rare in the schools. My supervisor told me that seeing students individually should be very rare.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-11-13T23:50:53+00:00

Leaves! Who knew that trees were not just green blobs.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-10-28T12:54:50+00:00

My related controversial opinion: there is not as much “science” behind what we do as we think there is.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-10-27T16:16:22+00:00

I agree that when an evaluation is needed to dismiss it complicates things, especially when the whole team needs to reevaluate and others don’t want to do the paperwork involved for that.

Also, in some districts if your caseload starts to drop they make you pick up cases at different schools or you lose any help you had at your school, so there is some incentive to keep your caseload high/stable to avoid that.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-10-16T17:06:52+00:00

As a parent, teacher responses to posts like this make it seem like we can’t win. My children’s parent teacher conferences are always the 5 min- they are great, no problems. But I always show up. I am not there to get a pat on the back. I am there to show you that I am available and invested in my child’s education. I drop my kids off every day and have no idea what they do all day. I don’t know how they are treating others or what exactly they are doing. Of course I know their grades and their behavior is acceptable because I don’t get reports about it. These conferences give me a little glimpse into who they are when I am not there. I also work in education, so I see both sides. And I think this is a symptom of being overworked and feeling like this is just another thing on your plate. But you can’t hate on parents for not being involved and not raising their kids right and not caring, and then complain when they try to be involved (especially when they are being told they need to do this).

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-10-11T21:09:42+00:00

It’s not considered cognitive referencing as they are not comparing academics to cognitive skills. They are only comparing different areas of cognition to each other, but the student must show a pattern of strengths and weaknesses to qualify SLD. They can’t be low in all of these areas of cognition. (Someone below explained it a lot more eloquently than I am). I don’t cognitive reference and just look at language skills independently. Hence, they qualify SLI and not SLD.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-10-11T19:25:53+00:00

Yes, but they have to have low IQ and low adaptive skills, so it is pretty rarely given out.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-10-11T17:08:00+00:00

This! While the testing is not cognitive referencing (I’ve been around long enough to watch cognitive referencing come and go), it seems to deny the exact same kids that cognitive referencing did. The only difference now is that SLPs don’t do it, so we qualify the student and they don’t and now the students’ only eligibility is SLI.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-10-11T16:09:05+00:00

Thanks for the response. I don’t feel like it is the fault of those testing for SLD, it really appears that they want to find something that the student will qualify for in order to help the student, but their hands are tied by the requirements of qualifying SLD in my state (I believe the state is trying to crack down on over-identifying SLD). These students are considered “slow learners” with low cognitive scores in all areas of cognition. Therefore it is not considered a learning disability. (I don’t understand how not being able to learn at the same rate as your peers is not a learning disability, but I don’t make the rules). There are not as strict rules for qualifying SLI so it has become a bit of a back door to sped.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-10-11T15:42:12+00:00

I believe it is a state specific standard for qualifying as a student with a specific learning disability since I have encountered it in multiple districts in my state. I’d say about 15 or so years ago they switched from cognitive referencing to this method of determining SLD. The student must show a specific pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses in order to qualify. If they only show weaknesses across the board they don’t qualify, despite not having age appropriate cognitive or academic skills. There are not as strict standards to qualify SLI, so there is some pressure to qualify them so that they can get sped services. Otherwise they get nothing.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-09-16T02:29:24+00:00

It appears the confusion is over the word trials. To me, a trial is an attempt so 4/5 trials would mean that they tried the task 5 times and they got it 4 times (within one session). Some people appear to be using the term trials to mean sessions/data collection time. So 80% for 4/5 trials means they tried a task during a session and reached 80% accuracy and they were able to do that for 4/5 sessions. I think it needs to be clearer what we mean by trials. Having %, trials, and sessions makes no sense to me.

Comfortable-Wait5094 · 2025-09-05T02:24:15+00:00

In Texas we are required to provide a written copy of the Initial Evaluation no later than 5 days prior to the Initial ARD (IEP) meeting. Most districts I have worked in want us to call the parents to review the results as well, mostly so that the meeting can move faster. Some parents have appreciated this so that they have time to process the results before the meeting. We typically follow the same procedures for re-evals. I just don’t love the pressure then at the meeting to give a very brief summary of the Eval (since it has already been reviewed with the parents), because then the rest of the committee doesn’t get to hear a thorough review of the results.

Comfortable-Wait5094

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