Re: FW: Tx hearing officer asleep during a hearing

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,As I mentioned before, the reason evaluations conducted by psychiatrists and licensed psychologist, who are not LSSPs, is they lack the "multidisciplinary" approach mandated by IDEIA, thus can not determine if the student meets the IDEIA criteria for the disability. This multidisciplinary team MUST consider and review ALL independent evaluations, including, but not exclusively, medical or psychological. The ARD Committee, of which parents are voting members, decides if the student is classified as having a disability, and eligible to receive special education service. It is process mandated by law. However, what happens to the process at the school district level?Everything that you write in your post, regarding the quality of SDs' evaluations is CORRECT!! Unfortunately, those evaluations are not conducted according to best practices, not even "appropriate" practices. Having someone with extensive knowledge of comprehensive evaluations on the parent's side, is the best way to tackle the problem. Unfortunately, those inappropriate evaluations are the main reason our children are not identified and/or serviced properly.Loretta,AdvocateSent from my iPad2

I’m glad to see that medical diagnosis must always be considered, because earlier you stated that school districts were “inappropriately†accepting medical diagnosis. Really the medical Dx should be accepted because the diagnosis definition in the DSM-IV (and definitely the one in DSM-V) is stricter for autism than the IDEA definition. That means, the medical Dx automatically meets the IDEA definition of autism if we’re just looking at definitions. The DIAGNOSIS means that the child may qualify for insurance services. The fact that many schools aren’t accepting the Dx shows how little they know about Autism. The docs would save the school money by contributing that piece (the autism eval) of the report.

The problem is that schools, which are providing the bulk of services for kiddos in the spectrum, DO NOT DIAGNOSIS and AREN’T ALLOWED to diagnosis. Schools determine the education label, then the need of each particular child based on that EDUCATIONAL LABEL. The irony is, the schools, which are not allowed to Dx, employ diagnosticians. . . . .but I digress.

Now whether and what services are needed is the job of the multidisciplinary report. Does this child OT, speech, social skills, PT? And for what skills? These are the questions that the multidisciplinary report should be answering. However most school reports are crap. . . . with many if not most of the district professionals are either backpedaling their recommendations based on what the school can afford to provide rather than what the child actually needs or they border on incompetent and don’t know how to do a decent report. Most district speech pathologists do not even know to give separate pragmatic/social skills tests for kiddos in the spectrum, asserting that the 5 pragmatic questions on the CELF suffice. Crap. I recently had a district FBA report on my son that did not even state the function of the behavior. . . it only stated teacher and parent observations! When I asked the Houston ISD LSSP where the functions of the behavior were in the report, she responded that that an FBA didn’t do that. CRAP.

S.

Re: FW: Tx hearing officer asleep during a hearing

Posted by: "Loretta Zayas-Revai" loretta@... lrevai@...

Sun Feb 12, 2012 11:29 pm (PST)

School staff does not answer to insurance companies, because all of the services provided are free, (Free and Appropriate Public Education -FAPE). The members of the multidisciplinary team employed by the district MUST hold licenses, certifications, and/or documented required training in each of the fields.

The characteristics of autism (PDD-NOS, Autism, and Aspergers) are: developmental delays in multiple basic functions, including communication and socialization. To properly assessed these characteristics, best practices require a multidisciplinary team: parent, teacher(s), speech pathologists, experts in behavioral science, nurse (vision & hearing), adaptive technology, LSSPs, etc,. If the decision of whether a student meets the AU disability criteria is made solely by the LSSP, the evaluation is not only inappropriate, but does not meet the law requirements. Actually, the Documentation of Disability form for AU MUST be signed by ALL the school members of the multidisciplinary team. School evaluation staff does not "diagnose," they determine if the "disability criteria" for each of the IDEIA areas of disability has been met. It is up to the ARD Committee to determine whether or not the student qualifies for Special Education service under each disability and the student's placement.

Medical diagnosis must always be considered. One of the most important benefits of a multidisciplinary team evaluation is the impact it has in developing appropriate individualized educational programs (IEPs) and placement. Here lies the difference between a "medical" and an "educational" evaluation.

From your account of what your experience has been, there are school districts that operate differently from what the regulations mandate and do not even make an effort to follow adequate practices. Accepting a medical diagnosis without conducting multidisciplinary evaluations, not only does not follow the mandates, but prevents our children from the benefit of appropriate IEPs and services. One of the best indications of this is the number of outside services parents must provide for their children.

Loretta,

Advocate