Special Education

4. - A disorder characterized, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors.
5. - Autism is a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and affects a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others.
9. - The team of qualified professionals made up of the parent, special education teacher, interpreter of test data, district representative, and general education teacher at a minimum.
10. Technology - Assistive technology is technology used by individuals with disabilities in order to perform functions that might otherwise be difficult or impossible.
12. - Intelligence tests that are administered to a student one on one. These tests are often part of the assessment process.
13. - The yearly meeting of the individualized education program (IEP) team (or called ARD committee in some states).
14. - The education to which every student is entitled under IDEA. Every student is entitled to an education that is appropriate for his or her unique needs and that is provided free of charge.

1. - A mental health issue including, but not limited to, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder (sometimes called manic-depression), conduct disorders, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and psychotic disorders.
2. - A law that guarantees educational rights to all students with disabilities and makes it illegal for school districts to refuse to educate a student based on his or her disability.
3. - Changes in educational environments that allow students with disabilities to participate in inclusive environments by compensating for learners’ weaknesses.
6. - A legal document that defines special education services between the school district and the parents.
7. - A type of instructional deficit in which a child needs to practice a skill or receive coaching in order to use a skill effectively. An example is a reading fluency deficit, where the child cannot read smoothly or does so at too slow a rate.
8. - A plan that targets one to three of a student’s undesirable behaviors with interventions that are linked to the functions of the behavior; each intervention specifically addresses a measurable, clearly-stated targeted behavior.
11. - Simultaneous hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for children with deafness or children with blindness.