Eligibility criteria for school-based services are dictated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA). The mandates of the IDEA then get translated through several levels of administration before being operationalized into a set of eligibility criteria used by local school districts. These translations can have the effect of the “telephone” game in which the message shifts with each translation between the law and the school district. As a result, clinicians are often asked to use practices that do not reflect evidence-based practice and have a dubious relationship to the law itself. This presentation reviews what the law requires by looking at the actual wording of the law and linking this to best practices in diagnostics.

ASHA: 0.2 ASHA CEUs, Intermediate Level

CA SLPAHB: 2.0 hrs

CMH: 2.0 hrs

Dr. Elena Plante conducts research primarily in the area of developmental language disorders. Her work concerns the accurate identification of adults and children with this condition, improvement of learning by these individuals, and understanding the neurobiological substraits of the disorder. She is a co-author on several standardized tests for children with language disorders including the Pediatric Test of Brain Injury, the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills, the SPELT-IV, and the Shirts and Shoes Test.  Her lab is actively engaged in treatment research to improve grammatical morpheme skills in preschool children with Developmental Language Disorder.  She has been conducting neuroimaging research for over 30 years and she primarily uses fMRI as a tool for revealing recruitment of cognitive systems for language processing. Her work has been funded by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and the National Institute on Aging and the Institute for Educational Science. Dr. Plante has numerous ongoing collaborations with researchers nationally and abroad.

1. Attendees will learn about what the law does and does not say about service eligibility.

2. Attendees will discriminate between the distinct assessment purposes mandated by the IDEA.

3. Attendees will be able to link different diagnostic approaches to the different assessment purposes under the IDEA.

This course must be watched in its entirety. In order to receive the CMH or the CEU certificate, a quiz is required to be completed with 80% success.

Financial— Dr. Plante is a co-author on several standardized tests for children with language disorders including the Pediatric Test of Brain Injury, the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills, the SPELT-IV, and the Shirts and Shoes Test.  

Nonfinancial— No relevant non-financial disclosures.

15 mins – Disclosures, Introduction

60 mins – objectives

learn about what the law does and does not say about service eligibility.

 discriminate between the distinct assessment purposes mandated by the IDEA.

link different diagnostic approaches to the different assessment purposes under the IDEA.

30 mins – Review of recommended methodology and strategies

15 mins – Q&A