South Carolina Code of Regulations › Chapter 43 - STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION › Article 19 - INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAM › Section 43-243.1 - The Criteria for Entry into Programs of Special Education for Students with Disabilities

Current through Register Vol. 48, No. 6, June 28, 2024
A. General Requirements
These criteria for entry into programs of special education for students with disabilities will be used by all members of the multidisciplinary team, who may include school psychologists, speech-language therapists, and other persons responsible for the identification and evaluation of students with disabilities.
The federal definitions for all categories of disabilities have been used, as included in the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA). All examiners, however, must be appropriately credentialed or licensed and should have completed training that is directly relevant to the assessment procedure being conducted. Examiners may administer supplementary measures such as curriculum-based assessments to gain additional information.
All evaluation procedures must ensure that the following minimal requirements are met:
1. Tests and other evaluation materials used to assess a student suspected of having a disability are selected and administered so as not to be discriminatory on a racial or cultural basis and are provided and administered in the student's native language or other mode of communication unless it is clearly unfeasible to use that language or any mode of communication.
2. Materials and procedures used to assess a student with limited English proficiency are selected and administered to ensure that they measure the extent to which the student has a disability and needs special education, rather than measuring the student's English language skills.
3. A variety of assessment tools and strategies are used to gather relevant functional and developmental information about the student, including information provided by the parent and information related to enabling the student to be involved in and progress in the general curriculum (or for a preschool child to participate in appropriate activities) that may assist in determining whether the student is one with a disability and what the content of the student's IEP should be.
4. Any standardized tests that are given to a student have been validated for the specific purpose for which they are used and are administered by trained and knowledgeable personnel in accordance with any instructions provided by the producer of the tests. If an assessment is not conducted under standard conditions, a description of the extent to which it varied from standard conditions, such as the qualifications of the person administering the test or the method of test administration, must be included in the evaluation report.
5. Tests and other evaluation materials include those tailored to assess specific areas of educational need and not merely those that are designed to provide a single general intelligence quotient.
6. Tests are selected and administered so as best to ensure that if a test is administered to a student with impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills, the test results accurately reflect the student's aptitude or achievement level, or whatever other factors the test purports to measure, rather than reflecting the student's impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills (unless those skills are the factors that the test purports to measure).
7. No single procedure is used as the sole criterion for determining whether a student has a disability and for determining an appropriate educational program for the student.
8. The student is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, if appropriate, his or her health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities.
9. In the assessment of each student with a disability, the methods of evaluation are sufficiently comprehensive to identify all of the student's special education and related-service needs, whether or not they are commonly linked to the category in which the student is suspected of having a disability.
10. Each school district/agency uses technically sound instruments that may assess the relative contribution of cognitive and behavioral factors in addition to physical or developmental factors.
11. Each school district/agency uses assessment tools and strategies that provide relevant information that directly assists persons in determining the educational needs of the student.