Are Children With PTSD Being Neglected By Their Schools?
Victoria Bell
13 August 2015
What kind of special education accommodations are required by law to be provided for students suffering from Traumas?
At a minimum, school districts have to identify emotionally disturbed children and create an individualized education plan to accommodate their needs. Some of those services include social work and psychological services. Unfortunately school districts do not follow the rules laid out in the IDEA and end up expelling students, under classifying students, and ultimately not accommodating those students. Those failures cause emotionally disturbed children to not succeed in school and the work force. Massachusetts created a solution to remedy districts’ failures, which requires an overall community effort to accommodate emotionally disturbed children. This allows those children to receive services before they are identified and have a constant reinforcement of those learned skills. The ability to have a clear program that all districts can follow, along with uniform training for all staff members is key to proper accommodations for emotionally disturbed children.
Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (Hereinafter “IDEA”), districts have certain responsibilities when it comes to accommodating special education eligible students. Under the IDEA, a child with a disability has “intellectual disabilities . . . serious emotional disturbance (referred to in this chapter as ‘emotional disturbance’) . . . other health impairments, or specific learning disabilities; and who, by reason thereof, needs special education and related services.” The IDEA places a child find obligation upon the school districts. This obligation requires the districts to “identif[y], locate[], and evaluate and [develop] a practical method . . . to determine which children with disabilities are currently receiving needed special education and related services.” This obligation applies to “[a]ll children with disabilities residing in the State, including . . . children with disabilities attending private schools, regardless of the severity of their disabilities, and who are in need of special education and related services.”
The IDEA requires districts to conduct an initial evaluation “to determine whether a child is a child with a disability within 60 days of receiving parental consent for the evaluation, or . . . within [the State’s] timeframe.” While conducting the initial evaluation, the district must “use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to gather relevant functional, developmental, and academic information, including information provided by the parent, that may assist in determining . . . whether the child [has] a disability.” The district cannot use “any single measure or assessment as the sole criterion for determining whether a child is a child with a disability or determining an appropriate educational program for the child.” The assessments must be conducted in all the areas of the student’s suspected disability. The initial evaluation requires the “review [of] existing evaluation data . . . including . . . evaluations and information provided by the parents of the child; current classroom-based, local, or State assessments, and classroom based observations and observations by teachers and related service providers.” After reviewing all the required information, the district must identify what additional data is required in order to better determine “whether the child is a child with a disability”, “the present levels of academic achievement and related developmental needs of the child”, and ”whether the child needs special education and related services.”
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