NC 1503-2.5 Evaluation Procedures

Plain English summary

NC 1503-2.5 establishes comprehensive evaluation procedures that LEAs must follow before determining a child's eligibility for special education, including required notice to parents, use of varied assessment tools, and detailed disability-specific screening and eligibility criteria. The regulation prohibits reliance on any single assessment measure and requires evaluations to be non-discriminatory, conducted in the child's native language, and administered by trained personnel. Specific eligibility criteria and required screening batteries are prescribed for each disability category including Autism Spectrum Disorder, Deaf-Blindness, Deafness, Developmental Delay, Emotional Disability, Hearing Impairment, and Intellectual Disability.

Key requirements

• The LEA must provide notice to the parents of a child with a disability, in accordance with NC 1504-1.4, that describes any area in which the LEA proposes to conduct evaluation.
• Use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to gather relevant functional, developmental, and academic information about the child, including information provided by the parent.
• Not use any single measure or assessment as the sole criterion for determining whether a child is a child with a disability and for determining an appropriate educational program for the child.
• Use technically sound instruments that may assess the relative contribution of cognitive and behavioral factors, in addition to physical or developmental factors.
• Assessments and other evaluation materials used to assess a child are selected and administered so as not to be discriminatory on a racial or cultural basis.
• Are provided and administered in the child's native language or other mode of communication and in the form most likely to yield accurate information on what the child knows and can do academically, developmentally, and functionally, unless it is clearly not feasible to so provide or administer.
• Are used for the purposes for which the assessments or measures are valid and reliable.
• Are administered by trained and knowledgeable personnel.
• Are administered in accordance with any instructions provided by the producer of the assessments.
• The child is assessed in all areas related to the suspected disability, including, if appropriate, health, vision, hearing, social and emotional status, general intelligence, academic performance, communicative status, and motor abilities.
• Assessments of children with disabilities who transfer from one LEA to another LEA in the same school year are coordinated with those children's prior and subsequent schools, as necessary and as expeditiously as possible.
• The evaluation is sufficiently comprehensive to identify all of the child's special education and related services needs, whether or not commonly linked to the disability category in which the child has been classified.
• A full and individualized evaluation of a child's needs must be conducted before any action is taken with respect to determining eligibility for special education.
• To be determined eligible in the disability category of autism, persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts manifested by ALL THREE of: deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors, and deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships must be demonstrated currently or by history.
• To be determined eligible in the disability category of autism, restrictive, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities manifested by ONE OR MORE prescribed criteria must be demonstrated currently or by history.
• To be determined eligible in the disability category of deaf-blindness, a child must demonstrate a visual impairment in combination with a hearing impairment resulting in severe communication, developmental, and educational needs that cannot be accommodated in a program for a child with solely a visual impairment or hearing impairment.
• To be determined eligible in the disability category of deafness, a child must have a deficiency in hearing as demonstrated by the elevated threshold of auditory sensitivity to pure tones or speech.
• To be determined eligible in the disability category of developmental delay, a child must be between the ages of three through seven, whose development and/or behavior is so significantly delayed or atypical that special education and related services are required.
• The criteria for determining delayed development for ages three through seven are: a 30 percent delay in one area of development or a 25 percent delay in two areas of development using prescribed measurement standards.
• To be determined eligible in the disability category of serious emotional disability, one of the following characteristics must be exhibited over a long period of time and to a marked degree: inability to make educational progress unexplained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors; inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships; inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances; a general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression; or a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.
• To be determined eligible in the disability category of hearing impairment, a child must have a documented hearing loss of a type and extent to have an adverse effect on educational performance and require specially designed instruction.
• To be determined eligible in the disability category of intellectual disability, a child must demonstrate intellectual functioning well below the mean on an individually administered standardized intelligence test, and the standard error of measurement of that test shall be taken into account in the interpretation of the results.
• For Emotional Disability and Intellectual Disability (when there is no prior diagnosis), two scientific research-based interventions to address the relevant skill deficiency and documentation of the results of the interventions, including progress monitoring documentation, are required screenings.

Affected parties

• Local Education Agencies (LEAs)
• Children with disabilities
• Parents of children with disabilities
• Special education evaluators and psychologists
• Children suspected of having a disability
• Preschool children with disabilities
• Children transferring between LEAs

Official source

https://www.dpi.nc.gov/documents/publications/catalog/ec144-policies-governing-services/open#page=61