Introduction to Special Education

Caring for Our People Training: Improving Care for Tribal Members with Disabilities and Special Health Care Needs

WHY SPECIAL EDUCATION?
Not every student who enters school is able to complete their assignments and interact with their peers without assistance. About 11% of students are serviced by special education, which is a program that provides children who have disabilities with individualized attention. These children are dealing with obstacles imposed by mental, physical, or physical limitations. Special education allows them to learn and receive the proper means to an education.

SPECIAL EDUCATION LAW
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is a law that requires quality services for students with disabilities, including preschool children and infants. By law, each student in special education is provided with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), through which the student, parents, teachers, and administration work together to find the best plan for this particular student in terms of a successful learning environment. During the IEP meeting, everyone involved discusses the student’s progress, goals, and methods to reach these goals. These students should receive special help when needed, but the law also requires that they be mainstreamed into regular classes whenever possible. Studies have shown that this inclusion actually makes an improvement on the student’s learning process, especially when it comes to social skills.

WHAT BEGINNING STAFF MEMBERS SHOULD KNOW
Anyone working within the special education field needs to be aware of the differences among students with disabilities and the various categories of disability served by special education programs. Not every student in the special education program is the same and students with different disabilities require different types of assistance. There are thirteen categories of students served in special education programs. Eight of these categories were discussed in more depth in the Introduction to Disability module of the Caring for Our People Training. If you did not take the introductory course, or just did not memorize it, the thirteen categories are listed below. If you click on any of these, you will be transferred to the web page in the introductory page or to a section of our virtual library, be sure to use the back arrow at the top of your browser to return you to this page The thirteen categories of disability provided services by special education programs are:

  1. Autism .....a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction ...characteristics often associated with autism are engaging in repetitive activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to changes in daily routines or the environment, and unusual responses to sensory experiences.
  2. Hearing impairment, there are three types of auditory impairments defined under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, hearing impairment is an impairment in hearing that affects a child's educational performance but that is not included under the definition of deafness.
  3. Deaf-Blindness......means concomitant [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.
  4. Deafness - ...means a hearing impairment so severe that a child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification, that adversely affects a child's educational performance.
  5. Emotional Disturbance,
  6. Intellectual disability, .... a condition in which a person has trouble learning, absorbing, and practicing everyday skills, which delays them from being able to take care of themselves and interact with others, (the most recent law changed the term from "mental retardation" to "intellectual disability" but the definition itself did not change.
  7. Specific Learning Disabilities - obstacles to the learning process that hinder a person’s full ability to be educated. These disabilities still allow the person to learn, he/she just has to find alternate ways to do this.
  8. Multiple Disabilities - simultaneous impairments (such as mental retardation and blindness), the combination of which causes severe educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in a special education program solely for one of the impairments. Does not include deaf-blindness.
  9. Orthopedic impairments–...means a severe orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
  10. Other health impairments - cover a variety of diseases and disorders. This refers to people who have limited strength, energy or alertness that affects their ability to learn in a normal classroom.
  11. Speech or language impairments
  12. Traumatic Brain Injury...acquired injury to the brain caused by an external physical force, resulting in total or partial functional disability or
    psychosocial impairment, or both,
  13. Visual impairment,