From Research to Practice

Abstract

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act introduces a new discretionary category of preschool eligibility: "developmental delay." A recent DEC position paper supports the use of this new category but raises concerns about the transition from the broad category of developmental delay instead of eligibility categories commonly used in elementary school. Investigators at UCLA have been following two cohorts of young children with developmental delays and their families since 1979. Findings from these longitudinal studies relate directly to the concerns raised in the DEC document and support the introduction of the new category of eligibility.The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the 1991 amendments (P.L 102-119) expand services to young children with disabilities through the addition of required services, by broadening eligibility criteria, and by extending rights afforded to school age children to infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. The idea that services should be provided in the least restrictive environment is central to the Act As the states prepare to make the leap from policy to practice, a number of concerns have emerged regarding the population to be served and about the most appropriate types of services. In this paper, we discuss issues raised by the expanded eligibility criteria and provide empirical support to a recent DEC position paper that has addressed those issues (McLean, Smith, McCormick, Shakel, & McEvoy, 1991).The IDEA Amendments introduce a new discretionary category of preschool eligibility.The category, developmental delay, is intended to include children from 3 to 5 years of age with significant delays in one or more domains of physical, cognitive, communication, social and emotional, and adaptive development who, as a result of their delays, need special education and related services. In essence, the introduction of this new eligibility option allows states to serve preschool children without assigning them a categorical disability label.The introduction of a new category for services raises a number of issues, however. The DEC position paper (McLean et al., 1991), although supporting the new eligibility option, identifies several of these issues, including concerns about the transition from a broad category of developmental delay to eligibility categories commonly used in elementary schools.

Las dificultades neuroevolutivas como categoría comprensiva de las dificultades de aprendizaje en niños con retraso del desarrollo: una revisión sistemática

“…Nonetheless, limiting the age range to 5-9 years entails that in order to receive special attention as they mature, they must be reassessed and labelled with a particular disability (Delgado et al, 2006). The majority continue to require special education services (Delgado et al, 2006) and some are re-classified, with the most common categories being: specific learning disabilities, speech or language impairment and educable mental handicap (Bernheimer, Keogh & Coots, 1993;Delgado et al 2006;Keogh, Coots & Bernheimer, 1996). Others, however, do not match diagnostic categories, which leads to their problems being minimized and a lack of provision of adequate care, even though throughout their childhood they demonstrate less readiness for school and are at a greater risk of poor school performance (Montes, Lotyczewski, Halterman, & Hightower, 2012;Romano, Babchishin, Pagani & Kohen, 2010), as well as having deficits in activity, poorer adaptation and decreased participation in school (Leung, Chan, Chung & Pang, 2011).…”