Definition of Special Education

Video Transcript

"Well special education is just providing free and appropriate educations to kids with special needs. And so they are entitled to have any, any service that they require in order to have the same education that a regular child would be. So whether it's speech linguist pathology or occupational therapy or physical therapy or whatever it may be, they are legally entitled to have this so that they can have the same educational rights as every other kid. We do something called the problem solving model and it's kind of complicated, basically what it is is there's these norms for the county and if the child has fallen below the norms, then we try all these different steps to intervene and get them up to where they should be and if they continue to fall behind and they don't grow with a certain rate then they are eventually considered entitled to special education. Other counties do a formal IQ test and if there is a discrepancy then that will entitle them to have an IEP which is an individualized education plan. But it is the way that the nations is going we are kind of switching away from the formal cognitive testing and we are going more towards what's called response intervention."