Students With Special Needs Evaluation Process

At-risk preschoolers and students with ADHD
The growth and development of children under the school going age is often expected to be normal and almost similar among all children. However, this is often not the reality in the society as some children are predisposed to some factors that curtail their normal growth and development. This developmental deficiency can be detected as early as 24 months where some children are detected to display a significant lag in cognitive and behavioral development. There are children in various categories that are predisposed to such lag in developmental issues yet they have not achieved the school going age, these are the ones referred to as the at risk preschoolers. There are various factors that have been seen to significantly subject young children to risk. One major factor is the low-income families within which they are born. Children can however be affected by more than one risk factor in effect making them more at risk, and when two or three factors are combined, there is a likelihood of the child suffering adverse effects including schooling failure, maladaptive behavior among other negative behavior. The main factors that put preschoolers at risk are households without English speakers, large families, low parental education, residential mobility, single-parent situation, teen mother situation and non-employed parents (Ritcher L.M., Black M.M & Lu C., 2016). Children living under or born in such conditions are generally categorized as at-risk lot.
ADHD
ADHD, the short form of Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is a brain based syndrome which is highly genetic and is concerned with the regulation of a specific set of brain functions and related behaviors. ADHD is known to involve the key skills known as ‘executive functioning skills’, these include significant functions of the human brain such as concentration, attention, memory, effort, motivation, learning from errors, hyperactivity, impulsivity, social skills and organization. ADHD is caused by differences in the development of brain anatomy and wiring, hence once has a challenge in the utility of the aforementioned skills. ADHD can therefore be referred to as a persistent pattern, which is lifelong, of hyperactivity-impulsivity and/or inattention that obstructs the regular development or functioning across time and settings (The Understood Team, 2014). It is estimated that in the US, 5% of adults have ADHD, which caters for 11,000,000 people and this condition affects both male and females and not limited to children. Since it is a neurobehavioral condition, it has no cure and most of the victims do not outgrow the condition.
Characteristics of children with;
Early developmental delays- there are some signs that a parent needs to look out for in the course of development of the child. In as much as it is true that each child has his own pace of development, there are some outstanding red flags that a parent needs to be aware of when there are lags in the mental, emotional or the physical growth. The early developmental delays include problems with language or speech, vision, movement or the motor skills, social and emotional skills, thinking or the cognitive skills. Further, when a child displays weight or height that does not reflect their age, or if the facial features, head growth, the body proportion or the shape do not tally with the normal age mates then these too can be considered as signs of developmental delays (Morin A., 2014).
ADHD- children with this condition often display difficulty in coping with the key areas in development and life functions that are responsible for the impulse control and focus among other skills. Such children struggle with working memory, flexible thinking, managing emotions, self regulations, organization and planning. Most of the children do not manage to outgrow these condition in totality, though some of the symptoms may get lesser pronounced as they grow older. Since this condition makes the children have difficulty in handling their executive functions, they always have difficulty in managing time, getting and staying organized, managing their emotions, paying attention and recalling things, changing or shafting of their focus from one thing to another, getting started on tasks and thinking before saying or taking an action. Due to such symptoms, it is common to see the preschool children who suffer from ADHD fail to follow directions or simply ignores them, can easily and extremely get frustrated, stands up or fidgets and talks when they are expected to be silent, finds it hard beginning a task, takes things without permission and needs to be repeatedly reminded to stop and listen (National Institute of Mental Health, 2016).
Best-practice instructional strategies for students with:
Early developmental delays- in order to know how effectively handle early development delay, it is important to know that there is no one fixed cause of this complication, but the risk factors include complications at birth like low birth weight, premature birth and lack of sufficient oxygen at birth. Environmental issues like lead poisoning, exposure to drugs and alcohol, poor nutrition, trauma and difficult family conditions can also lead to developmental delays. There are other medical conditions like the chronic ear infections, vision problems, injuries with long term effect on the daily life of the child and illness which can also cause developmental delay. Once the parent and the teachers detect such symptoms in a child, the best practice to help in improving the development of the child is to communicate more with the child, for instance striking conversations more often, singing as you encourage the child to repeat and sing along. The parent also needs to read a book daily to the child. In the course of the day, the parent needs to reinforce or encourage the child to engage in speech with others. If there is complication with the ear, then the parent needs to seek medical attention for such infections as soon as detected. If the challenge is with the visual perception of the child, there is need to acquire lenses, an eye patch or even surgery for the child. In the event of motor skills delay, the child will need physical therapy and rampant physical activities to help rejuvenate the motor system. The social and emotional development delays can be lessened by instituting special types of skill oriented and behavioral therapy (WebMd, 2017).
Best-practice instructional programming for at-risk preschoolers and students with ADHD
Children with early developmental delays as well as ADHD basically suffer real life skills deficiency. This makes them look like they are less effective in the daily activities that would ordinarily pass for being obvious among the normal children. The blanket assumption relegates this special category of children to the edge of the society where their disadvantages are often not taken care of, an act that leaves them disadvantaged against the other children. It is important therefore to develop a special program that will cater for the deficiencies of these children.
The instructional program needs to be an activity filled program that will allow this special group of children to engage in physical activity and speech activities. The program will also have a lot of physical activities that will make the children active hence able to help in the development of the motor system of the children. The intervention program will also have the inclusion of the normal children in the class, this will help in reduction of the trauma and psychological discomfort of isolation. The inclusion of the normal children in this program is also meant to have the normal children encourage and aid the children with challenges to learn from their colleagues, this is a more effective approach. The special program will also have at its centre the involvement of the parents of the children with special needs. This will deliberately be done in order to ensure that the learning process and adjustment of the child does not end with the end of the school day but is progressive into the home under the guidance of the parents. The teachers will share with each parent of the children with challenges the unique things that the parents need to focus on. This will also bring into focus the personalized approach of learning to each child, taking into account the uniqueness of the special needs. There will also be resources allocated to each student with the challenges in line with the unique needs of the child.
The special education programs as well as the regular education will be regularly evaluated by professionals in the special education programs to ensure the requirements of the common core standards are well adhered to. As part of the evaluation to ensure effectiveness of program, regular checks on the qualifications of the teachers will be the top priority. There will also be scrutiny into the resources allocated to the various arms of the special program to ensure sufficient resource allocation to each sector of the program and each child. The evaluation will also ensure the use of summative, formative assessments on regular basis to drive instructions in class under this special program. The planning time of the teachers for the children with special needs will be of great interest in the evaluation process and will form an important and integral part of the process to ensure quality delivery of services by the teachers. To ensure an effective evaluation process, appropriate evaluation tools (including observation) will be employed herein, there will be an evaluation team specially tasked with that role, there will be independent educational evaluation (IEE), evaluation timeliness will also be observed. To further inform the program in details, there will be small group and individual interviews conducted with the special education teachers, the general education teachers, instructional assistants, speech therapists and the occupational therapists and even the superintendent of the school. The monitoring program will be in compliance to the regulatory expectations of the region (Shillinglaw J.A., 2017).
In order to ensure a long term effect and continued efficiency of the program, the special education teachers and the regular education teachers need to be regularly trained to keep the highest standards of the disseminated material to the children and their handling. Since the educational needs of the students are complex and diverse, the training of the teachers needs to be an ongoing activity. Despite the fact that as a minimum entry requirement, each special education teacher must have a bachelor’s degree in special education, there are supplementary courses and trainings that the teachers can undergo to keep their knowledge ever fresh and relevant bearing in mind the complexity and demanding nature of special education. It is important for the school to have flexible programs that allow the teachers to go further and have their master’s classes and training in special education as part of ongoing training for the special programs. Further, the teachers need to be placed under mentors who have been in the field of handling children with special needs for a longer period of time (Mader J., 2017). This mentorship will enable the relatively new teachers to get a few skills and knowledge on handling the children with special needs hence act as an ongoing training and improvement for the teacher.
References
Mader J., (2017). How Teacher Training Hinders Special-Needs Students. Retrieved February 09, 2018 https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/how-teacher-training-hinders-special-needs-students/518286/
Morin A., (2014). What You Need to Know About Developmental Delays. Retrieved February 09, 2018 https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/treatments-approaches/early-intervention/what-you-need-to-know-about-developmental-delays
National Institute of Mental Health, (2016). Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Retrieved February 09, 2018 https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd/index.shtml
Ritcher L.M., Black M.M & Lu C., (2016). Risk of poor development in young children in low-income and middle-income countries: an estimation and analysis at the global, regional, and country level. Retrieved February 09, 2018 http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(16)30266-2/fulltext
Shillinglaw J.A., (2017). Evaluation of the Special Education Programs Department of Special Education Swansea Public School District Swansea, Massachusetts. Retrieved February 09, 2018 https://www.swanseaschools.org/cms/lib/MA02202433/Centricity/Domain/8/Swansea%20Special%20Education%20Program%20Evaluation%202017.pdf
The Understood Team, (2014). Understanding ADHD. Retrieved February 09, 2018 https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/add-adhd/understanding-adhd
WebMd, (2017). Recognizing Developmental Delays in Children. Retrieved February 09, 2018 https://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/recognizing-developmental-delays-birth-age-2#1