There are many terms and specialized jargon in the special education field. Parents and teachers participate in the many steps in the process from referral to placement. They encounter many words that need clarification because they are frequently used, often as acronyms.
- This first set of terms is made up of jargon and their respective acronyms that seem to come up most often and in which parents and regular education teachers ask about.
Individual Educational Plan (IEP): The Individual Education Program Plan (IEP) is a written plan that specifies the students academic goals and the method to obtain these goals.
The IEP is developed by a team made up of the parents and the schools special education representatives .
Child Study Team (CST): The team has a number of responsibilities including consultation, identification, diagnosis, classification and formulation of recommendations for remediation of learning and behavior problems consists of School Psychologists, Learning Consultants, and School Social Workers.
Least Restrictive Environment (LRE): an educational setting providing students with disabilities a place to learn to the best of their ability and also have contact with children without disabilities
.Specific Learning Disability: learning disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in acquiring, organizing or expressing information that manifests itself in school as an impaired ability to listen, reason, speak, read, write, spell or do mathematical calculations, despite appropriate instruction in the general education
Extended School Year (ESY): A special education program that extends beyond the regular school year.
Appropriate placement: Providing students with disabilities a setting where that will receive appropriate instruction.
Inclusive education: disabled children receive services in their home school and are placed in the same classroom with non-handicapped children. There is a regular education teacher as well as a special education teacher.
Mainstreaming: some or all of the child's day is spent in a regular education classroom
Self-contained setting: a classroom specifically for special education students in which students receive more than 50% of a days instruction in that setting.
Resource setting: a class placement that serves the children's needs to learn specific skills within the least restrictive environment for less than 50% of the day.
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD): a medical diagnosis saying that the student has
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