Qualifying requires BOTH a disability and a demonstrated need for services. The point of the evaluations is to look at both– does the student have a disability and, if so, does it impact their schooling?

In 34 C.F.R. § 300.306(c)(2) IDEA states that:

(2) If a determination is made that a child has a disability and needs special education and related services, an IEP must be developed for the child in accordance with §§300.320 through 300.324.

IDEA has 13 disability categories plus a bonus one– developmental delay– for the youngest students.

In order to qualify, students have to have a disability that fits under the umbrella of one of those categories. Some are really broad, like Other Health Impaired that covers everything from diabetes to anxiety to ADHD. Some are really narrow, like Deaf Blind, which requires that a student be both hearing and vision impaired. 

The list of qualifying disabilities is long and there is a lot of complexity in determining who qualifies under each so we are not going to paste the full IDEA text here– but you can check it out on the IDEA site. 

What counts as a demonstrated need for special education and related services is not spelled out in IDEA. What IDEA says is that the disability has to adversely affect the student’s educational performance. The disability has to make school harder for the student in a way that is visible.

The most common way is by impacting the student’s academic progress relative to same age peers. That is shown on academic testing. If a student’s performance on the WIAT, KTEA, Woodcock-Johnson or other academic test shows that the student is not performing as well as same aged peers in at least one area that might be related to the disability, that can count.

But some students perform extraordinarily well on tests and horrible in classes. A student with ADHD might do really well 1:1 in a quiet room on a test and be failing multiple classes due to difficulties with impulse control and focusing in a busy class. In that case, reports cards and transcripts might demonstrate academic need.

It can get even more complicated though. What about a student with Autism who gets amazing grades but sits alone at lunch every day, gets overwhelmed with sensory stimulation, or struggles with transitions?

The law does NOT say that a student has to do poorly on a standardized test assessment to qualify for special education or be in only remedial classes– or be failing any classes. It says adversely effect educational performance. Therefore, teams have a lot of discretion to interpret the educational need provision broadly– and there are good arguments that doing so is in line with the intent of IDEA.

In 34 C.F.R. § 300.306(c)(2) IDEA states that:

(2) If a determination is made that a child has a disability and needs special education and related services, an IEP must be developed for the child in accordance with §§300.320 through 300.324.

In 34 C.F.R. § 300.8(a)(1) IDEA also says:

Who, by reason thereof, needs special education and related services.

And, finally, in 34 C.F.R. § 300.8(a)(1) IDEA says:

adversely affects a child’s educational performance.

The IEP team has to rule lack of instruction or limited English proficiency as an explanation for the student’s academic challenges. If a student has missed a ton of school, that can keep them from qualifying unless the team can prove that it was the student’s disability that kept them from going to school. The team can’t know if a student has a learning disability if they have skipped years of English classes. Maybe they are behind just because they haven’t been in class. It’s the same thing with language– the team has to prove that the student is not struggling in classes just because they speak another language.

In addition, a student who just needs related services but not special education — aka needs occupational therapy or assistive technology but not academic supports from a case manager/special education teacher– does not qualify for services. Students have to need the academic support of a case manager or, at younger ages, a speech and language pathologist, to qualify for special education.

In 34 C.F.R. § 300.8(a)(1) IDEA says that:

Parent’s have the right to written copies of all reports. They have the right to attend the meeting, to agree to or refuse special education services for their child, and to dispute the findings of the district.

In 34 C.F.R. § 300.306(a)(2) IDEA says that:

(2) The public agency provides a copy of the evaluation report and the documentation of determination of eligibility at no cost to the parent.

In many districts, special education teachers do no formal assessments. They are strictly done by school psychologists or other trained staff members. In many other districts, teachers are trained on and asked to do the Woodcock Johnson-IV or a similar academic norm referenced test. In those districts, teachers are responsible for administering the test, scoring it, and writing up a report on their results. Note that the WJ-IV and similar tests give teachers an automated “report” based on the student’s performance. This is gibberish and I highly recommend never giving it directly to parents. Instead, teachers can create their own template with explanations of the jargon and then copy and paste in the relevant sections from the automated report. 

Informal assessments are all you! I strongly recommend talking to, getting work samples from, and getting data from general education teachers who work with your student but ultimately, you are the one who does the informal assessments and, in most districts, writes the IEP that comes from them. 

The meeting where the team discusses the evaluation results is often called an evaluation summary meeting. After it, the team has 30 days to hold the initial IEP meeting where the student’s goals, services, and supports will be figured out. Some districts might combine this with the evaluation summary meeting but, because anything can happen at an evaluation summary meeting, it is good for the two meetings to be separated.

In 34 C.F.R. § 300.323(c) IDEA says that:

Schools can’t diagnose anything medical. Like a school can’t say a child has diabetes or even ADHD or Autism or depression. For things like ADHD and Autism though the school can say the child has characteristics of ADHD. It’s a weird loophole—but schools aren’t doctor’s offices and teams need to watch their language. For depression or anxiety, schools skip it entirely and instead state that the child has an emotional disturbance. What schools can do is diagnose learning disabilities and challenges. So an auditory processing deficit can be diagnosed by the school, but depression can’t be. Doctor’s offices generally have the opposite issue. They can diagnose medical issues but not learning disabilities because those require specific educational assessment tools. There are gray areas with intellectual disabilities and Autism but in general schools diagnose educational disabilities and doctors medical ones. A letter from a doctor is proof of a disability BUT that child would still need special education assessments to understand how it impacts the student at school. A medical diagnosis doesn’t automatically equal an IEP.

The criteria is the need for special education services. The student needs to have a demonstrated need for an IEP to qualify for one. This used to mean a discrepancy between their academic potential (aka IQ) and performance (aka scores on the Woodcock Johnson).

The law changed about 20 years ago to let students qualify if there is sufficient documentation that, even with research based interventions, the student is not progressing at an expected rate. That can be enough to show that the student needs the IEP.

It gets more complicated for emotional challenges or attentional ones. What counts as needing services? If the child is so anxious they can’t come to school but they do great when they sit in class, does that count? A lot of time that does, but there can be differences by school, district, and state because students are often really complicated. What if that same child had self-medicated through drugs and drug use was part of what was keeping them from going to school? Is it still the disability impacting them? What if the anxiety wasn’t just biochemical but was about fear of an abusive parent? The point is that it is often not clear cut when you are looking at whether the student’s documented disability is what is impacting their school performance. As a result, the decisions on 504 or IEP are often subjective and it is really important for general education teachers, parents, and students to speak up throughout the process. challenges. So an auditory processing deficit can be diagnosed by the school, but depression can’t be. Doctor’s offices generally have the opposite issue. They can diagnose medical issues but not learning disabilities because those require specific educational assessment tools. There are gray areas with intellectual disabilities and Autism but in general schools diagnose educational disabilities and doctors medical ones. A letter from a doctor is proof of a disability BUT that child would still need special education assessments to understand how it impacts the student at school. A medical diagnosis doesn’t automatically equal an IEP.

One disability gets picked as the primary and the other as secondary. Students can have multiple disabilities listed on their IEP for why they special education services. Note that they would not qualify under multiple disabilities– that is a really specific term reserved for students with very significant needs. A student who qualifies under multiple separate disability categories just has to decide which one is listed as the primary disability and which is a secondary disability.