Praxis 5358 key terms

The legal right of every eligible student with a disability to a public education that meets their individual needs at no cost to the family, provided through an IEP designed to confer meaningful educational benefit.

The requirement that students with disabilities be educated alongside peers without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate, with removal only when progress in the general classroom cannot be achieved even with supports.

The written rights given to parents, including notice, consent, access to records, independent evaluation, and dispute resolution, that protect their role in special education decisions.

A required written statement to parents explaining a school's proposal or refusal to initiate or change identification, evaluation, placement, or services, including the reasons and information sources behind the decision.

Parental agreement to an action such as evaluation or provision of services, given after receiving full explanation in the family's native language, and revocable in writing for service provision.

A formal administrative proceeding where an impartial hearing officer resolves disputes between families and school districts over identification, evaluation, placement, or services for a student with a disability.

The ongoing legal duty of states and districts to identify, locate, and evaluate all children who may need special education, including those in private schools, homeless, or highly mobile situations.

A written, legally binding plan for one eligible student that documents present levels, measurable annual goals, services, accommodations, placement, and progress monitoring, reviewed at least annually.

The IEP section describing a student's current strengths, needs, and baseline data, which anchors goal writing, service selection, and accommodation decisions for the coming year.

Statements in the IEP describing what a student will reasonably achieve in one year, written with observable behavior, conditions, and criteria so progress can be objectively tracked.

The range of service settings, from full-time general education to homebound or residential programs, that districts must make available so placement matches individual student needs.

An instructional approach in which students with disabilities attend general education classes and participate in the same curriculum, with supports and accommodations designed so they can succeed there.

A multi-tiered framework of increasingly intensive, research-based instruction and progress monitoring used to identify students who need support and to inform referral for special education evaluation.

A schoolwide framework integrating academic, behavioral, and social-emotional supports across tiers, using data-based decisions to match intervention intensity to student need.

A disability category describing persistent difficulty in listening, speaking, reading, writing, or mathematics caused by a processing disorder, not primarily by other disabilities or environmental factors.

A neurobiologically based, persistent difficulty with accurate and fluent word reading and spelling, typically stemming from weaknesses in phonological processing rather than general intelligence.

The ability to notice and manipulate sound units of spoken language, including syllables, onsets and rimes, and individual phonemes, forming a foundation for decoding and spelling.

A neurodevelopmental condition marked by developmentally inappropriate inattention, impulsivity, or hyperactivity that impairs functioning; it may qualify a student under Other Health Impairment.

An eligibility category for students whose chronic or acute health conditions, such as asthma, epilepsy, or ADHD, limit strength, vitality, or alertness enough to affect educational performance.

A developmental disability affecting social communication and interaction, often with restricted or repetitive behavior patterns, that adversely affects educational performance and is documented through comprehensive evaluation.

Significantly below-average general intellectual functioning existing with related limitations in adaptive behavior, expressed in conceptual, social, and practical skills, and manifesting during the developmental period.

The everyday conceptual, social, and practical skills a person needs to live independently, such as self-care, communication, safety, and money management, measured through standardized rating scales and interviews.

An eligibility category for students with chronic, educationally significant emotional or behavioral patterns that cannot be explained by other factors and that impair learning or relationships over time.

The comprehensive, multidisciplinary process of gathering assessment data to determine whether a student meets eligibility criteria and to identify instructional needs, completed within required timelines with parental consent.

The planned set of measures, including standardized tests, observations, work samples, and caregiver reports, selected to answer specific referral questions across relevant domains of functioning.

A commercially published measure administered and scored under uniform conditions, yielding norm-referenced scores used to compare a student's performance with that of same-age peers.

A transformed score expressing how far a raw score falls from the normative mean in standard deviation units, commonly used to compare performance across tests with different scales.

The percentage of students in the norm group who scored at or below a given score, indicating relative standing but not the percentage of items answered correctly.

A set of brief, standardized probes drawn from the curriculum and administered repeatedly to index growth in basic skills, enabling data-based decisions about intervention effectiveness.

Frequent, repeated measurement of a targeted skill using comparable probes, graphed against a goal line so the team can judge whether instruction is working and adjust accordingly.

A structured teaching approach using clear modeling, guided practice with feedback, and independent practice, with skills broken into small steps and reviewed cumulatively.

Teaching that follows a carefully sequenced, logically ordered progression of skills, building each new objective on previously mastered knowledge with planned review.

Temporary supports such as prompts, models, or graphic organizers that let a student accomplish a task they cannot yet do alone, gradually withdrawn as competence grows.

Changes to how a student accesses instruction or assessment, such as extended time or preferential seating, that remove barriers without altering what is being taught or measured.

Changes to what a student is expected to learn or demonstrate, such as reduced content or simplified text, which alter the standard rather than merely the route to it.

A proactive planning framework that offers multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression so diverse learners can access the same curriculum from the start.

A systematic process of gathering data through observation, interviews, and records to identify the antecedents, consequences, and function maintaining a problem behavior before designing intervention.

A written plan, based on functional assessment data, that specifies replacement skills, prevention strategies, reinforcement, and response procedures for addressing a student's interfering behavior.

A tiered schoolwide framework teaching and reinforcing expected behaviors through data-based decision making, with increasingly individualized supports for students who need them.

The coordinated set of activities, beginning by age sixteen in most states, that prepares a student for postsecondary education, employment, and independent living based on measurable goals.

Any device or service, from low-tech pencil grips to speech-generating software, that increases or maintains a student's functional capabilities and must be considered for every IEP.