Praxis 5941 key terms

The legal guarantee that a student with a disability receives specially designed instruction and related services, at public expense, that meet their individual needs and confer meaningful educational benefit.

The requirement that a student with a disability be educated alongside peers without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate, with removal occurring only when supplementary aids and services cannot support success.

A written legal document describing a student's present levels, measurable annual goals, special education and related services, accommodations, and progress-monitoring plan, developed by a team and reviewed at least annually.

The parental rights required by IDEA, including notice, consent, access to records, participation in meetings, and dispute resolution through mediation, complaint, or due process hearing.

A required written explanation given to parents before the school proposes or refuses to change a student's identification, evaluation, placement, or provision of a free appropriate public education.

The ongoing obligation of states and districts to identify, locate, and evaluate all children who may need special education, including students who are homeless, in private schools, or highly mobile.

Parental agreement to an evaluation or service that is given voluntarily, in writing, after receiving full information in the family's native language about what is proposed and any records involved.

The range of service options, from full-time general education to residential settings, that a team must consider so placement matches student needs rather than availability or convenience.

The practice of educating students with disabilities in general education classrooms with appropriate supports, belonging to the school community, and participating in the same curriculum as peers.

Supportive services such as speech-language therapy, occupational therapy, counseling, and transportation that are required for a student to benefit from special education instruction.

Changes in how a student accesses instruction or demonstrates learning, such as extended time or a text reader, that do not alter what is being taught or the expected standard.

Changes to what a student is taught or expected to demonstrate, such as reduced content or a lower-grade-level assignment, which alter the learning standard or performance expectation.

A proactive planning framework that builds multiple means of engagement, representation, and action or expression into lessons so varied learners can access content without after-the-fact retrofitting.

Deliberately varying content, process, product, or learning environment based on readiness, interest, and learning profile so each student works at an appropriate level of challenge.

A structured teaching approach using clear modeling, guided practice with feedback, and independent practice, often with worked examples and cumulative review for students with learning difficulties.

Teaching that follows a carefully sequenced progression of skills, from easier to harder and simple to complex, with review built in so learners master prerequisites before advancing.

Temporary supports such as models, prompts, graphic organizers, or sentence frames that help a student complete a task, then are gradually withdrawn as competence grows.

Frequent, brief measurement of a student's performance on a target skill to judge whether instruction is working and to adjust intervention before a formal evaluation cycle.

Standardized, short probes of basic academic skills, scored for speed and accuracy, used to track growth over time and compare a student's rate of learning with peers.

A multi-tiered prevention framework that provides increasingly intensive, research-based instruction and monitors student response, often used before or instead of referral for special education eligibility.

An integrated schoolwide framework combining academic and behavioral supports in tiers of increasing intensity, with universal screening and data-based decisions for all students.

A tiered, proactive approach that teaches and reinforces expected behaviors, uses data to identify needs, and reduces reliance on exclusionary discipline for students with disabilities.

A systematic process of gathering information through observation, interviews, and records to identify the antecedents, consequences, and function that maintain a student's challenging behavior.

A written, individualized plan based on functional assessment data that specifies prevention strategies, replacement skills to teach, and responses to reduce problem behavior.

A required team review, triggered by certain disciplinary removals, deciding whether a student's behavior was caused by or substantially related to their disability or to the school's failure to implement the IEP.

A disorder in basic psychological processes affecting listening, speaking, reading, writing, or mathematics, identified through a pattern of strengths and weaknesses or insufficient response to intervention.

A neurobiological, language-based learning disability characterized by difficulty with accurate and fluent word recognition, decoding, and spelling despite adequate instruction and intelligence.

The ability to notice and manipulate sounds in spoken language, including syllables, rhymes, and individual phonemes, and a strong predictor of early reading success.

A developmental disability involving persistent differences in social communication and interaction plus restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or sensory responses that affect educational performance.

An eligibility category for students whose behavior or emotional responses over time significantly interfere with learning and cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or other health factors.

Significantly below-average intellectual functioning together with limitations in adaptive behavior, such as communication, self-care, or social skills, that appear during the developmental period.

The everyday skills a person needs to function independently and socially, including conceptual, social, and practical domains, measured when identifying intellectual disability and planning instruction.

Any device or service that increases, maintains, or improves the functional capabilities of a student with a disability, from text-to-speech software to communication boards and seating systems.

Systems and tools, such as picture symbols, switches, or speech-generating devices, that supplement or replace spoken language for students with limited functional speech.

The IEP section summarizing a student's current skills, based on evaluation and classroom data, that anchors goals, services, and accommodations to real, documented needs.

A coordinated set of activities, beginning by age sixteen, that builds postsecondary goals for education, employment, and independent living and identifies services needed to reach them.

A partnership in which general and special educators jointly plan, instruct, and assess a shared classroom, using models such as station teaching, parallel teaching, or team teaching.

Breaking a complex skill into smaller, ordered steps that can be taught, modeled, and reinforced one at a time, often used for daily living and functional academic routines.