Special Education Services
Overview
The Illinois State Board of Education partners with school districts to provide programs and services for students with specialized educational needs.
Special Education Services assures that these programs and services meet state and federal requirements. This involves both compliance and technical assistance functions. Compliance functions include monitoring least restrictive environment compliance, administering due process system, providing mediation services, conducting compliant investigations, approving policies and procedures, conducting focused and comprehensive reviews and approving nonpublic special education facilities. Technical assistance functions involve providing information and guidance on promising practices in educating students with disabilities, including the operation of numerous statewide training and technical assistance initiatives, administering the comprehensive system of personnel development for special education and management of grant programs to schools for special education service delivery.
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What's New
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Special Education Eligibility and Entitlement within an RtI Framework
ISBE is pleased to announce the finalization of “Illinois Special Education Eligibility and Entitlement Procedures and Criteria within a Response to Intervention (RtI) Framework: A Guidance Document.” The guidance document is designed to provide Illinois districts and schools with a framework for using RtI to determine a student’s eligibility for and entitlement to special education services. In accordance with 23 Illinois Administrative Code 226.130, beginning with the 2010-2011 school year, districts must use a process that determines how a child responds to scientific, research-based interventions as part of the evaluation procedures to determine special education eligibility under the category of specific learning disability (SLD). While this requirement is specific to SLD, districts also have the option of using such a process as part of the evaluation procedures for other disability categories. - Save the Date! 2010 Special Education Directors' Conference - July 28-30 in Peoria
- Work Load Plans for Special Educators: Navigating the Process Effectively
- Deviations
The 2009-2010 focused monitoring cycle is approaching and we would like all districts to be aware as they verify and finalize their data for submission in FACTS that the Department of Special Education will again be using the percentage of students with disabilities in the general education setting 80% or more day as the criteria for determining districts to be selected for an onsite review. With that in mind, we are strongly suggesting that districts review and verify the accuracy of their FACTS data as it relates to the Educational Environment (EE) codes prior to final submission.
