Your child may be eligible for special education if your child:

• Has a specific learning disability, a hearing impairment, a speech or language impairment, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, an orthopedic impairment, deafness, a visual impairment including blindness, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairment, deaf-blindness, or multiple disabilities and
• Needs special education as determined by an evaluation team.

Your child must meet both qualifications in order to be eligible for special education. In Pennsylvania, all children eligible for special education have the right to a free appropriate public education (FAPE).

Some indications that your child has a disability that meets the first part of the two-part definition are:

• Difficulty performing tasks that require reading, writing, or mathematics,
• Difficulty communicating,
• Health problems that affect educational performance including attention problems,
• Difficulty seeing or hearing that interferes with the ability to communicate,
• Lack of interest or ability in age-appropriate activities,
• Resistance to change,
• Consistent problems in getting along with others,
• Exhibition of an emotional disturbance over a long period of time that affects your child’s ability to learn.

Your child may need specially-designed instruction that other children in the general education classroom may not need to make progress in school. This need for special education is the second part of the two-part decision to qualify a child for special education services.

NOTE: Children who have disabilities that substantially limit their participation in or access to school programs, but who do not need special education, may qualify for reasonable accommodations in the regular classroom under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and other Pennsylvania education regulations. The rules - called Chapter 15 - that apply are different from those for students needing special education who qualify by meeting the two-part criteria listed above.

Source: Pennsylvania Parent Guide to Special Education for School Age Children - July 2008 Chapter 14 Regulations. Pennsylvania Department of Education, Bureau of Special Education; Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network.

http://parent.pattan.net/files/parents/SchAgeParentGuide.pdf