The Child Find Process

This blog post is a review of the journal article "Child Find Activities Under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act" as published by Teaching Exceptional Children in, Council for Exceptional Children, 2017, Vol.49, No. 5, pp. 301–308.


Although this blog is dedicated to the research and understanding of how to properly identify students of ethnic backgrounds for special education services, this next article gives us some insight to properly identifying students in general. Child Find, is a term used for programs and people that specifically evaluate and determine students who need to receive special education services. There are many systems in place across the country that are determined at the district level for the evaluation process.

At the school I work at, we use an RTI (Response to Intervention) approach for determining whether or not a student should qualify for special education. This consists of determining that a student is not having the same growth as most of the students in their class. In response to their inability to remain at the same level of growth as their peers, interventions or targeted instruction is documented for that student. If the student does not respond to the targeted intervention they receive over a period of time, they are then able to qualify for the evaluation process into special education.

The article, "Child Find Activities Under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act" is a recent article that gives us a summary of factors that should be included in this process. The most important factor, according to this article, is to always be looking out for students who are considered to be "at-risk." (pg 304) In my school district, students who are considered to be "at-risk" are those who perform well below benchmark for our early literacy skills assessments. These students are then put through our RTI process before determining the need to a special education evaluation process.

The most interesting part of this article was the "common mistakes" found in the Child Find process. The article asks us to look at three areas of concerns (timeline, student progress and mental health) in a more critical lens. When looking at timeline, the evaluation needs to take place in 60 days, the initial evaluation should not be delayed, and waiting for an outside evaluation should not take precedence over that start of the school-based evaluation process. (pg 305)

The article also points out that "cultural factors, environmental or economic disadvantage, and limited English proficiency must be ruled out before a child can be classified as having a specific learning disability." A school needs to have a process for eliminating these other factors to make sure these students are not inappropriately identified. (pg 305) If a school doesn't have a process for examining and ruling out these factors in a valid and reliable way, there is a strong chance of giving misidentifying a ELL student with a learning disability.

According to the article, when examining student progress, be mindful of the amount of undocumented supports the teacher is using to keep the student making progress. If teacher is providing many informal supports over a long period of time, this may show a need for the student to have formal special education report to continue the services the student received from their teacher. (pg 305)

There also needs to be an awareness of the mental health concerns that may need to be addressed if it appears to be affecting the students educational progress. (pg 305) There aren't many referrals in my school specifically for just mental health, however when their mental health is showing a severe impact on that students progress their needs to be formal documentation. It is important to keep in mind that many cultures do not address mental health concerns and that student will not have the chance to receive an outside diagnosis. It is important for the school to express to teachers to be aware of the characteristics of a student who may be struggling with mental health concerns and how to go about creating a referral for them.


In conclusion the article states, "school districts are likely to be found in violation of Child Find activities when school officials overlook signs of a disability, fail to evaluate, or have no justification for deciding not to evaluate." (pg. 307) I think this last statement is really important when determining when to evaluate a student who is culturally diverse. What is the deciding factor in the school that determines whether it is time to evaluate that student for a learning disability? This process is extremely important and specific, so making this process specific to students who are culturally diverse need to be put in place. Working in a growing community with an increase in diversity we are becoming more aware of the changes and updates we need to make on our Child Find activities.