Are There Situations When the General Education Intervention Process for Children K-12 Would Not Be Used?

According to Parents Rights in Special Education (Procedural Safeguards) distributed by South Carolina's Office of Exceptional Children at the State Department of Education, the general education intervention process usually occurs before a student referred to a support team for initial evaluation is assessed. "However, under some circumstances, it would not be necessary to begin with the general education intervention process before referring the student for an initial evaluation. This would most likely occur in an instance where a student with an obvious disability has not been identified previously. Another example might be for a student who has recently sustained a traumatic brain injury. Of course in situations such as these it would be inappropriate to delay further evaluation to determine the student's need for special education. In these kinds of cases, the data used for documentation that general education intervention would be inadequate to address the needs of the student might come from medical records, previous school records, observation, parent and teacher report, etc. However, in cases such as this, even though it is appropriate to move directly to evaluation, it is recommenderd that general education intervention and strategies occur as part of the student's special education evaluation so that the team may collect data to determine what the best instructional approach for the student might be."