Does Screening Initiate the Protections of Procedural Safeguards and Due Process?

According to Parents Rights in Special Education (Procedural Safeguards) distributed by South Carolina's Office of Exceptional Children at the State Department of Education, Federal requirements indicate that the screening of a student to determine appropriate instructional strategies for curriculum implementation shall not be considered to be an evaluation for elgibility for special education and related services (C.F.R. 300.302). Further explanation in the comments to the federal regulations indicates that screening refers to a process that a teacher or specialist uses to determine appropriate instructional strategies. The comments go on to describe screening as typically being a relatively simple and quick process that is used to determine strategies to more effectively teach children. This would include examples of such things as univeral screening and progress monitoring tools (e.g. DIBELS, etc.) that yield information teachers may use to more appropriately select interventions tailored to a student's area of academic need; observations of children in various environments from which analyses of behavior patterns may occur in order to direct staff to appropriate intervention selection; and diagnostic tools which assist school personnel in a deeper understanding of the student's presenting concern so that more effective interventions may be selected. It should be made very clear here that the latitude given by the regulation is NOT to be interpreted as a way to circumvent other regulations pertaining to evaluation. The difference between screening and evaluation is the intent of the activities. If the intent of the activities is to determine instructional strategies, that constitutes screening. It is clear in the regulation and subsequent comments that the ONLY activities that may be considered screening are those activities which result directly in information to be used solely for the purpose of designing instructional strategies. At any point that the intent changes to seek to determine if the student is a child with a disability or if the student is in need of special education, that is evaluation and all due process protections come into play. At that point, parents must be contacted to seek consent for intial evaluation.