Text 1. Early Identification of Children with Disabilities

Early identification became a topic of increasing interest with the community mental health movement of the 1960s and again with the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (PL 94 – 142). This law contained components requiring that schools take aggressive action to identify children with disabilities needing services; it recommended that such children be provided services from ages 4 through 19, and children with severe disabilities from birth through age 21. In addition, several early childhood intervention programs that targeted at-risk children began yielding impressive evidence by the late 1970s of the cost-effectiveness of early intervention. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and its implementing regulations carried forward and extended the requirements articulated in PL 94 – 142 with respect to state and local education agency responsibilities regarding the identification of children with disabilities.

Effective early intervention programs require identification methods with high predictive validity. Given possible undesirable outcomes (such as labeling effects) and the extensive costs of intervention programs, the number of false positives (students predicted to become disabled but who do not) should be kept low. The identification procedure must also be cost-efficient; screening procedures should use readily available information or tests that are quick and inexpensive to administer.

An example of a possible cost-efficient method is to use data contained on children’s birth certificates. Finkelstein and Ramey (1985) used such data, including the mother’s age, education, and previous live births now dead; the child’s birth order, race, and birth weight; and the month in which prenatal care was begun. The data were used to predict which of 1,000 children would have disabilities at first grade. A disability was defined as having scores more than one standard deviation below the mean on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and on the Myklebust Pupil Rating Scale. Although using birth certificate data correctly identified almost all (81 percent) of the actual students with disabilities, only 15 percent of the group predicted to have a disability actually did. This procedure cannot be used as the sole method of early identification, but it may represent a first screen in a series of ever more extensive screening tests. There appear to be many inexpensive techniques that can be used to identify the students most at risk, but most of these methods yield too many false positives.

There have been a large number of attempts to construct easily administered tests and test batteries that accurately identify children needing special services. Mercer et al. (1979a) reviewed 70 studies, only 15 of which allowed computation of false positives and false negatives. In these studies, screening instruments included the Evanston Early Identification Scale, the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT), the Metropolitan Reading Readiness Test, and the Bender-Gestalt, as well as batteries composed of visual-motor, language, gross motor, and cognitive measures.

Intervals between administration of the screening and criterion measures ranged from 8 months to 7 years. Median accuracy rates (percentage of all subjects correctly identified) were 75 percent for single instruments, 79 percent for batteries, and 80 percent for teacher perceptions.

Mercer et al. indicate that developmental history, socioeconomic status, and teacher perception of skill deficits are strong predictors of later learning difficulty. They suggest that screening should take place in mid-kindergarten, as this allows intervention to begin at the earliest time that teacher ratings become reliable as predictors. Share, Jorm, Maclean, and Matthews (1984) provide data indicating that more than half the variance in first- grade reading scores can be predicted by direct assessment of phonemic naming and letter copying in kindergarten; Mercer et al. suggest that useful ratings of these skills can be made by classroom teachers, freeing professional examiners’ time.

(Source: Encyclopedia of Special Education, THIRD EDITION
Cecil R. Reynolds and Elaine Fletcher-Janzen, Editors, 2007)

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