Categories of Eligibility for Special Education

• Autism: Students with this condition have a developmental disability that significantly affects their verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction. This condition is generally evident before age three and adversely affects the student’s educational performance. Those who have this condition engage in repetitive or stereotypical behaviors, are resistant to environment or changes in their daily routines, and have unusual responses to sensory experiences. Autism does not apply if a child’s educational performance is adversely affected primarily because the child has an emotional disturbance. 

• Deaf-Blindness: Students with this condition have both hearing and visual impairments, which cause severe communication, developmental, and educational problems. Those who have this condition may have moderate to severe visual or hearing loss and require very specialized services. Special education services are provided starting as early as birth.

• Emotional Disturbance: Students with this condition have significant difficulty in the behavioral and social emotional domains that adversely affect the child’s educational performance. These students may exhibit one or more of the following characteristics (over a long period of time), to a marked degree: a) an inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors; b) an inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers or teachers; c) inappropriate types of behaviors or feelings under normal circumstances; d) a general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression; and e) a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems. This condition includes children who are schizophrenic, but does not include students who are socially maladjusted;

• Hearing Impairment: Students with this condition have a hearing impairment (permanent or fluctuating) that adversely affects their educational performance. Some may be classified as hard of hearing (meaning they have a significant hearing loss but can make the best of some residual hearing with the use of hearing aids or other amplifying devices), and others may be classified as deaf (meaning they have no residual hearing and can, thus, not benefit from using hearing aids or other amplifying devices).

• Mental Retardation: Students with this condition have significant sub-average general intellectual functioning, which exists along with deficits in two or more adaptive skill areas. This condition is usually identified before age 18 and significantly affects the child’s educational performance;

• Multiple-Disabilities: Students with this condition have two or more disabilities (for example, mental retardation-blindness, or mental retardation-physical disabilities) that are so severe and interrelated than none can be identified as a primary disability, and that cause severe educational problems;

• Orthopedic Impairments: Students with this condition have physical conditions that significantly affect their ability to move or complete motor activities. The term includes impairments caused by disease (e.g., poliomyelitis, bone tuberculosis), and impairments from other causes (e.g., cerebral palsy, amputations, and fractures or burns that cause contractions) that adversely affect the child’s educational performance.

• Other Health Impairments: Students with this condition have chronic or acute health problems such as asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, sickle cell anemia, and Tourette syndrome. This condition normally requires ongoing medical attention and is so significant that it affects the student’s strengths, vitality, alertness, and educational performance.

• Specific Learning Disability: Students with this condition have a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in using or understanding spoken or written language. This condition may show itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do math calculations. It includes conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. This condition does not include children who have learning problems that are primarily the result of other disabling conditions (such as visual, hearing, mental, or motor disabilities; and environmental, economic, cultural, or linguistic differences).

•  Speech or Language Impairments: Students with this condition have a communication disorder (such as stuttering, impaired articulation, language impairment, or voice impairment) that adversely affects the child’s educational performance;

• Traumatic Brain Injury: Students with this condition have an acquired brain injury caused by an external physical force resulting in total or partial functional disability or psychosocial impairment (or both) that adversely affects the student’s educational performance. Those with this condition have an open or closed head injury that results in impairments in one or more areas, such as cognition; language; memory; attention; reasoning; abstract thinking; judgment; problem-solving; sensory, perceptual, and motor abilities; psychosocial behavior; physical functions; information processing; and speech. Traumatic brain injury does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital or degenerative, or to brain injuries induced by birth trauma.

• Visual Impairments: Students with this condition have impaired vision (including blindness) that, even with correction, adversely affects the child’s ability to learn.

• Developmental Disabilities: The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (2004) allows states and local educational agencies to use this term for children (ages 3 to 9) who have significant developmental delays in their physical development, cognitive development, communication development, social or emotional development, or adaptive development; and who, for this reason, require special education and related services.