The promise of meaningful eligibility determination: Functional intervention-based multifactored preschool evaluation

Despite considerable controversy, standardized norm-referenced assessment p rocedures are widely used to determine eligibility for special education se rvices. Under Public Law 105-17, children ages 3 through 9 may receive spec ial services under the broad category of child with LE disability-rather th an traditional diagnostic labels-based on a delay in one or more developmen tal domains. Due to the limitations of traditional ability and developmenta l norm-referenced measures, the determination of developmental delays may b e highly error prone and unrelated to intervention decisions. As an alterna tive, we describe minimal requirements for functional intervention-based as sessment and suggest strategies for using these methods to analyze developm ental delays and make special service eligibility decisions for preschool c hildren (intervention-based multifactored evaluation or IBMFE). The IBMFE m odel provides a basis for deriving logical, natural, and meaningful discrep ancies in behavior or performance through the contextual analysis of child- related, environmental, and instructional variables.