Autism Spectrum Disorders: A behaviorally defined group of disorders characterized by an uneven developmental profile and a pattern of qualitative impairments in social interaction, communication, and restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interest, and activities, with onset in early childhood.
Blind / Visually Impaired: A medically verified condition accompanied by limitations in sight that interfere with acquiring information or interaction with the environment.
Deaf / Hard of Hearing: A diminished sensitivity to sound that is expressed in terms of standard audiological measures.
Deaf/Blindness: A medically verified visual impairment coupled with medically verified hearing impairment that, together, interfere with acquiring information or interacting in the environment. Both conditions need to be present simultaneously and must meet the criteria of both vision and hearing impairment.
Developmentally Delayed: (Birth - 7 only): A substantial delay or disorder in development or an identifiable sensory, physical, mental or social/emotional condition or impairment known to hinder normal development.
Emotional/Behavioral Disorders: An established pattern characterized by severely aggressive or impulsive behaviors, severely withdrawn or anxious behaviors, generally pervasive unhappiness, depression or side mood swings or severely disordered thought processes manifested by unusual behavior patterns, atypical communication styles or distorted interpersonal relationships.
Mild-Moderate Mentally Impaired or Moderate-Severe
Mentally Impaired: Significantly sub-average general intellectual
functioning resulting in or associated with concurrent deficits
in adaptive behavior.
Other Health Impairment: A broad range of medically diagnosed chronic and associated acute health conditions which may be accompanied by limited strength, endurance, and alertness, including heightened or diminished alertness to environmental stimuli that adversely affect educational performance to the extent special education and related services may be needed.
Physically Impaired: A medically diagnosed chronic physical impairment, either congenital or acquired, that adversely affects physical or academic functioning.
Specific Learning Disability: A significant discrepancy between one’s general intellectual ability and academic achievement in one or more of the following areas: oral expression, listening comprehension, mathematical calculation or reasoning, basic reading skills, reading comprehension and written expression.
Speech/Language Impairment: A communication disorder in fluency, voice, articulation or language.
Traumatic Brain Injury: An acquired
injury to the brain caused by external force, resulting in total
or partial functional disability or psychosocial impairment, or
both, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
The term applies to open or closed head injuries resulting in impairments
in one or more areas, such as cognition; language; memory; attention;
reasoning; abstract thinking; judgment; problem-solving; and speech.
The term does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital or
degenerative, or brain injuries induced by birth trauma.