Maine DOE’s Office of Special Services has revised Maine’s Learning Disability Evaluation Report form to adhere to the requirement in IDEA that no single measure or assessment is to be used as the sole criterion for determining whether a child is a child with a disability. With a previous version of the form, it was possible for the IEP team to look only at the data for the first question and make a determination of eligibility, whereas the new form will require that the team review data for all questions in the form before making that determination.

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When the revisions to the Maine Unified Special Education Regulation Birth to Age Twenty (MUSER) were approved during the legislative session just ended, they contained an error that was not caught before their enactment. Section X.2.A(1) states that consultation may be provided by special education teachers or speech/language clinicians or pathologists “as a related service.” That section should have read consultation may be provided by those individuals “as a special education service.” Consultation is a related service only when provided by other providers, such as occupational therapists or physical therapists, or by a speech/language clinician or pathologist to a child whose disability category is not speech or language impairment. The Maine DOE will seek to correct the language in this section of MUSER during the next legislative session.

For more information or if you have questions about consultation services, please contact the Maine DOE’s Roberta Lucas at roberta.lucas@maine.gov or 624-6676; or Jonathan Braff at jonathan.braff@maine.gov or 624-6671.