No single factor is determinative of the need for extended school year services.  A variety of factors must be examined when considering if a student should receive ESY services.  These factors include, but are not limited to, the degree of the impairment, ability of a child’s parents to maintain child’s level of skills, whether the service is extraordinary to the child’s condition, and the child’s rate of progress, retrospective data such as past regression and rates of recoupment of skills.

ESY should provide for the maintenance of acquired skills and knowledge not the acquisition of or continued development of new skills. For that reason, the amount of services provided for ESY purposes are usually less than that provided during the regular school term where the student is expected to make “progress”.

Services do not replicate those provided in the school year, but are generally limited in scope, duration, intensity, and frequency so as to be sufficient to minimize regression.

Related services such as speech/language therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy are provided as determined by the IEP team and are often less than the typical school year due to the shortened hours of the program.

Reliable sources of information for determining the presence of these factors may include:

• Progress on goals in consecutive IEP’s

• Progress reports maintained by teachers and others having direct contact with the student before and after interruptions in the educational program

• Observations and opinions from teachers, parents and others, and

• Results of criterion referenced tests, assessments and other equivalent measures

For further information, please see the Illinois State Board of Education memo:

www.isbe.net

Regression is defined as the amount of loss during a scheduled break in instruction of a learned skill or acquired knowledge, which has been specified in the measurable annual goals and short-term objectives and benchmarks in the child’s IEP.

Recoupment is the amount of time required to recoup those lost skills when school/instruction resumes.