Last Updated on May 1, 2024 by Editorial Team
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is designed to assist students with learning difficulties. Extended School Year (ESY) services are intended to assist a student with a learning disability in maintaining the academic, social/behavioral, communication, or other skills they have acquired as part of their Individualized Education Program (IEP). In other words, Extended school year (ESY) services are extracurricular special education and related programs offered to a student with a learning disability. This service is provided when the school is not in session, especially during summer or winter breaks.
While these services focus on various aspects of child development, a checklist can make things smooth and easy for educators and parents. It is important for parents and teachers to carefully reflect on the need for ESY through the checklist.
Why is an extended school year checklist important?
While there are various elements to an extended year checklist, it offers various benefits to parents and educators. The checklist is also helpful for schools to create a uniform system for providing education in an extended school year service.
1. Helps Collect Data
The checklist includes everything about a child, the child’s needs, behavior, and need for an extended school year. The schools get an opportunity to collect relevant data and align their efforts accordingly.
2. Helps Determine the need for ESY
Many times, a child might not necessarily need an extended school year. A checklist helps parents and teachers decide if the child needs an ESY by understanding various aspects of their behavioral patterns.
3. Keep Track on Progress
A checklist for ESY helps parents and teachers keep a check on the progress of the children. One can always visit the checklist to determine the result of efforts invested in the teaching process. It stands as a reflective document to determine the success of the extended school year.
Extended School Year Checklist
1. Do students constantly show an inability to restore previously taught skills during short breaks like Thanksgiving or spring?
2. Can the student continue to use the skills without an extended school year?
3. Does the learner exhibit a history of losing the skill the child once possessed mainly during long breaks of more than four weeks?
4. Does the student now succeed in achieving the IEPs goals and objectives?
5. Is the student, if applicable, completing the regular education program with passing grades?
6. If applicable, have the child’s general education teachers provided feedback on their progress?
7. Is there anything alarming regarding the type and extent of the child’s disability?
8. By the start of the second six-week grading period, was the student implementing the new important skills listed in the current IEP?
9. Does the student take a lot of time to revise the skills taught in school after a break?
10. Does the child show any psychological/ physiological/ mental/ emotional/behavioral or social change during holidays which is generally not noted before?
Final word
With a well-structured checklist, it becomes easy to keep track of information about children. This checklist is an essential requirement to determine eligibility for an extended school year. Schools, parents, and educators can modify the checklist with collaborative efforts. In this case, the checklist can also be designed in a manner that suits the needs of individual children depending on their disability.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,