Mental Retardation

Definition

Mental Retardation means significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior manifested during the developmental period that adversely affects a child's educational performance.

Criteria

A child displays mental retardation when:

1. The child performs 2.0 Standard Deviations below their peers of equivalent age, ethnic, and cultural background when measured by a standardized instrument of cognitive ability;
2. The child displays adaptive behavior consistent with measured cognitive ability. Adaptive behavior refers to the effectiveness with which a student meets the standards of personal independence and social responsibility expected of his/her age and cultural group. There should be a significant positive correlation between the student's intellectual ability and adaptive behavior. If not, the team must give careful consideration to other evaluative information and utilize professional judgment to determine the student's level of cognitive and adaptive functioning;
3. The disability adversely affects the child's educational performance.

Professional Judgment
A child may also be deemed eligible if the child displays, through formal and informal assessment, a significant discrepancy even though the deviations do not fall below the criterion range. In such cases, sufficient data must be present in the evaluation report to document the existence of a significant discrepancy.