The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Data Center (IDC) has developed an Educational Environments Tool Kit to assist with 618 data and SPP/APR Part B Indicator 6 Educational Environments data collection and reporting for children ages 3-5. The Tool Kit includes federal information and guidance, a Decision Tree, and Scenarios which may be used as a resource to illustrate appropriate reporting categories. Color coding is used to show the relationship of 618 categories and Indicator B6 reporting.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Data Center (IDC) developed educational environments scenarios for states to use as a resource for 618 child count and Indicator B6 educational environments reporting for children with IEPs ages 3-5.
States may customize the scenarios to match the early childhood program terminology, definitions, instructions and reporting codes they use.
Kindergarten, state funded prekindergarten, Title I, Head Start and other public and private community preschool programs are generally considered to meet the reporting definition of regular early childhood programs. Programs included in the scenarios are assumed to have a composition that includes a majority (at least 50 percent) of nondisabled children (i.e., children not on IEPs), unless otherwise specified.
If the age of a child is not provided within a scenario, consider the child to be between three and six years of age. Children who are five years of age on the state specified child count date and in kindergarten are included in this count. Children older than six years of age are not included.
To develop the draft scenarios, IDC completed a national scan for scenarios currently used in state-level training materials, then organized, reviewed, revised and added scenarios for use by all states. A panel of state Section 619 Coordinators and data managers rated the scenarios for clarity and relevance.
The IDC Preschool Environments Team would like to hear from you about your use of the educational environments scenarios. Please contact us with any questions, needs or samples of your state’s customized version of the scenarios.
IDC would like to acknowledge the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (ECTA) for its collaboration on the B6 Data Reporting Tools: Educational Environments, Ages 3-5 toolkit, published by ECTA and IDC in August 2014. Production of the toolkit informed the development of this B6 Data Reporting Tools: Educational Environments, Ages 3-5, Interactive Application.