18A:46-2.12 Development of parent resource guide.

3. a. The Department of Education, in an effort to assist deaf and hard of hearing children in becoming linguistically ready for kindergarten and in consultation with the Department of Health, shall develop a parent resource guide for use by parents of deaf and hard of hearing children.

The parent resource guide shall:

(1) help parents monitor and track deaf and hard of hearing children's expressive and receptive language acquisition and developmental stages toward English literacy by presenting language developmental milestones;

(2) be appropriate for use, in both content and administration, with deaf and hard of hearing children from birth to five years of age, who use both or one of the languages of American Sign Language and English;

(3) be written for clarity and ease of use by parents;

(4) be aligned to existing instruments used by school districts to assess the development of children with disabilities pursuant to federal and State law;

(5) include a statement that the parent resource guide is not a formal assessment of language and literacy development, and that a parent's observations of his child may differ from formal assessment data collected as part of a professional evaluation; and

(6) include a statement that a parent may bring the parent resource guide to a child study team meeting for purposes of sharing observations about the child's development.

b. The department shall incorporate the recommendations provided by the working group established pursuant to section 1 of this act into the parent resource guide.

c. The department shall make the parent resource guide developed pursuant to this section publicly available on its website.

L.2019, c.205, s.3.