When thinking about the Social Security disability process, many times medical evidence is the focus. Medical evidence is needed to prove someone is disabled and unable to work due to physical or mental health impairments, but educational information can also be important in a Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claim for a minor.
Claims for disabled adult children and SSI child claims may not only focus on medical evidence, but also educational evidence. Intellectual disabilities can entitle a student, or former student, to Social Security benefits, which is why educational records are important.
One of the documents Social Security uses to get a better idea of how a student is limited is the teacher questionnaire. As you can see by this sample, the teacher questionnaire informs a claimant’s current or past teacher that the student has applied for disability benefits and the teacher is requested to provide important information of how the applicant functioned in school. A teacher’s response can be crucial in deciding whether the student receives disability benefits.
“To decide whether a child qualifies for disability benefits, we use information from both medical and non-medical sources. Medical sources include doctors and other health care professionals; non-medical sources include teachers and other people who spend time with the child. Information from the sources who know the child well is important, because a child’s level of functioning at school, at home, or in the community may affect his or her eligibility. The information you provide about the child’s day-to-day functioning in school will help us to determine the effects of the child’s impairments. It will also help us to compare this child’s functioning to that of other children the same age who do not have impairments. We need this information from you even if you have taught (or did teach) the child for only a short time. Your information is not the only information we will be considering when we decide if the child qualifies for disability benefits, but it is very important to us,” the questionnaire points out.
In some types of claims support from an educational professional can be as important or even more than medical evidence.
