Institutional Framework Taxonomy

Version 1.0. Issued 21 August 2026. Status: adopted.

1. Purpose

This taxonomy fixes the vocabulary the Index uses to describe entities, so that fifty-one state files describe comparable things in comparable terms. It is descriptive rather than normative. Where a state's own arrangement does not fit a category cleanly, the file records the arrangement in the state's own words and notes the fit problem, rather than forcing the entity into a category it does not occupy.

2. Entity type

Each entity captured on the Schools and Programs sheet carries exactly one entity type from the following list.

State school. A school for Deaf students, or for Deaf and blind students jointly, constituted by state statute. State schools vary enormously in governance and the type does not imply any particular operating authority.

Local education agency programme. A programme operated by a school district, whether centre-based, cluster-site, self-contained classroom, or itinerant service, that the agency itself identifies as serving Deaf or hard-of-hearing students.

Regional or cooperative programme. A programme operated by an intermediate service unit serving more than one local education agency. State names for this layer differ substantially and the local name is recorded alongside the type, including Boards of Cooperative Educational Services, Regional Educational Service Agencies, Regional Educational Service Centers, education service cooperatives, Special Education Local Plan Areas, and Administrative Units.

Charter school. A charter school serving Deaf students. The record must state whether the school is its own local education agency under state law, because that determines its treatment in the frame.

Private school or programme. A non-public provider, including listening and spoken language schools, oral schools, and private special education day schools serving Deaf students.

Statewide outreach or technical assistance unit. A unit holding a statewide advisory, consultative, or itinerant remit. The record must state whether the unit delivers direct service or consultation only, because the distinction is frequently blurred in the unit's own materials and is the single most common source of overstatement in this field.

Early intervention programme. A programme serving children below school age, whether birth to three, birth to five, or another band. The band is recorded explicitly and the transition point at exit is recorded with it.

Deafblind project. The state's federally funded deafblind technical assistance project.

Newborn hearing screening system. The state Early Hearing Detection and Intervention programme.

State coordinating body. A council, commission, office, or division holding a policy or coordinating remit for Deaf and hard-of-hearing people. The record must state whether it is advisory or executive and where it sits in the machinery of government.

Standards or licensing body. A body setting interpreter qualification, teacher endorsement, or related professional standards.

Post-secondary or transition programme. A programme serving students beyond the compulsory school age band.

Marked for exclusion. An entity documented in order to justify excluding it, most commonly the blind counterpart institution.

3. Operating authority

Operating authority is the answer to the question of who runs the entity, which is distinct from who funds it and distinct from who governs it. The Index has found each of the following in the first ten states and none of them is the norm.

State education agency direct. The agency operates the school as a division of itself, with no separate board. Georgia is believed to run two Deaf schools and one blind school this way.

Independent state board or authority. The school is a state institution with its own governing board, frequently gubernatorially appointed, and its own appropriation.

Other state agency. The school or programme sits under an agency other than the education agency, including departments of health, labour, and human services.

Local education agency operated. A single school district operates a facility serving the whole state. Alaska and Delaware both do this.

Private operator under state contract or placement. The state has no school of its own and purchases places at a private institution. Connecticut does this at a private school founded in 1817.

Cooperative or regional authority. The programme is operated by an intermediate unit.

Independent private. No state operating relationship.

Where operating authority, governing authority, and funding authority differ, all three are recorded separately. Conflating them is the most frequent error in secondary descriptions of Deaf education and the Index does not reproduce it.

4. Educational setting

Setting is recorded from the entity's own published description and mapped to the following: residential school; day school; separate facility within a district; self-contained classroom on a general education campus; resource or cluster arrangement; itinerant service delivered at the student's home school; home-based service; virtual or remote service; and consultation to staff with no direct student contact. Where an entity operates more than one setting, all are recorded.

5. Communication and language approach

The approach is recorded by quoting the entity's own published philosophy verbatim rather than by classification. Classification follows the quotation and never replaces it. The classification vocabulary is: American Sign Language and English bilingual; total communication or simultaneous communication; listening and spoken language, also described as auditory-oral or auditory-verbal; cued speech; multiple tracks operated in parallel; and no published philosophy located.

Two rules attach. First, where an entity operates more than one track, the file records whether the entity publishes any framework reconciling them, and the absence of such a framework is a finding rather than an omission. Second, no philosophy may be inferred from an entity's history, its name, its staffing, or its use of a language in practice. Absence of a published statement is recorded as absence of a published statement, and the pages checked are named.

The Index has repeatedly found published philosophies hidden inside collapsed accordions, script payloads, and pages with unrelated titles. Before recording an entity as publishing no philosophy, the retrieval obligations at SRC-004 must have been discharged.

6. Governance basis

The statutory or regulatory instrument constituting the entity, cited to section, with the operative sentence quoted. Where an entity exists without a statutory basis, that is recorded explicitly, and it is a finding of the same weight as a citation. Organisational self-description is not a governance basis. Several bodies in this field describe themselves in terms that the statute does not support, and the Index checks the code text rather than the self-description.