question re: IEP time and goals

[Anonymous]

My 9 year old has an IEP with service for math and reading. 20 minutes per day in both. She met her IEP goals for decoding and comprehension this year (CVCC words, answer who/what/where/when questions given instructional level passage) and thus they want to cut her reading time down to 3x/week since she met the yearly goal. But she is still way behind grade level in reading.

Is this how things typically work? To me, it is surprising that they'd want to cut minutes since she is still so far behind grade level, even though she met the goals. But this is my first rodeo in the IEP world, so I'm trying to get a sense of what typical practice is and this is something that one would expect given their child met their goals.

[Anonymous]

IMO, a lot of IEP related issues are form over substance and that sounds like what you are experiencing. They cannot work on goals that haven't been set by the team even though there is more to work on. And there is no point in taking her out of class to work on skills she has mastered. What I'd do is I'd talk to the counselor or whoever is asking you about reducing services about getting an updated/revised IEP to address the next steps. And, some schools and teams are better than others about moving on to the next steps and parent intervention is not necessary. But, it doesn't sound like that is your school.

[Anonymous]

When the goal has been met, new goals are created. That new goal could be that she gets intervention 3 times a day instead of every day. That is the IEP team’s decision. You are also a part of the IEP team.

[Anonymous]

In our district (Midwest) you generally have to be 3 grade levels behind to get academic pull outs. It is extremely frustrating because we spend so much time and energy to keep my son within 1.5 grade levels behind and be gets nada from school

[Anonymous]

Go back to the eligibility testing that initially qualified her. Use that data to determine the next goal.

[Anonymous]

If she is still so far behind they need to have new goals which are formed by using updated data. I can tell you that twenty minutes at a time is barely enough to get seated and started before having to stop. I bet there is only about fifteen minutes on task time, at most, without interruptions.