Did you use an advocate for your IEP and, if so, how did you choose one?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you PP! We're new to the process but have been told by others with more experience that we have very strong grounds for filing a state complaint. The problem is that we're worried about retribution by the school team.

Does anyone have any advice about this?

What would your grounds be for filing a state complaint? I'm sincerely not being snarky, but would you feel comfortable with these professionals working with your child if you're feeling so strongly about having a case against them?

Personally, in my experience, we've had a lot more success working with the team. I understand this isn't always the case for others. However, we found that we didn't always agree with the team, but we worked together and it's always worked out in the best interest of our child. In fact, there have been issues where we've ultimately changed our position based on feedback from the school. I have friends who have been more aggressive and have ultimately gotten what they "want", but the team has been a bit more rigid after that...providing the minimum to meet all expectations. We've preferred a more civil approach.

I'm sure you mean well but your experience is clearly limited. You seem to think that 'if we could all just get along' that things will work out. It's not always that easy. We've worked to maintain positive relations with our IEP teams and have been very successful with it. The meetings are always civil. But, we've had to invoke our right to independent education evaluations more than once. That's what you do when you don't believe the school team's recommendations/findings/testings are valid. In ever single instance, the IEE not only supported our position, the recommendations went further than what we were requesting. You might call that being 'aggressive', I call it being my child's advocate. There are a number of reasons why we've had to struggle so hard. I believe the primary reason is because resources are scarce and my child requires more support than is typical. The school system hoards those services. I also think some don't understand what the evaluation scores really mean. But, if the level of 'civility' correlated to a good IEP, we'd have the best. Too bad for us.