NW schools with best IEP services/Inclusive Ed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Capital City PCS is fantastic for this

Not in our experience.

[Anonymous]

Wonderful experience with my DC’s IEP at Mann. So sad (and worried quite frankly) to have to leave for middle school.

[Anonymous]

We have had a good experience with John Francis Education Campus for pre-k (formerly SWWFS). Of course, it would probably depend largely on your student's IEP specifics; our child is in Gen Ed getting various itinerant services.

For comparison, we moved to DCPS from NY (Westchster County) which sounds crazy, but having all the services consolidated through school has worked well for us (versus being responsible for scheduling them all individually - at home - in NY and then shelling out 20k/year for private preschool on top.

[Anonymous]

Experience is going to vary widely depending on school / kid / needs / the specific teachers working at a school at the time you're there. Our family has had a wonderful elementary SPED experience at a Title 1 NW school, but our child's need are also increasing as the academic rigor does with the older grades, so inclusion might not work much longer. I think looking for a culture that seems welcoming and accepting of difference is going to matter a lot to your child's experience with inclusion, and that will be hard to gauge without visiting the school and talking with the school leaders. YMMV, but some of the "best" schools in upper NW, which tend to have wealthier families, have fewer SPED resources (and the peers/parents are less socially accepting of kids who are "different" than the schools with more economic and racial diversity).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s the IEP for? DCPS has some good specialized programs that are inclusion?

Speech and OT are pretty similar in every school, since such therapists travel from school to school (they’re not based at any one school).

Two of my kids have had both services throughout elementary. Such services have ranged from mediocre to good over the years, depending upon who we got that particular year. Regardless, we’ve always supplemented.

But it’s tough to justify such services after ECE without an appropriate diagnosis. Which leads me to my original question — what’s the IEP for?

DCPS doesn’t have any inclusion programs. Either a child is in self contained or resource.

Though as a self-contained teacher I have certainly given students inclusion hours in gen ed but that’s because the plan was to slowly transition them to gen ed/resource.

I would name my school for you OP but then I’d totally out myself lol. I’d say look at if the school has self contained. That’s actually a good thing because children in those programs often have related services meaning they will for sure have an OT and speech pathologist.

Then I’d ask the school how long the resource sped teachers have been there, if it’s less than 2 years that’s a bad sign.

I’d ask the school how they make sped student feel included, if they don’t have an answer right away, another bad sign.

Ask them how they are making sure all student are moving forward.

I’m also going to be honest here and say DCPS isn’t great for sped because admin often don’t care about sped, we are last. So unless the sped teachers are passionate and always advocating for their students you’ll have a lot of liberties taken with your child. Especially in NW schools.

That is just not true. I'm not saying it's any good, but there is absolutely inclusion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A friend is moving back to the area with rising 2nd grader who needs speech, OT, and has an IEP. She is looking for a an inclusive program. Anything worthwhile in DCPS?

Something for your friend to consider is that DCPS will do its own evaluation. DCPS seems to have a mission to deny kids IEPs so it is not guaranteed that her child will even continue to qualify. MCPS and FCPS are probably not perfect but have the reputation of being better and giving kids what they need. DCPS seems to count on those who can afford it giving kids services outside of the school system. I wish this were not the reality and but I wish someone had warned me. Some schools may be better than others but that's the general impression many of us have. What I've seen in DCPS's so-called inclusion programs are disturbing at best. Some Charters may be better but the lottery for next year has already closed so that would be difficult, at least for 2021-2022.

Literally WHAT inclusion programs? DCPS has self contained and then resource, they may call it inclusion but it’s not a program. It’s literally children with generally 20 hours or less of push in and/or pull out time from a special education teacher and/or related service providers.

Inclusion is a joke in DCPS, you either have to have a excellent teacher and school team or be the ‘bulldog parent.’

if kids have resource hours, they're INCLUDED in the classroom. Hello?

[Anonymous]

DCPS has lots of inclusion. Any kid with an IEP who is in a gen-ed classroom (i.e., not self-contained) counts as inclusion. My kid falls into this category.

In preK, there are some schools with 10:6 classrooms (10 kids w/o IEPs, up to six kids with them and the class has two teachers with at least one certified in SPED and sometimes also a para, vs. one teacher an a para). There's also the Strategies inclusion program for 3-5th graders with ASD being piloted in a few schools.

Not saying everyone is having an amazing experience but it's inaccurate to say there's no inclusion in DCPS.

[Anonymous]

We are pretty happy with our kid’s IEP at Hyde Addison. School proposed the IEP in PreK and got our child on a schedule of OT, speech, behavioral. Our kid gets both pullouts and small group therapies. It’s soooooo convenient to get it all done through the school, integrated with the school day. No need for us to take off work or shell out $$$$. We still do private OT every week.

[Anonymous]

Garrison ES. The teachers and SPED coordinator are mostly great and the culture is nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are pretty happy with our kid’s IEP at Hyde Addison. School proposed the IEP in PreK and got our child on a schedule of OT, speech, behavioral. Our kid gets both pullouts and small group therapies. It’s soooooo convenient to get it all done through the school, integrated with the school day. No need for us to take off work or shell out $$$$. We still do private OT every week.

This x 100000

Before school, we had to manage 4 different therapists (special instructor, ST, OT, PT) coming to our house on frequently changing (or missed) schedules while somehow managing to hold down a job at the same time. Having a set schedule where everything happens at school and therapies makes a huge difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are any of the general Ed teachers good with kids with IEPs? Usually speech and OT are contracted so it can change each year. When you say SPED is awful at the school, what does that mean? Is it usually bad for all disabilities?

Not many. And some actively try to act like only the sped teacher is their teacher.

I’m an inclusion teacher at a NW school.

[Anonymous]

Which is the best school in terms of inclusion SLS, Much or Lafayette?

[Anonymous]

Great experience at Janney, terrible experience at Key ES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I really hate to say this because I have tried so hard to make DCPS work for my student with an IEP but my advice for your friend is to look at MCPS and FCPS. In DCPS, you are dependent on your individual school and the vagaries of staffing which can change year to year. ES can be ok but MS is terrible (which may not be so much an issue if your friend’s child works through some challenges before MS).

Not MCPS. SPED is terrible there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^PP is not just bitter -- she's also wrong. In addition to SWS, there's a HFA inclusion program at Takoma Education Campus (a Title 1 school).

Barely there are some schools that should lose their title 1 status soon enough. I believe that school is one and Tyler ES.

Are you saying Takoma Elementary is barely Title I? Hahahaha. This year, it's 42.2% economically disadvantaged (and 85% Black and Hispanic, in case you're really confused about our demographics), so in no danger of losing Title I status anytime soon... especially since that number includes a robust PK program that is significantly more affluent than the upper grades, and most of those families will leave before the upper grades. That has been the case here for as long as I have lived inbound (8 years). I am guessing PP lives on the Hill and has no idea what's actually going on in upper NW, east of the park, but that's often the case in this forum. (I don't know what's going on at Tyler, nor do I really care... it's a minimum 50 minute drive from my house during rush hour and there's no way I'm sending my kid there.)