Reply to Horrible IEP meeting - I could use a shoulder

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "Horrible IEP meeting - I could use a shoulder"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here.  I want to thank you all, again.  You've given me some good ideas to follow through on this.  I'm in the process now of writing a letter to capture what happened in the meeting and to provide perspective on my reaction.  The writing process is helping me be more dispassionate, clarify my thoughts and document how egregious the school's actions were.  I came into the meeting and [b]the draft IEP showed they had already selected service delivery options and hours with no input or discussion with me.[/b]  What they selected was completely different than what we had agreed to in the previous meeting.  Of course, their position is that what they were presenting is just a 'draft', it's a 'proposal'.  In all the years I've been doing this, I've never been at an IEP meeting where the service delivery options and hours were already populated.  And, they couldn't show me the data that lead them to this conclusion.  Oh, I had also asked for a person from the central office to attend (someone with expertise in the area we were discussing).  A central office person did not attend, I was not informed a rep would not be there and was told the school team had had 'staffing' (not a meeting, a 'staffing') where that representative had spoken to them.  Yeah, they're trying to screw us.

And they wonder why I won't attend an IEP meeting without an advocate.  [/quote]

FCPS sped teacher here--

This should never happen, and your special ed. team should know that--including the PSL.  It is one thing for the school team to have thought about and discussed the possible service delivery options they wanted to present to you, but those fields of the IEP should NEVER be filled in prior to the actual IEP team meeting.  Also, it is best practice (though not always followed) to send draft goals home at least 3 days in advance of an IEP meeting.  It is hard for me to tell how much time had lapsed between the first meeting where the IEP draft was presented and your most recent meeitng to finalize details--could you clarify?  If the initial draft had been changed so dramatically, I am very curious as to what data they used to develop the initial set of draft goals, and where the "new" data came from?  And of course, why they did not inform you that they were considering a change in the goals and send you a set of the "updated" goals.  That should have happened.

Also regarding data, there are some limitations placed on schools as to what they can share--your post does not specify what your child's areas of need are, but for some assessments, like the DRA (a reading assessment) only the scores can be reported--the school is not allowed to share the actual protocols with parents.  But they should definitely be able to share the scores with you in some detail for most assessments, including strengths/needs, error patterns, etc.  Classwork, tests, quizzes, and writing samples are also reasonable ways to document progress.

If the needs are more about behavioral and/or social issues, there should be a system in place to track progress toward goals.  Since behavior is tracked through observation, it is often a challenge to quantify results.  I find that using daily or weekly checklists work well, along with some sort of anecdotal notes and (at the elementary level, at least) a way to exchange daily info with the parents.  I use this type of chart with many students, and even though I don't often get comments back from the parents, at least I can document that I have shared their child's information and behavioral data on a daily basis throughout the year (the forms go home each day in a folder and are initialed by the parent each night).  I keep copies of any data I send home.

I will tell you that this type of support is much more common at the elementary level, mainly because there are fewer teachers involved and it is simply easier to manage.  However, middle schools are still required to collect meaningful data, so if your child's issues are in this area you should ask them to share the tools they will be using to monitor progress.  They should at least be able to give you an idea of how they will measure behavior.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics