Reply to Ever cry at an IEP meeting?

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Reply to "Ever cry at an IEP meeting?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Yes! I think the advocates are not worth the money. Get your psychiatrist, tester, or tutor in there to explain precisely what your child's needs are and why.

Because, of course, once the school team hears precisely what your child's needs are and why, they'll be sure and get your child just that!

Yeah, I agree that schools will just ignore what they don't want to hear. We had our child's speech therapist listen in on the whole IEP meeting and she commented clearly on our child's needs, but to no avail. We got the IEP, but none of the speech services that were necessary.
 
We have had good experience with an advocate and an attorney, but the best experience was when I complained in writing to a special ed supervisor outside the school in the central county office. My letter was factual about the ways in which the school was violating the law and refusing to provide the services for which we had clearly demonstrated need. It worked wonderfully!
 
The problem is that there is basically no oversight of the school-based IEP process except in terms of procedural timelines that must be met by law. Because of this, as long as the procedure has been followed, it doesn't matter whether the school has rely complied with the substance of the law. Some of this is probably due to the reluctance of courts to second guess the "educational decisions" of the "experts" (aka teachers and administrators) except in really egregious cases. [/quote]

OP here.  It's nice (and sad) to know I'm not alone in this.  One of the reasons I'm so very frustrated is precisely, as the above poster noted, that as long as procedure has been followed, it doesn't matter whether the school has complied with the substance of the law.  We continue to hit this.  We get into this loop where the school team points to the procedure, saying that they followed it and, therefore, their decision is correct.  I understand they need a framework/procedure to better ensure rights are respected and laws are followed but they also need understanding of the overall environment the law creates.  It's so very frustrating.[/quote]

I am PP to which you are commenting.  One thing that I think would really change the dynamic is a change in the Burden of Proof.  Typically in the law, the burden of proof rests with the moving party in civil complaints.  IDEA originally had nothing to say about which party bears the burden of proof in actions brought under its statute, so courts interpreted the burden of proof to be with the moving party as in many other fields of law/civil complaints.  The problem is that the moving party is almost always the parents because the parents are the ones who are unhappy with a school decision.

If the burden of proof were changed, and the burden was on the school system to show that it had made a reasonable IEP instead of on the parents to prove that the IEP is unreasonable, then I think things would change significantly for the better in special education.  The school system would feel more obligated to provide services, since they would have to justify not providing them if brought to court.  It would be in the school system's interest to work with parents to make them happy so that claims are not brought.

Now, with the burden of proof on the parents, school systems feel comfortable flouting the substance of the law (and often even procedural aspects) since they know it is costly and thus rare for parents to continue to contest IEPs since it costs them a lot of $$ in lawyer's fees and expert witnesses (not to mention time) upfront.

Burden of proof legislation failed last season in Maryland, but it will be brought up again in the fall.  In this election season, I encourage everyone to ask their elected officials and other candidates where they stand on this important issue.

See www.burdenofproofmd.org[/quote]

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