Q: After our son Ryan struggled through his 7th grade year, we had him tested this fall by the school district as we suspected he might have a long undiagnosed learning disability. Sure enough, the tests came back positive for a combination of language and auditory processing disorders. We are now scheduled to meet with the special education staff to create an IEP(Individualized Educational Program) for Ryan. Neither my wife nor I have any real concept of either what takes place at such a meeting, or how the IEP should be written. What are our rights? Are there points we should be sure and address in the meeting? We want to make sure Ryan is provided with the best possible program in order to support him effectively through the rest of 8th grade.
A: Many parents find themselves in the same situation as you are in right now, i.e. being invited to an IEP without any clue as to what to say or do at such a meeting. In fact, all too often, inadequate or downright ineffective IEP’s are written for parents who unwittingly allow the school staff to dictate all the terms. Blind faith in the school’s ability to construct and implement an IEP that best suits your son’s needs will more likely than not result in an weak program that is of little or no service to him in the long run. It is of paramount importance that you arm yourself with enough knowledge in order to participate fully in the IEP meeting. After all, you are your son’s primary advocate; it is you who know best his strengths and weaknesses and you who understand how he does and does not learn. Parents all too often feel ill-equipped to discuss their child’s academic program; they believe that the design of the program should be left to those who speak "education jargon" - to trained educators who understand the numbers and test results.
Educational decision making is a collaboration of all of those adults who know the student best. The IEP is a sort of "treatment plan" for academic ills. As a member of the IEP team, you will work with the educators to determine the best approach for addressing your teen’s needs; this will then be documented in writing - officially known as the IEP. The creation of an IEP is your son’s right if he is to receive special education services; the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates it. In order to determine the best possible approach for managing Ryan’s school program this year, the IEP team will look at both subjective and objective data from a variety of sources. Testing is essential to establish the current level of his performance and to help in creating goals and objectives for the coming year. IEP’s are generally done annually, although you, as a parent can request a meeting at any time to discuss the plan, your son’s progress, or to devise revisions to the existing plan as they become necessary.
What should be included in an IEP? The document created needs to clearly state your son’s present level of performance for each academic area. Relevant test scores for each subject must be included in the documentation. If you don’t understand the testing that has been done, ask for an explanation. What did was tested? What do the scores mean? It is your right to know. The IEP must then enumerate measurable annual goals, intermediate goals and benchmarks. A general timeline should be constructed along with dates for follow-up testing to measure progress. Don’t allow the team to get away with measuring your son’s progress by "teacher observation" alone. By itself, such a measure is inadequate in that it is subjective and lacking completely in scientific validity. Make sure that the goals stated are designed to resolve or minimize a student’s difficulties. The means to achieve these goals may include accommodations, bypass strategies or compensatory techniques.
Too often, IEP goals are all too vague; they fail to address the specific needs of the individual and instead enumerate goals that could be appropriate for anybody at the same age level. You as the parent must help ensure that the remediation approach matches the specific problems of your son or daughter.
How do you know if the IEP is working? If the objective testing administered demonstrates progress. A teacher merely stating that "Ryan is doing well in reading" tells you absolutely nothing. You want to know if the hard data reflects change as set forth in the original document. Even passing grades do not necessarily reflect real progress. Often grades are either inflated or the student has been given work that is far below his ability level demonstrating successful performance in a resource program. Make sure that objective ways of measuring progress are denoted in the use of percentile ranks or grade equivalents.
Who should be at the IEP meeting? In addition to the parents and the special education team, at least one of the student’s regular academic teachers must be attendance. As parents, you are entitled to bring an advocate to the meeting. This is often an educational therapist or consultant with special knowledge of the child, his needs and the process of writing IEP’s. This advocate can be of great assistance to you in helping you understand the entire IEP procedure and in providing you with advice. It is often an excellent idea for a teenager to attend his own IEP as he can give the team valuable information about his performance in school and provide a unique perspective on what type of accommodations he needs.
Badly written or inappropriate IEP documents have ended up as catalysts for parent lawsuits against school districts. At the very least, they have stalled a student’s progress for months or even years. If a particular strategy for addressing your son’s problems seems valuable, make sure it is written into the IEP. For example, if you want a weekly progress report on your son, this must be spelled out in the document you create. Simply requesting verbally that the teachers send home such a report is not sufficient; unless it is mandated by the IEP, an accommodation does not have to be implemented. You can prevent a great deal of future aggravation by seeing to it that the original IEP "assesses what is to be measured, what behavior is to be changed, and what skill is to be learned. Quantify the starting point as the level presently observed and measured in either percentile rank, grade equivalent or age equivalent… Then assess where the skill, behavior or other area should be a year later..." This summary of guidelines for an IEP comes directly from a wonderful web site on the entire IEP process, complete with examples of cases; it was designed by a psychologist and a special education attorney. The address is
