As I’m reading through the threads of the posts of writing IEP goals, I am in awe. All of our goals at IEPs have been pre-written by the LD case managers and brought to the meeting. When my husband and I suggest things we want addressed they are written down in the parental concerns area (inaccurately most of the time), not re-written as goals. Things that we have asked for specifically, we have been told it is not in the district’s continuum. What are we doing wrong? Most of you seem to be active participants. Do your schools write most of them and you just add on or do you start from a blank sheet at your annual reviews? And what is this mysterious “district continuum” and what do I ask for when I call to get a copy. Is it useful for me to have. Also some one posted advice to look at the IEP Basics info that the school is required to give parents, we never received anything like that, only Procedural Safeguards pamphlets.
Re: think I'm missing something here
You do NOT have to sign an IEP that doesn’t look the way you want it to. And if they can’t come to an agreement with you, they are, by law, required to go to arbitration with it. (which they won’t want to do if your demands are reasonable… it will cost them more money and they will lose anyway)
As far as coming to the IEP meeting with a pre-written document, I think it depends on the situation. When my son was placed back on an IEP at the beginning of 4th grade, he had been off an IEP for a year, was at a new developmental level, and we had a solid dx for him for the first time. We all (including the neuropsychologist and our advocate) sat in the room and wrote the IEP from scratch, It took forever.
This year, it was a matter of fine-tuning an existing document. He had been in school for about 6 weeks, so we knew what was working and what wasn’t. The team leader had made some changes to the draft based on our input, and what she knew was going on in the classroom ahead of time. We came to the meeting with a list of changes we wanted made. Then was tried to mesh those all into one document.
The next step was that we were sent the next version in the mail. I forwarded a copy to our advocate, and we went over it with a fine-toothed comb, comparing it to last year’s IEP and to our list. Most of it was pretty much the way we wanted it, but there were a few corrections to be made, but nothing that I felt required negotiating with the entire team. I made an appointment to sit down with the team leader in her office, with the computer right there. As she and I went through the changes, she sat at the computer and made them to the IEP document on the spot. She printed out the corrected version, and again I took this home, went over it in peace and quiet, and made sure that it agreed with what I’d discussed with the advocate.
Only when we were completely satisfied did we sign off on the IEP. That’s the most important thing to remember… If you are not happy with it, they can’t make you sign it.
As far as their “district continuum” is concerned, by law, that’s not the way an IEP is written. An IEP is written based on the NEEDS OF THE CHILD. You write that part of the IEP first, and then look at the services available that might meet those needs. Hopefully, the school system has something in place that willl meet those needs. If not, they have two choices. They can contract for outside services to fill in the gaps, or they can look for a suitable outside placement for the child. (these are both expensive options, so they’d much prefer to provide the services in-house) They CANNOT, by law, base IEP services on what they have available unless that coincides with the needs of the child.
That doesn’t mean they won’t drag their feet, however, if it means spending extra money. We’ve found our school system to be very willing to make accomodations that do not cost extra money. (like reformatting of tests to be visually less confusing, and an extra set of text books to keep at home) We had a much harder time getting them to provide the one-on-one keyboarding training our son needed. Part of that was that they didn’t want to pull him out of class for it, which I admire… I think that was a good call on their part. But part of it was the cost of having someone sit there with him individually. (he needed it to be one-on-one because he must be reminded to keep both hands on the keyboard… he doesn’t willingly use his right hand) But we did finally get this much-needed training for him, after school, 3 days a week, at school expense.
One thing that we’ve found useful is to do our share to work with the school system and help out where we can. We told them that we can supply him with a lap top when he is keyboarding well enough to benefit from it. I think the fact that we were willing to handle this part of the expense made them more willing to provide what we couldn’t, the direct teaching.
Karen
Re: think I'm missing something here
I think it depends on the district; in our K-5 system, total inclusion is used…there is no resource room, so an IEP would not be written for resource room instruction. There is no after-school instruction for K-5, because of the teacher contract…so an IEP would not be written to call for school based after-school instruction. I think you need to be realistic about what is available in your system.
Re: think I'm missing something here
Again, it’s just plain against the law to look at “what’s available” first, and then write an IEP based on that. Now, it’s entirely possible that a school system has another, appropriate way to deal with the same problems in another creative way. But they HAVE to meet the child’s needs, whether they have to contract outside the system or not. Otherwise they need to be prepared to pay for out of district placements when thy don’t meet the children’s needs.
Karen
This is not the way it is legally supposed to work. Last year I was able to get a radically different IEP by hiring an advocate. In the end, they wanted to implement it using the same program (which was ineffective for my son) that was going to implement the old IEP goals. You don’t legally have any input into implementing the IEP—only developing the IEP. (You do have this legal right and you might start by reminding them of this.) I ended up thinking that I wasted a lot of time and money–that they were going to do what they were going to do anyway.
For us, it is better this year because some of the players have changed. They take our input much more seriously and with some strong advocating I have been able to change some things—and not just on paper. For example, I actually got the OT to give him services this year after she was ready to dismiss him.
Beth