Confused on IEP's or IPP's

Hard, because some of the answer is HARD TO SWALLOW, or let’s call it ‘HTS’. Here is the ‘HTS’ answer: ‘BECAUSE THE SCHOOL DOES NOT HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO TEACH EVERY CHILD’. (not that they don’t WANT to try, or that some of them ARE trying VERY HARD — they DO and they ARE!) Overall, the system shortchanges some people. Period. If you take what they are offering — that’s what you get. You, thankfully, are NOT willing to settle for ‘less than’ for your child — Bravo! Huzzah!

This HTS answer is NOT fair, nor is it what we expected as we paid our taxes lo these many years…but all the LD moms/dads have to accept the HTS answer. It is actually better to rant and rave to the forum and get past the anger — as I say to all my friends, ‘DON’T get me started…’ cuz I don’t want to bore them getting nasty on my soapbox! Occasionally my closest everyday friend and I (she’s an LD mom X2, tourettes/ADHD and ADHD, with LD’s for both!) have a real snarl to make ourselves feel better…but in the end, we keep on struggling, and just say: HTS, but ‘life ain’t fair, is it’!

YES, I believe what YOU are doing privately IS the reason your son is starting to make progress. That you have to pay out private cash above and beyond your tax dollars is EXTREMELY ‘HTS’, but it is NOT going to change, nor will the teachers be able to answer it or change it. THEY are generally caring educators who do what they can with sometimes limited skills and resources for the job at hand. Mostly, they can’t sleep at night unless they tell themselves ‘some children just ‘CAN’T’ do x, y, z’. So asking them for answers just hurts your kid, by reminding them of their shortcomings and making you an obnoxious pain…

He will get MORE if you have them on your side, and they will NOT like it if you don’t appear to be as cooperative as possible. If they are doing NO meetings til November — wait til November, but learn, learn, learn, plan, plan, plan, to make that meeting as effective as possible. Unless he is having a PROBLEM — ie unhappy, or BLANK workpapers, etc. — just be friendly and cooperative, and PATIENT. Maybe call now, and ask to BOOK your meeting? Tell them he has private tutoring, and making much progress, so you’d like to make sure you are able to provide effective home support — so please, Mrs. Principal, can I get a date for my meeting? Of COURSE, since you are all so busy, at YOUR convenience? Also, think about having tutor attend — would be cash well-spent, IMO, if she is willing.

My experience from friends locally (Toronto area, Ontario) is that the IEP has limited value — necessary for accomodations but if the services/skills don’t exist, no IEP can get them for you — we got no FAPE up here — and even where they have FAPE, a lawsuit is not necessarily the best thing for your kid, either!

I won’t get into my son — but in Gr. 2, my hubby said ‘WELL — if that’s all they can offer via IEP, we might as well just consider them tax-paid babysitters and teach him ourselves!’ We avoided the IEP on the advice of our tutor at that time, who DID get him reading in 4 weeks after 9 mos of first grade failure — hence my respect for her opinion! This has worked for us, but an IEP is usually necessary — just don’t expect that it will live up to it’s name! There are two standard streams to funnel students into — ‘REGULAR ED’ and ‘IEP’. The words ‘individual, education, plan’ are not to be taken at face value!

Be patient. Pick your battles — post about specific ones and make your decisions based on your analysis of answers. Get to know the teachers, the class, present an amiable and respectful face whenever you deal with the teacher — even if you have to bite your tongue til the blood runs down your chin. DON’T expect them to do what you think they should — I made this mistake in Gr. 4, BIGTIME, and although she was professional enough not to take it out on my son, she basically IGNORED him and did not one millimetre extra — and was definitely NOT helpful when she easily could have been, had I not offended her right off. A waste! And my own stupid fault, in retrospect — learn from my stupidity, please, do!

Figure out what they CAN do in class, and work to get the best of what is available. Keep on with the tutoring as much as you can — IMO, reading is WAY important, and I spent my cash on that (well, my credit, so I’m still paying for the past!) and so that is where you are…but DO NOT yet accept limits for your kiddo! (read des’s post under teaching a child with LD re cognitive vs LD — very apt!) ACCEPT NO LIMITATIONS FOR AN 8YO!!! I don’t care what the ‘experts’ say, they DO NOT NECESSARILY KNOW!!! And I warn you, they will expect LESS if they label him ‘cognitive’, so downplay this as much as possible — cognitive or LD or both, kids will do MORE if we EXPECT more — provided we expect it with patience and support…

The IEP is necessary to get accomodations that will make his life at school bearable and reasonably productive — but DO NOT expect them to teach him what he ‘NEEDS’ to know — it ain’t necessarily going to happen, IEP or not!

And ignore my tone if I seem obnoxious — I’m just another LD mom, proud of how far you’ve come in joining our elite society of the best parents the human race has to offer, and obnoxiously focused on seeing you take it all the way — I don’t want to give away one minute of living, but I’m darned if I don’t believe that every kid of an active parent of this forum will do just GREAT! (and thumb his/her nose at every nay-sayer in his/her past!) So, you have joined this club — in about 10—15 years, we will be reaping the benefits as we see our kids successfully joining the grownup world…
Have a good one, and remember to ENJOY him…

PS: YES, when it is proven that he was not ‘COGNITIVE’, I WILL say ‘I told you so’, but I’ll be QUITE nice about it!

HTS –— very Hard To Swollow…it royally sucks. I know that the teachers do the best that they can with what they have. They have a lot of children with different disabilities and they all learn differently, but the clinic that I send my son too has offered to have my son’s teachers / school in to show their techniques in teaching Braydon (using phono-graphix). I have emailed this to the principal of the school, I have written a note to the teachers to let them know they are welcome to go to the clinic. Every second Friday my son does not have school. In the school notice they explained that the Friday will be used and utilized for the “special Ed” program. So, why not spend an hour at the clinic? why not see and learn this program that is being used to help a child with severe reading disabilities? Especially if it is helping?

Under our “special education Act” it states this:
Coordinated Services

School boards must:
a. work together with members of the community, who have an interest in the students in a schools, to meet the special education needs of students, including students and their families, community agencies, organizations and associations, other education authorities, regional health and children’s services authorities

b. develop, keep current and implement written local policy and procedures for working with other members of the community to design and deliver services for students with special education needs; local policies and procedures will be consistent with provincial legislation, regulation and policy

c. obtain written informed consent from parents to provide coordinated services to students, when required, and as identified in students’ I PPs

d. take an active role to initiate or participate in working together with other members of the community to improve services for students with special education needs

e. have written procedures for accessing, recording, and sharing medical information and for storing and/or administering medications

f. when required to administer health-related support services to students in schools, provide staff with training by qualified professionals or other individuals with expertise, including parents

So, is that not telling me that the school board if required, should work with his tutors? I am totally on the schools’ side. Iam not one to raise “hell”. I am just looking for answers because I am new to all of this. I just want to know how they are teaching my son, and why it is not working!!! What can I do? what can they do? I am impressed with my son’s new class and his teachers….my son has 3 new teachers. One teacher is full time, and two of them job share. There are also 2 Educational assistants in the class and they get a SLP once a week. I am impressed with all the help there is in the class room, but I want to know how I can make sure that his IPP is a little more clearer. Give me an idea how you will get him to use “4 descriptive words”, what method will you use? Don’t just say “he will work with an assistant’. or tell me how will he be able to increase his reading vacabulatry from the Dolch Word list” What will they use to teach him this, besides memorizing, which seems to be what they are doing.
Sorry, I am ranting and raving.

I am not offended by your tone, it does not seem obnoxious at all! Just looking for any information possible on others experiences!
Thanks for your reply Elizabeth, I appreciate it.

I am so glad to hear that the PG and LiPs are working. Hurray!

basic rule: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. You have found approaches that are breaking the reading barrier for your child. Good. It often isn’t the one or the other, it is often feedback from both. When I tutor, I use two or three or sometimes four different activities/programs/approaches in a lesson. They feed back to each other, phonics to reading to spelling to writing. So hang in with what works.

I have had a couple of times parents with “fear of success”. When something started working and we were seeing breakthroughs, some parents became angry (I guess because they and their child were losing their special status) and some parents changed the program and changed it again and then quit. When you get success, stick with it until you get more and more success. Time to change the program later, when he has graduated from this phase.

I have only seen one Canadian IEP, and it was a total joke.
I learned years and years ago that IEP goals *must* be absolutely specific and objectively measurable, for example “Billy will read the 100 key words in Ladybird Books 1 to 4 with 90% accuracy by December”. “Billy will read a standard Grade 2 basal reader with 90% accuracy on vocabulary by June” “Billy will spell simple CVC short-vowel words with 90% accuracy by December” and so on.
When the parent started working on the IEP she asked me for help, so I spent several (unpaid) hours typing up about fifty similar clear and measurable goals. Well, the other tutor with lots of experience in the school system showed up with *her* version of the IEP, which was a short list of two or three pages with vague statements like “Billy will read with the tutor” and “Billy will write sentences.” Since she was the person with all the experience in local schools, she did an excellent job of putting me down and making me look totally foolish — well WE don’t use things like that around HERE; later she essentially pushed me out of the tutoring job with the same techniques, parents’ choice but I wish I’d been able to progress further with the kid who was on a real breakthrough (no doubt the other tutor took credit for that.)
So my experience says that it may not be worth the bother, just go through the motions because they’re going to come up with the same slush anyhow.

As far as no meetings until the end of November: write a polite letter, and then rewrite it and take out the remaining sarcasms — keep on the high road. But point out that September-October-November, three full months, is nearly a third of the school year past before they are even making any plans for what to do. Ask them if they think that kids who are *already* behind can afford to miss a third of the year, and how they expect to do any catching up when they throw away a third of the time available. Then attach it to their letter refusing meetings and send a copy to the special ed department head, the principal, the coordinator of special ed for your district, the district superintendent, and if you can find who’s in charge, the special ed person for the province. You obviously won’t get any changes this year because the time has ticked away, but we can hope for a policy change next year.

Right now you have to deal with the hand you’re dealt. Once you get past the emergency phase with your son, time to start pressuring the school system to use research-based proven effective reading methods from day 1 of kindergarten, and the colleges of education to teach them — help all the others in your shoes.

I will keep stressing with his teachers and the school that my son is learning slowly, but he IS learning, and I think he is learning the “right” way for him. If they can just implement a little bit during the school hours and if they use the approach that is working, then my son may make bigger gains.
I think the thing that scares me is suggesting this to the school and or his teachers. I am not a teacher, or a tutor, or an educational specialist, and I don’t want to come across like I know what I am talking about. But I have seen how it is working for him, and my son is correcting himself for the first time. I have a meeting with his teachers on Friday to talk about his IEP. They are giving me the meeting because I have voiced my concern. Now, I feel like I am going to go into that meeting with no amo! Again, I am not one to raise a stink and asking for a meeting was not to tell them how to do their jobs. I do want to know their method of teaching, and I want to find out what they can do to help him keep up with what he has learned in the past few months. Tutoring can get expensive, and eventually I have to put my hands in the trust of the school system, but until I feel comfortable with that I will have to keep paying thousands and thousand of dollars a year to help him read the very basic books that children his age can read with no problems.
Victoria I am not sure why parents “fear the Success”, I can’t believe parents would would stop something that is working. I am not sure, but how do teachers write an IEP? Especially if they are new teachers an no nothing about the student?
There was an open house at the end of September, this special ed class is new, and there are 18 children in this class now. Sitting in that open house, listening to the principle, teachers, etc., and looking around at all the parents, it made me think and wonder if these parents know that there is so much more we can do as parents for our childrens education.

You can buy a book or go to a website and get all the sample IEP’s you want to copy.

What about simply going in and showing them WHAT is working? And trying to get as much info as possible, in a very non threatening and grateful sort of way? Sounds like you can leave the ranting here and put on your cooperative mama face, even if you ARE biting your tongue!

It is my experience that they do NOT want to be told anything — they KNOW it all, especially if the one doing the telling is a parent. It is also my experience that the LEAST skilled teachers are the MOST likely to get their backs up at any suggestion. (great apologies to any teachers reading this, but you all KNOW at least one mediocre colleague, don’t you?)

BUT…your position is different than mine. You DO have an IEP, and yes, in Canada it is likely not worth the paper since we have no recourse by law. AND…you may find that you can get them on your side. After all, the IEP goals are NOT as important as the daily work and education your son receives — if the daily stuff is effective and results in LEARNING, plus your home tutoring supports to give him extra, you are on the right road!

And, the IEP goals, etc. are something you CAN have input into — maybe this will be your learning year, but YOU can learn what your boy needs — and become skilled at getting it for him. Essentially, this is the reality — you and your son are responsible for his learning. Teachers are there to help — but I don’t advocate EVER ‘leaving it in their hands’ — however, you should be able to gradually withdraw your support as his skills as an independent learner mature.

The whole thing is — to get the best overall help you can. Even if you must supplement the school, if there is a chance to get what you need, or even improve it above the level of ‘taxpaid babysitting’, GO FOR IT.

Maybe go in there on friday, with your info about what is working and his progress…simply go on an information hunt & sharing expedition. Just to see ‘the lay of the land’ so to speak. Use this meeting as a ‘pre IEP’ meeting, to find out WHAT they are doing. Don’t crit what they are doing, or talk about the IEP or why they are taking so long — just get as much info about WHAT is going on as you can. This way, you will not be ‘telling them what to do’ but just letting them in on what outside help he has been getting — that WORKS — and finding out what is going on at school so you can ‘provide appropriate home support’. THEN you can go home and take it from there.

And rant all you like, come to the Parenting a Child with LD board — someone is always ready to hear you, and we are all on the same road!