It's Back to School/IEP Season!!!

I'm a little bit late on this topic (since I was dealing with my own Back to School/IEP Season), but as parents of special needs know, September is not just about buying a new backpack and the long list of school supplies.  It's also about evaluating your child's IEP, and making sure that it's still appropriate for him and her.

Hopefully, you've already had your pre-school IEP meeting.  I think it's always a good idea to bring the team together before school starts, and discuss what's happened over the summer (good and bad) that may impact the IEP goals.

I'm going to repost some excellent thoughts from my colleague Charmaine Thayer (who has a great website of her own - Visions and Voices Together).  I think Charmaine has a really balanced perspective on parent/school collaborations - optimistic, and still realistic.  Here you go from Charmaine:

Your Back-to-School IEP Check:

1. I understand the goals my child is working on this year and these are still appropriate for my child.

2. Teachers and related service providers are working on the goals, and I know this because ______________________.

3. My child is receiving all the services and supports written on his/her IEP, and I know this because ______________.

4. I do not agree to any amendments to my child’s IEP without considering all of the possible repercussions of an amendment. 

* CAUTION: some parents have been receiving proposed amendments to their child’s IEP to decrease amount of time for services, or change services from direct (actually working with your child) to indirect (consulting with school staff) and asked to “Sign here and send back to school.”

5. I have a communication plan in place to receive daily/weekly communication from people working with my child.

6. I share with school staff what strategies work well with my child.

7. I consider not signing a release (or revoking if I already have) of information between the school and private providers.  Instead, I provide written reports to each party when I think it is appropriate.  If school staff and private providers want to speak to each other, I am on the phone with them, or meeting with them.

8. I thank school staff and recognize when things are going well.

9. I celebrate my child’s successes!

And given the time of the year, it seems like a good time to post some general IEP resources, relevant to any time you're considering an IEP meeting.

IEP Guide: This is a pretty basic primer on your, and your child's rights under IDEA, and how to navigate the IEP process.

NCLD on IEP Teams:  This is a parent-advocate's perspective on the "dream" IEP team....and what is often the ugly reality.  So this is not what I'd call a balanced perspective, but it's certainly one that parents are quite familiar with, and speaks to the frustration and anger that many parents feel. 

As always, Wrightslaw has a variety of really helpful resources, including an email newsletter, the Special Ed Advocate and their website full of archived materials and analyses.

Good luck!

Special Ed Basics - Parentally Placed Private Placements

You might be getting the sense that special education law and policy is more complicated than you originally thought.  Boy has it been a learning curve for me, and I am still on that curve.  One of the interesting little wrinkles that we need to cover (so that I can post about some recent developments) is the situation where a parent is unhappy with the public school services that her kid is receiving.  Maybe she disagrees with the amount of services, or doesn't think the service providers are effective.  She finds a local private school, enrolls her kid in the school, and then notifies the public school of her decision.

Assuming the simplest case (the school had provided FAPE, and there's no due process hearing, no litigation about that issue), the public school system is basically done with this kid.  The LEA has no obligation to provide special ed services to the child, and no obligation to pay the tuition for the private school.  On the side of the private school, the private school has no obligation to provide any special ed services because they're not a public school, and not subject to the requirements of IDEA.  (Charter schools are tricky.  They are usually public schools, and so are legally subject to IDEA, but the fact of the matter is is that they rarely offer adequate special ed services to students, even though they receive funds from the LEA to do so.)

So this situation can put parents in a difficult position.  On the one hand, they might feel their child's education is suffering in the public school - but at least the kid is getting some kind of special ed services, at no cost to the parent.  On the other hand, if they want a (presumably) better education at a private school, there are no included special ed services, and all this is coming out of the parents' pockets.

The IDEA does provide an outlet, but one that's a hard road to travel.  In order to get the public school system to reimburse for a parentally-placed private placement, the parent must prove that (a) the public school did not provide FAPE, and (b) the parents provided notice of their intent to remove their child.  To do this, the parent generally needs to file for due process (in order to prove the first prong).  This is hard - due process hearings can be long and drawn out, and meanwhile, the parent is paying for this private placement.  A lot of parents simply can't take on this financial and emotional burden.

So, some states have tried to offer alternatives.  In Florida, the McKay scholarships are offered to students on IEPs that want to attend private schools.  In Colorado, Douglas County is offering school vouchers on a pilot basis to kids that want to attend private schools.  In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee school district had a similar voucher program - that became the subject of a complaint filed with the DOJ.   Sadly, in all of these cases, there have been serious flaws in the implementation, and how the programs support (or, more accurately, don't support) kids with disabilities.  And that, my friends, will be covered in my next post on this topic.

The Medical Malpractice Analogy, or, a Question of Trust

I recently heard a presentation about the importance of trust in the school district-parent relationship, especially when it involves a child receiving special education services.  Parents of kids with special needs are relying on the school to provide the services set forth in the child's IEP, and to provide their child with FAPE (a fair and appropriate public education).  If the system breaks down - the child isn't receiving the specified type, or amount, of services; the school isn't implementing the specified accommodations or behavior plan; the child is being "taught" by an unskilled aide in a trailer on the edge of campus (no really) - then that trust between the school and the parent is destroyed.  Even if the situation is resolved through an IEP meeting, or mediation or other dispute resolution process, how can the parents trust the school again?

The dynamic has permanently changed.  This particular parent, who may have been easygoing before, is going to be more demanding, more insistent on record keeping, and less trustful.  How can the school rebuild the trust?

Special Education Law Basics, Part Two

Again, in order to lay the groundwork for future posts and topics I plan to address, I want to make sure everyone has a basic grounding in the principles and acronyms used in special education law.  In my first post on the topic, I covered the super simple basics: how are special education services provided, and what's the legal standard used.  (Need a refresher?  Hit Back to Basics again).

As I've said before, the IDEA is both a funding statute, providing federal funds for state schools, and a civil rights statute, designed to rectify decades of discrimination against children with special needs.  In keeping with its role as a civil rights statute, the law provides procedural safeguards designed to protect the rights of children with disabilities and their parents.  Some of these safeguards consist of various notice requirements (e.g., the school must provide parents with "prior written notice" before changing the placement of a child).  Other procedures address what happens if the collaborative process envisioned by the IDEA breaks down. 

You can see, I'm sure, the possibility for big disputes between the parents and the school district concerning the education of a child with disabilities.  Some parents feel like inclusion isn't the best place for their child (as I discussed in The Inclusive Classroom); other parents feel like their child can succeed in a general education classroom, albeit with appropriate supports.  School districts, meanwhile, have limited resources, declining budgets, and staffing challenges.  The first step in a dispute between the school and the parent is informal dispute resolution, just as any parent would approach the school if the child was having an issue.  The parties can also request mediation, to be conducted by a neutral party at no cost to the parents.  (Mediation is a great option, and I'm a big believer in it).  After this, the escalation procedures are specifically laid out in IDEA.

The Inclusive Classroom: Pipe Dream or a Necessity?

As I mentioned in my intro post about the IDEA, Back to Basics: Special Education, one of the fundamental goals of the IDEA is to eliminate the "separate but equal" status of children with special needs.  Before the IDEA, kids with special needs were not only often in the trailer on the edge of the school campus, there were in a trailer no where near their home school campus.

Many, many parent advocates work tirelessly to promote inclusion.  In the terms of the IDEA, each child must be educated in the "least restrictive environment" appropriate for that child.  Ideally, this would be a general education classroom for all kids.  Now, the IDEA doesn't assume that all kids are going to thrive in a traditional classroom by being simply placed there.  Each IEP must consider appropriate supports and related services that can enable that child to succeed in the general ed classroom - not just be placed there.  These supplemental aids and services can include anything from nursing assistance, psychological therapy, and transportation.  They also include assistive technologies (as you know, a subject near and dear to my heart) such as AACs, PECS, LiveScribe pens, etc.

This is how the IDEA is supposed to work.  As you might imagine, despite great strides towards inclusion, there is some disagreement in the disability community as to what is actually best for the child.