The IEP Team: The Law, the Reality and the Dream - Page 3

Don’t Feel Rushed Don’t pay attention to the “While I am in here I am not servicing my other students, blah, blah, blah….” Nonsense sometimes conveyed by school personnel, and intended to make you feel bad about the amount of time your child’s IEP team meeting is using. An IEP that delivers FAPE cannot be written in 1 hour. At its most efficient an IEP team meeting will run 2 ½ to 3 hours, and only if team members have prepared their input on suggested annual goals and supplementary aids prior to it.

Defining Measurable Goals

Back on the road to FAPE, parents may face the educational-deer-in-the-headlights look when the topic of drafting measurable annual goals is raised with the IEP team. The IDEA ensures that children with disabilities will have access to the general education curriculum, thus enabling them to “meet the educational standards…that apply to all children.”  

Still, you may run into an IEP team that has forgotten best practice is to use the student’s grade-level curriculum and content expectation standards to write a “standards-based” IEP, because the child is taking standardized state assessments. More than once I have had a director of special education ask, “Marcie, why don’t you write the annual goals like you did for a previous student?” A growing number of states are requiring standards-based IEPs, so you will want to research your state’s policy prior to the IEP team meeting. 

Extended School Year Services

Perhaps the IEP team at its ugliest? When the time comes to discuss the student’s need for “extended school year” (ESY) services. In my many years as an educational advocate, never have I heard more ridiculous responses to parents’ queries regarding ESY. 

• It’s the exception, and not the rule.
• There has been no regression in your child’s annual goals.
• Be thankful that your child does not qualify for ESY.  
• Two to three years behind in reading is not considered “severe” or a “critical area of learning.” 

Frankly, all children with IEPs need ESY. Every school year, children with IEPs spend hours that add up to days, weeks and several months, without their teachers or direct instruction. Their teachers are attending IEP team meetings!

No Snacks Necessary Parents should not have to think that providing food is necessary in order to keep IEP team members actively engaged. So why is such a lovely expression possibly a bad idea? The IEP team meeting isn’t about cookies and socializing. It’s about getting down to business – the business of your child’s right to FAPE. Can you bring a desert or munchies? Absolutely, but because you want to, and not because you feel obligated.

The Dream IEP Team

If only?  Parents are there, confident, ready and relaxed. I walk in as the educational advocate and am not viewed as an adversary or pit bull. All of your child’s service providers are in attendance, and if there are evaluation results, they are clear and easy for parents to understand. The special education administrator attends, and remembers that special education is at no cost to you, the parent. 

Special education teachers are trained in best educational practices, research-based methodologies, and computer software designed to address deficits in reading, writing, and mathematics. Parents are not considered the “expert,” anymore than you would be if your child had leukemia, and the oncologist was reviewing treatment options.

If your child has a 1:1 paraprofessional or a paraprofessional is assigned to one or more of your child’s classes, this person would be in attendance and a valued member of the IEP team. 

And holy cow, actress Whoopi Goldberg, business leader Charles Schwab and Yale professor and renowned author Sally Shaywitz (Overcoming Dyslexia) are sitting in the meeting larger than life – ready to cheer us on and remind us of all that our children can achieve.

The IEP team would remember that learning disabilities are neurologically based life-long disabilities that can be successfully remediated with research-based instruction delivered with fidelity. IEP team members would feel free to express concerns about your child’s progress and come prepared to draft annual goals, supplementary aids, programs and services.  Members would not talk to you outside of the IEP meeting and say, “Don’t tell anyone that I told you….”

If your child has AD/HD (and many who have LD also have AD/HD), the treating psychiatrist, neurologist or pediatrician would attend the IEP team meeting, instead of by signature or letterhead. Also attending would be any clinician (PhD psychologist, neuropsychologist, speech clinician, behavioral consultant, etc…) who has evaluated your child through an “Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE)” at public expense. Even the audiologist would be there to explain the manifestation of academic deficits in reading comprehension and written expression that are due to a “central auditory processing disorder” (CAPD). 

If your child is reading 2-3, or even 1 year below grade level the IEP team will be frantic and hold all-nighters until they reach agreement on a prescriptive reading program. Members will never have been suspected of child abuse due to educational neglect. The IEP team does not need portable defibrillators to resuscitate your child’s education. Your child’s educational airbag will never be released while sitting on the school bus that drives down the “yellow brick road” to FAPE. 

If I Had a Magic Wand

I want the road to FAPE to be paved with a collaborative spirit and driven by an IEP team with well-rounded knowledge and expertise. Every IEP meeting would adjourn with parents knowing that while you will travel this road at least once every school year, you will welcome the ride.

Every day that I am an educational advocate I wonder, will I live to see the promise of the IDEA delivered? Will I know what it is to be a member of a “dream” IEP team? Will I see your child reach his or her maximum potential and go off to college and to live his or her dreams? Until then, I encourage parents and education professionals to aim for an informed, inclusive, respectful and collaborative IEP team – one that will best support “your” child’s educational needs and road to success.

Additional ResourcesQuestions and Answers on Individualized Education Programs (IEPs)

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