Learn Your Special Education Laws, Special Education Rights, and Share IEP Goal Ideas

I don’t understand why every time we post an article on Special Education Advisor regarding advocacy or relationships with your child’s school we always get the same type of comments. If the article is discussing how to collaborate with your school or create a positive relationship I receive comments about how utilizing this philosophy would put you in a weak position. On the other hand, every time we post an article about being a strong advocate for your child we get comments about how this is counterproductive to the collaborative nature of the IEP Meeting. Since when did we start living in a universe where you can’t have a positive relationship with your child’s school and be a strong advocate for their needs? You absolutely can do both, but it requires finesse. Before we talk about how to do this I want you to see two of these comments we have received. On the article Top Ten Methods to Foster IEP Team Collaboration we received this comment: Read the rest of this entry →

Probably the most frustrating part of being the parent of a child with a different ability [1] is the response from the very organization you hoped you could trust the most to do right by your child – your school district.  After all, teachers and administrators are trained to adapt the teaching environment to help my child, right? (No.)  I pay my property taxes, so I should be able to control how the schools work, right? (You should, yes, but in reality you don’t.) 

So what should I do when the school district won’t do what they are supposed to do for my child?  Read the rest of this entry →

On January 24th Disability Scope ran an article, Most Parents Pleased with Role in Child’s IEP. The article stated:

In a study looking at the experiences of families of more than 10,000 students with disabilities, the majority of parents said they attended their child’s most recent IEP meeting. And of parents who attended, about 70 percent said they thought their level of involvement in decision making was “about right.” In most other cases, parents said they wanted to be more involved. Read the rest of this entry →

I recently had some wonderful clients who had signed what I considered to be a terribly one-sided settlement agreement with a local Southern California school district. Seeking to obtain rights for their child after the fact, we found that the agreement handcuffed them in every direction and precluded them from being able to negotiate any changes for their child. At the time, my client told me that based on her research, school districts were engaging in some unfair practices with parents, all designed to deprive them of the rights provided them by IDEA, federal, and state law. Since that time I have been looking more carefully at how districts use settlement agreements and other waiver of rights, and I have come to see how correct her observation is. Read the rest of this entry →

I read an article yesterday on Forbes.com called, “Are You Using Word Problems to Solve your Business Problems.” At first glance, this article seemingly has nothing to do with special education. The more I thought about this article the more I realized it has everything to do with special education. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Remember those word problems you dreaded in your middle-school math class? “We’ll never use that in real-life” we all thought. Well, we couldn’t be more wrong.

No, this isn’t about figuring out at what time Train A and Train B will meet if they are going 80 miles an hour. But similar types of problems have existed almost daily in all of my businesses as long as I can remember. Everything becomes a word problem.

Should I hire another sales person? Turns into: I have 200 leads a month, with an average lead requiring four hours of time over a six-week sales cycle to covert into a sale, currently working 160 hours a month each. Read the rest of this entry →

I am hearing from parents more often than ever that they feel their child’s current educational placement is not providing a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) as required under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).  What are some of the options a parent has when this is the case:  They can file a Due Process Complaint and wait for the outcome or they can place their child in a private school and try to get reimbursed for the cost of the tuition from the public School District. Read the rest of this entry →

Pete Wright, the Godfather of Special Education law, has often been quoted saying, “Unless you are prepared to remove your child from public school forever, you need to view your relationship with the school as a marriage without the possibility of divorce.” While this may be true regarding the School relationship, this isn’t the case for individual members of the IEP Team. IEP Team members change frequently and it’s amazing how adding or removing one person from the IEP Team can make a huge difference in the quality and implementation of an IEP. While the Parents are not normally in control of the IEP team members from the School, there are methods the Parents can use to add or remove members. Read the rest of this entry →

It’s time for another top ten list and here we go:

10. Prepare

Review all past and present assessments, tests, letters, and IEP’s.  Put markers next to important information so it’s easy to find while in the IEP meeting.  Pay close attention to test scores and how that information may be used by either you or the District to make a point.  This may include educating yourself on how to read the test scores.  If you don’t have enough information to make your case then you won’t convince the IEP team. Read the rest of this entry →

When a dispute arises between a parent and the school in an Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting there are a few methods that can be utilized to work out the disagreement.  Most School Districts will have at least one Informal Dispute Resolution (IDR) system in place that can be employed to work out the dispute.  IDR will look different in every school district but most likely it will involve a meeting or phone call with a District employee who was not at the original IEP meeting discussing the disagreement and trying to come to a successful resolution.  IDR is not mandatory and can be skipped if the parents want to exercise their rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) procedural safeguards which could include Mediation or Due Process. Read the rest of this entry →

It has been said, “You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions” (Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel Prize Winner for Literature).  These are words to live by and my wife, Dennise, and I have found that asking questions in an IEP meeting is a very effective strategy for advocating for your child.  Yesterday, Dennise wrote in her blog, “Needs Drive Goals and Goals Drive Services in an IEP”;

….. if you think your child needs additional services always remember to start at the beginning.  First, update your child’s present level of performance.  Next, write multiple goals for every area of need including all of the components.  Lastly, use the present levels of performance and goals to justify additional services.  If parents remember to work from beginning to end they should have a much more productive IEP meeting. Read the rest of this entry →