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

There is a very popular ABC (Antecedent – Behavior – Consequence) approach when the carer is supposed to find the trigger (Antecedent), define the Behavior and provide the Consequence for this (often called inappropriate) behaviour – ignore/ time out/ etc. In autism this approach does not always work. Sometimes the antecedent cannot be easily identified, because it can be either ‘present but invisible’, or ‘possible future’, or ‘past’ antecedent. Let me explain.

Present but invisible antecedent

Sometimes we cannot see/ hear/ feel certain stimuli as our senses are too ‘normal’. For example, the child may be disturbed by the sound of the microwave oven two rooms away. As the carer cannot hear it, any ‘challenging behavior’ displayed by the child would be interpreted as ‘out of the blue’. Read the rest of this entry →

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) says that behavior is a special factor that must be considered when developing an Individualized Education Program (IEP).  Specifically, IDEA states that IEP’s for those children whose behavior impedes their learning or that of others, should consider the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS), and other strategies, to address that behavior.  Congress’s reasons for including PBIS was due in part based on their findings which stated, “Almost 30 years of research and experience has demonstrated that the education of children with disabilities can be made more effective by providing incentives for whole-school approaches, scientifically based early reading programs, positive behavioral interventions and supports, and early intervening services to reduce the need to label children as disabled in order to address the learning and behavioral needs of such children.” Read the rest of this entry →

Today in the Inspirational Teacher Series we profile Patrick Black.  Patrick is one of the most popular special educators on twitter and is your go to guy when you are seeking advice on using technology in the special education classroom.  When I originally conceived of this series a couple of months ago I knew I needed Patrick to particpate and I’m glad he did. Read the rest of this entry →

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires the IEP Team to consider five special factors in developing, reviewing, and revising a child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP).  The five special factors are listed in IDEA and read as follow:  Read the rest of this entry →

One of the benefits of being an advocate is when you attend a lot of IEP meetings in the same District you start to see patterns.  Usually, these patterns are designed by the School District to manipulate the outcome of an IEP with a set agenda.  As a parent, you probably won’t even realize this is happening because you only attend one or two IEP meetings a year, but as an advocate they are easy to spot. 

For years, my local school district has been paying behaviorists from non-public agencies (NPA) to help children in school who need more behavior support than a paraprofessional can provide.  Due to the cost and shrinking budgets, the School District has decided to try and eliminate NPA behavior support from ALL IEP’s.  The elimination of NPA behaviorists isn’t a written policy that a parent could find in the School District’s Special Education manual but it’s still happening none the less.     Read the rest of this entry →

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires the IEP Team to perform a Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) on a child with an IEP, if it is determined that any problem behaviors are caused by the child’s disability.  So what does it mean to perform an FBA?

An FBA is an approach that incorporates a variety of strategies and techniques to diagnose the causes of problem behaviors and to identify useful interventions.  FBA’s look past what the behavior looks like or sounds like and focuses on identifying biological, social, and environmental factors that initiate, sustain, or end the behavior in question.  Read the rest of this entry →