How To Address My Concerns At IEP Meetings?

Sometimes people come to us with so many concerns they simply do not know where to start. In fact, when there are so many unaddressed issues and such a lack of educational progress, we might feel overwhelmed too. But, then we quickly realize we know just what we need to do. We make a list, we prioritize the most pressing issues, and then we attack them one by one.

We have the parents come up with a list of all the areas of concern they have for their child insofar as their education or access to their education is concerned and include what they want for the child on the list. We ask the parents to list all things, big and small. Once we get the list, we work with the parents to group the issues accordingly such as under reading, math, attention, sensory, speech, etc. Some things can be addressed by goals and proper services, while other things can be addressed by accommodations, and still others things might require assistive technology, behavior or other assessments, so we add related notations in this regard.

For all things that can be addressed via accommodations, we make a list and include requests for related accommodations at the next IEP meeting. We request the accommodations at the appropriate time during the meeting (when we get to the accommodations discussion) and explain the basis for each request. As we go through the requests, we ask any team member who has a better way or idea to address the issue giving rise to the accommodation request to share their thoughts.

In addition, where we believe an assessment is required, we will make a related request, whether before, during, or after the next IEP meeting, again explaining the basis for the request and attempting to get confirmation from team members (usually by way of in person or telephone conversations as this is when teachers are most willing to share information) that the issue exists before the request is made. We are ready to be a little more persuasive when it comes to assessments and definitely like to use input previously given by team members to support the request. So, if any of the conversations reveal helpful information, we would suggest sending a same-day email to the person who provided such information thanking them for meeting with you and sharing a, b, and c.

As for goals and services, we would outline all areas of need that require a goal at the next IEP meeting and then present related requests for such goals at the appropriate time during the IEP meeting along with an explanation as to why each goal is needed. For instance, our proposed reading goals may be presented during or immediately after the team discusses the district's proposed reading goals. If one of our reading goals coincides with a district reading goal, we might suggest edits to the district's goals while that goal is being discussed. For components of reading not adressed by the district, we might present them after the district reviewed all of its reading goals, saying something like: "there are a some additional reading goals we would like to propose, which are in areas of need not addressed by the district's goals."

We determine areas of need for goals based on parent and teacher observation and assessment results. A couple of weeks prior to any IEP meeting, we suggest parents meet with the teacher to discuss the child, including all areas of concern for the child, and to request copies of any math, reading, and writing assessments she has performed, including any beginning of year assessments as well as any follow-up assessments. We also have the parents note all the areas where they have personally seen the child struggling when it comes to schoolwork. All of this information is then used to develop our outline of areas of need and draft goals. We always have draft goals on hand at the IEP meeting so we can work off of them as we make the goal requests to the team. The final goals may not look exactly like our draft goals as it is a team effort, but we always work hard to get them to measure up. In addition, we like to have the student's present levels on hand to support the need for the goal, whether from teacher or parent observations, or assessments. Sometimes, we have parents hire a private reading or math specialist to do an assessment when the school has insuffient data to support our request and may even have that person attend the meeting.

But, for the big things, like a change in reading services, we would likely only focus on that one issue during the IEP meeting and then call another IEP meeting in 30 days to address any other issues. Although this may be our strategy, we certainly do not announce it to the IEP team but rather keep it close. As an example, if a child has a reading, writing and math disability and has not been making any progress in any of these areas over the past year or longer, we might only focus on the reading issue at the next IEP. After that issue is resolved to our liking, through appropriate goals and services, we would then request an IEP meeting within 30 days to address the parent’s second biggest concern, such as lack of math progress. After that issue is resolved to our liking, we would then request a meeting to address the next issue of concern, the lack of writing or speech progress and so on. We prioritize all of these issues at the outset but are aware that, as we discover more information, the order of concerns may be adjusted.

So, if one-to-one reading services 3-4 days a week with a properly trained teacher in an Orton-Gillingham-based program is our big priority for an IEP meeting, we would look to create some great reading goals addressing each component of reading and get the team to agree to really good progress monitoring measures. Goals drive services, and so good goals will work toward improving the services as desired or the agreed-upon progress monitoring measures will establish the need for better services down the road. At the same time, knowing we were going to focus on math and writing services over the course of the next year, we would be mindful to ensure the annual math and writing goals were SMART and have good progress monitoring measures as they will still be discussed by the team despite not being our priority.

One thing we notice a lot is parents tend to get lost in the minutia of IEP issues. In this regard, we might have a parent come to us with an IEP that completely fails the child and tell us my child is in fifth grade and reads at a second-grade level (a high-priority issue for us). But, then the parent only wants to discuss how the district was late in holding an IEP meeting. While the district may have been wrong and violated the law in scheduling the IEP meeting, sometimes we feel that focusing on such things prevent the parents from achieving the bigger goals at hand because they upset all the members of the IEP team by repeatedly complaining about a minor issue.

As advocates, we refer parents to attorneys if they want to pursue a violation of their legal rights. We, on the other hand, encourage parents to focus on what they want for their child and help them to figure out how to get there. We have learned if we have too many issues to address at IEP time, nothing gets done well so we encourage parents to look at the long game with the goal of a satisfactory IEP in about a year.