Safe for Another Year!
Yesterday was Girly Girl's IEP. It went well. Whew!
An "Individual Education Plan" is a document written by a group of professionals (teachers, therapists, school psychologist, parents) that determines a special needs child's exact placement. It's time consuming to write, as you have to include stengths and weaknesses in many different areas (reading, writing, math, social, developmental, adaptive, gross motor, fine motor, etc.) and then write objectives that address the needs. Finally, the group determines the best place for the child to meet the objectives.
I was more stressed about it than I expected to be. First, I didn't realize until Tuesday that this was her formal IEP. It was set up as a meeting to discuss what adaptations Girly Girl would need to take the WASL (the state test students have to pass to graduate), and apparently they decided to go ahead and do the whole thing since the group was gathered. But they forgot to tell us (technically illegal, but not a big problem).
Usually I spend hours thinking about exactly where she is and where *I* would like her to be in a year, and I write my own goals for all the areas. They're usually very similar to what the others write, but usually we add one of two of mine in each area. Well, as she gets older, I am less knowledgable about where the other children are, and even about where Girly Girl is (Mars does homework with her--she works better for him). So I didn't do it.
It came up in conversation that I hadn't done it, and one of them added this candid comment. "You know, that first year when you guys came from the other school for the IEP meeting? It was a little intimadating when you walked in with a big stack of papers."
LOL. They were intimidated by ME?!! Just goes to show how silly we humans are. Let me assure you, as a parent (read: "unskilled, nonprofessional"), it's WAY intimidating just to walk IN to a meeting where 10 people with at least a master's degree plan to discuss your child for two or three hours.
In the past, IEP meetings have been either really easy or really stressful. In this district, all the kids are bused to the same school, so there's one school that's only K-1, another is 2-3 grade, and so on. Every two or three years, the kids move to another school, with a whole new set of staff.
The year we moved to the Grades 2-3 School was the worst (I wrote about it here). They routinely shuttle children with Down Syndrome into the self-contained (and very segregated) classroom. All the people who were working with Girly Girl said she didn't belong there, but the staff at the new school didn't believe it. They thought we were just pushy parents in denial (we are pushy parents, but we aren't in denial about her skills), and they were determined to put her in that dungeon. That's the year we had to hire an attorney and steamroll over the poor teacher who didn't want her. But a month into the new school year, everyone at Grades 2-3 School believed she was in the right place, so last year's IEP was a breeze. And we've been very happy with the treatment she's gotten there (not to mention her progress--she reads about 2.8 grade level!).
But next year she switches schools again, so I was bracing for another fight. Then in November, she was given extensive testing, and the %$&$#@ psychologist gave her a written I.Q. test (yes--a third-grader with Down Syndrome was given a written IQ test; every time I write that, I cannot believe it). So of course her IQ dropped 10 points since the one three years ago, and I was furious. When she did the first IQ test (in kindergarten), the moment they got the results, they started trying to push her into that self-contained classroom based on her IQ score, even though they'd always agreed up to that point that it wasn't appropriate for her and even though everyone, including the person who administered the test, believed it didn't truly reflect her mental capacity. It was like they forgot everything they knew about it the moment they looked at the number. So I figured this would be the biggest fight ever.
The special ed teacher came with a draft IEP. We accepted nearly all the goals and objectives as she wrote them (they were great!), had some discussion about the direction we wanted to go, and left in little over an hour.
Best of all: she'd written that the program remains the same. Girly Girl stays in a general education classroom and is pulled out two hours a day for therapy and remedial work in reading, writing and math.
But here's the kicker. The IEP is good for a year and cannot be changed without bringing the whole group together again. Nobody at Grades 4-6 School was at the meeting, so for all practical purposes, the people currently working with her have locked the new school staff in without their input.
And that's great news! It's often more effort to change an IEP than to adjust to it, so the school will probably at least try it our way. And in our experience, Girly Girl can convince them herself once they give her a chance.
An "Individual Education Plan" is a document written by a group of professionals (teachers, therapists, school psychologist, parents) that determines a special needs child's exact placement. It's time consuming to write, as you have to include stengths and weaknesses in many different areas (reading, writing, math, social, developmental, adaptive, gross motor, fine motor, etc.) and then write objectives that address the needs. Finally, the group determines the best place for the child to meet the objectives.
I was more stressed about it than I expected to be. First, I didn't realize until Tuesday that this was her formal IEP. It was set up as a meeting to discuss what adaptations Girly Girl would need to take the WASL (the state test students have to pass to graduate), and apparently they decided to go ahead and do the whole thing since the group was gathered. But they forgot to tell us (technically illegal, but not a big problem).
Usually I spend hours thinking about exactly where she is and where *I* would like her to be in a year, and I write my own goals for all the areas. They're usually very similar to what the others write, but usually we add one of two of mine in each area. Well, as she gets older, I am less knowledgable about where the other children are, and even about where Girly Girl is (Mars does homework with her--she works better for him). So I didn't do it.
It came up in conversation that I hadn't done it, and one of them added this candid comment. "You know, that first year when you guys came from the other school for the IEP meeting? It was a little intimadating when you walked in with a big stack of papers."
LOL. They were intimidated by ME?!! Just goes to show how silly we humans are. Let me assure you, as a parent (read: "unskilled, nonprofessional"), it's WAY intimidating just to walk IN to a meeting where 10 people with at least a master's degree plan to discuss your child for two or three hours.
In the past, IEP meetings have been either really easy or really stressful. In this district, all the kids are bused to the same school, so there's one school that's only K-1, another is 2-3 grade, and so on. Every two or three years, the kids move to another school, with a whole new set of staff.
The year we moved to the Grades 2-3 School was the worst (I wrote about it here). They routinely shuttle children with Down Syndrome into the self-contained (and very segregated) classroom. All the people who were working with Girly Girl said she didn't belong there, but the staff at the new school didn't believe it. They thought we were just pushy parents in denial (we are pushy parents, but we aren't in denial about her skills), and they were determined to put her in that dungeon. That's the year we had to hire an attorney and steamroll over the poor teacher who didn't want her. But a month into the new school year, everyone at Grades 2-3 School believed she was in the right place, so last year's IEP was a breeze. And we've been very happy with the treatment she's gotten there (not to mention her progress--she reads about 2.8 grade level!).
But next year she switches schools again, so I was bracing for another fight. Then in November, she was given extensive testing, and the %$&$#@ psychologist gave her a written I.Q. test (yes--a third-grader with Down Syndrome was given a written IQ test; every time I write that, I cannot believe it). So of course her IQ dropped 10 points since the one three years ago, and I was furious. When she did the first IQ test (in kindergarten), the moment they got the results, they started trying to push her into that self-contained classroom based on her IQ score, even though they'd always agreed up to that point that it wasn't appropriate for her and even though everyone, including the person who administered the test, believed it didn't truly reflect her mental capacity. It was like they forgot everything they knew about it the moment they looked at the number. So I figured this would be the biggest fight ever.
The special ed teacher came with a draft IEP. We accepted nearly all the goals and objectives as she wrote them (they were great!), had some discussion about the direction we wanted to go, and left in little over an hour.
Best of all: she'd written that the program remains the same. Girly Girl stays in a general education classroom and is pulled out two hours a day for therapy and remedial work in reading, writing and math.
But here's the kicker. The IEP is good for a year and cannot be changed without bringing the whole group together again. Nobody at Grades 4-6 School was at the meeting, so for all practical purposes, the people currently working with her have locked the new school staff in without their input.
And that's great news! It's often more effort to change an IEP than to adjust to it, so the school will probably at least try it our way. And in our experience, Girly Girl can convince them herself once they give her a chance.