JSD24

IEP changes are based on data. If there isn't sufficient data to move a student who is getting itinerant (special ed for less than 20% of the day) support to supplemental (special ed for between 20 & 80% of the day) support, the student stays where they are. Similarly, a student getting a supplemental level of support will not be moved to full support (special ed for 80% of the day or more) if there is no data to show this is needed. (The terms you used are from PA Chapter 14 of the school code which advocates outside of PA might not know about.) Full support is given to the most severely disabled students. My district has 3 types of full support classrooms: Autistic support, Life skills support (generally for a downs syndrome diagnosis) and multi-disability support (this room tends to have nurses as these are the medically complex students). Special ed services should be increased gradually. Schools shouldn't be moving a student from under 20% of the day getting special ed services to over 80% without trying a supplemental level. A big jump might give the impression the prior IEP wasn't FAPE so a school would most likely only do this if there was a significant change to the student's needs. Struggle can be hard to measure. Struggle is a good thing too. It means the curriculum isn't something the student already knows. You want to see students grow and they grow with the appropriate level of struggle. Do you feel the homework requires too much parental assistance? If the school sees homework getting done and the parent doesn't note that it took 3 hours to get through the assignments and the parents helped a lot with it, the school assumes the student did it with minimal help. A specific example of the struggle you are seeing might be helpful with providing more suggestions to get this student more support.

IEP identification/child find should be based on multiple measures. Same with exiting from IEP services. Was the eval that showed 95th percentile a normed evaluation? Given that background knowledge will increase comprehension levels, were the topics in the assessment that was used something this student was familiar with where this was why the comprehension levels were so high? Given the student is gifted, the giftedness could be masking the inability to decode with automaticity which is the hallmark of dyslexia - or it could be due to background knowledge. It's also possible that the prior school held students to a higher level of academic rigor where there was a need for specially designed instruction. I'd want to see additional testing in case this one test score was an anomaly. Do you have any data on this sort of testing from his prior school? What tests did they use? How did he do on them? I think you were OK to make a suggestion based on the data you saw. I believe you want to see 4 or 5 data points before you can determine if the data has statistical significance. Was oral reading fluency assessed? How does he do with nonsense words?

If your child can produce average test scores without their accommodations of calculator, testing setting, math aids, etc then it might be OK to not provide the accommodations. What data does the school have that your child is an average performer without accommodations? Has he taken tests w/o these accommodations? How did he do? Are they basing this on a reeval? If he has only been tested with these accommodations and there was no reeval, the school has no data on how he will do without access to the accommodations. I'd assume he'd do worse given the lack of focus from the ADHD and the fatigue and need to conserve energy. Ask to see the data that is part of his records showing his test scores are average when he doesn't have accommodations. If the school doesn't have data, there is nothing to base removing accommodations on. If they insist, ask for an IEE at school expense so there is data on which to base removing accommodations and request accommodations remain in place until the IEE is none. I'm not sure if you can file a state complaint if the school is looking to remove accommodations w/o data to base this change.

If there is staff prejudice, I can see how the observations will be biased. They might look at the non-compliance which is more noticeable - although this would show he's regressed and might need more services.

So this was the 7th (or so) meeting grandpa attended and this is the 1st time the district is saying anything about this. IMO, it might be where your husband questions: When he attended meetings in the past, his former occupation was not mentioned as an issue. Why is this an issue now? Given that I am not in a position to attend my child's IEP meetings, I've had my dad attend in my place. He knows my child, his grandson, and attended the IEP meeting as a family member. This is what IDEA says about who can attend IEP meetings: (vi) at the discretion of the parent or the agency, other individuals who have knowledge or special expertise regarding the child, including related services personnel as appropriate Would the school be willing to schedule meetings at a time where your husband can attend? (If your FIL worked as a special ed attorney, I could see the school complaining.) I feel it is reasonable for grandparents to come to a meeting - especially if dad can't be there. I'm in PA & we have a consult like we can call with questions like this. Other states have disability rights groups or The Arc as well as Parent Centers who can help with questions like this. It might make sense to file a state complaint or it might make more sense to drop the issue depending on if real retaliation takes place - you don't want to escalate this if it might make things more difficult for your husband. Are they going to transfer your husband to a school that's 20 minutes farther from your home? Not provide comp ed for missed sessions? This would be retaliation IMO. In my area, there was a practicing special ed lawyer who had a child with an IEP. I'd be curious if the school attorney attended these meeting. It does change the tone of the meeting when legal council is present. Carolyn's reply posted as I was composing my reply. I agree with her: It might be that your husband, as a school administrator, should have been aware of the 'rule' that you should be letting the school know when a lawyer attends an IEP meeting even if they are not wearing their 'legal council' hat but their grandpa/family member hat.

Many goals are measured by staff observation. The goal in plain English is: frequency at which he will follow adult (verbal) directions. Other than staff observation, how do you measure this? You need a human to see when a direction is given and if it is followed. You could add in the amount of prompting needed for him to follow a direction. It could be broken down. If there are issues with him 'taking out your math book and turning to page XX' and a goal of 80% compliance, this could be a more concrete goal but you'd still need a person in the classroom keeping track if what happens when the class is instructed to do this. If this only happened in math, you might want to look at a math disability but if this happens with many things, you might want to see if there is a glitch in how he understands verbal commands or if he's not focusing on what the adults in the room are saying. I've seen goals where 'student will follow directions with no more than 3 prompts in 80% of opportunities observed' is what the IEP says. This would still be staff observation that gathers the data on how the student is doing with the goal. If "staff observation" is rubbing you the wrong way, how would you propose the school measure progress toward this goal?

"He didn't use the accommodations last year." This actually is data that can be used to remove accommodations. On the other hand, if they were not available last year, there would have been no way to use the accommodation. Might be good to know the accommodation he didn't get so we better understand what's going on. Was it extra time, breaks, small/quiet room for testing, large font, instructions read to the student...? Is it the type of accommodation the school provides or the student requests?

If they are advertising an opening & have no applicants, they are doing all they can to provide FAPE so they are in compliance with special ed. Audits & reviews are one way schools are found to be out of compliance with special ed. They are supposed to police themself but this doesn't tend to work. Not enough staff with the DOE for audits to find all of this. Not sure why they would change the hours. (I've also seen where audits missed things and this resulted in corrections to what was initially determined.) There could have been sessions that happened that were not noted at the time of the 1st letter.

Hit enter too soon... My other thought is this is retaliation or they don't have the staff to accommodate students during state testing so they just take the accommodations off of the IEP so they don't have to do it. (Providing accommodations are a huge PITA for school to do.) I agree with you that a student's accommodations should be consistent. If they have it for a class test, it should be the same for state testing, PSATs, SATs, ACTs... If you have data to remove an accommodation from state testing, it should be removed from other testing too.

I'm not sure if this is an option given you are in mediation. My thought is that changes to an IEP need to be based on data. I'd request what data the school had in order to remove the accommodations your child relied on. This should be an IEP team decision that was discussed at an IEP meeting that you attended where you could voice your concerns over the removal of the accommodations. From my perspective, this is a procedural violation that a state complaint should be dealing with. (You want the state DOE involved so they can make sure this isn't happening to other students in his district.) If you had posted this while you were dealing with the situation, my suggestion would have been to ask to see what data they have to remove the accommodation and to put the accommodation back on the IEP with a no meet revision given the was not a discussion point at his IEP meeting.

I think there was one IEP meeting where the school saw our perspective. My child was in a job exploration program and many of the community partners are retail stores and food service. When you have a child whose transition goal is college and a job in an office, these types of jobs don't align too well with that goal. I think that clicked at this meeting. We were offered a job shadow opportunity in the school's IT department. This was pivotal in my child's life. Prior to this, they wanted to go into graphic design. This position changed their focus and they went to school/got a degree in IT. Funny story. One assignment was to transfer videos on a disk, label them and store them for future use. They couldn't get it to work. My child figured out that the accessory holding the disk needed to be turned on where the people training them couldn't figure this out.

If there was school refusal, some will argue that it's on the parents to get their child to school - in other words, this is a parenting issues & not a school issue. On the other hand, an IEP that isn't FAPE can cause trauma to the student where that's the backstory behind the refusal. Bullying can also be a reason for school refusal and it is on the school to prevent this. I think a lot of schools unenroll a student when they are not in attendance for 10 days. I've seen this with athletes who travel to competitions and end up missing a lot of school so not just a special ed issue. Your attorney should know more of the details and be able to let you know if paying the therapist is tied into attending school. Sometimes the wording in the IEP determines what will happen and we don't see this.

I'm not sure a meeting is required if the school does an eval and the eval shows the student is not eligible/does not meet criteria to get an IEP. If you are looking for a definitive answer, you can call the consult line. https://odr-pa.org/consultline-contact/ Did the eval cover 'all areas of suspected disability'? I've seen school skip areas where the student would have qualified. If the school did an eval & the student wasn't eligible, I'm not sure if the family can get an IEE at school expense. (Another question for the consult line.)

I'm not fully understanding your question. Are you looking to keep the private school placement but waive a service in the IEP - it might be possible. Did you say no to an IEP dated 10/23 and now want to get what this IEP says your child needs? After this length of time and with no progress monitoring, baseline/present levels need to be updated so the school would likely want to evaluate before reinstating an IEP. They might be OK with using the old IEP while they do evals or they may want the student in gen ed since there is no longer an IEP identifying them as disabled.

If he needs help with organization & EF, the college's disability office can do this. It might look like meeting with someone 1X or 2X a week, going over what's due and when he plans to do it. My oldest was in the school's gifted program & did a 5th year where 3 days were at a local university where she took one class per semester. They also worked on transitional living skills needed for life on campus. The other 2 days were a job shadowing program. She learned a lot that year but it was more happenstance. She was with a classmate who had seizures. They were doing a rock wall on campus and he had a seizure while she was belaying him. She went to the ER with him & called his parents to let them know what happened. Gathered his stuff to bring with them, etc. She did everything you'd expect an adult friend to do. I was a proud mom with what happened. Many community colleges have agreements with 4-year colleges. You go to CC & get an associates. You are then automatically accepted into the same major at the 4-year college. No SATs, no HS GPA/transcript - some will even waive application fees. Since students at CC tend to live at home, it can be an easier transition to college. Cost also tends to be less and the agreement means that all credits will transfer. (4-year colleges are hurting for enrollment and this is one way they are looking to boost enrollment.) Knowing there are options can help with planning. See if he knows what accommodations he'll need at college and make sure he can advocate for them.

That's one thing that can shock parents but the school follows their evals and considers an outside eval. Outside experts in person at a meeting - same thing. They will follow what their staff says. Did they say no to an IEE at school expense? Tell them your child is bored and it going to be a behavior issue if his slow processing and ADHD aren't taken into account. The 1st rule of special ed is to do it in writing (email is OK) so you have a paper trail. I feel a 504 to accommodate the disabilities the outside eval found is a good 1st step. You can't force them to give your child an IEP & put them in the grade you want him in. An attorney & due process is the way to get them to do things.

The eligibility meeting is when you go over the eval & see if your child meets the criteria to get an IEP. My school district merges this into the IEP meeting where you write the IEP. Signature doesn't mean much unless there is a LD. See page 11: https://www.pattan.net/assets/PaTTAN/aa/aab2daae-1366-425a-85e3-5dc087cae4bd.pdf (I think it means you provided input.) You get the NOREP when you get the IEP. You can also get one when your child doesn't qualify for an IEP. PaTTAN.net has a lot of info including videos. It's not organized great but there's lots of info there. It's where the annotated eval report came from. You can look for an annotated IEP too. What you really want is an explanation of procedural safeguards. This should help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N11X6b7k-jA

Ask to see what data they have that shows the 2:1 TA is no longer needed - changes to the IEP should be based on data. Who was the LEA at the May meeting? Do they have a sheet to sign into the meeting? My state (PA) has this - very easy to look at the LEA line & see whose name is there. Just an FYI - avoidant is a behavior. Ask to see their data that shows it's not 80% of the time. (I'd hate being a teacher if I was teaching a class where everyone was oppositional or avoidant even 20% of the time. 80% seems like a very high threshold. I'd think the data would be in comparison to typical students. I know with my child, I asked them to take data on him being on-task and also look at a typical classmate for comparison.) Also, everything we do is a behavior. A child gets on the bus & sits quietly and jokes with their seatmate is a behavior. Child waits their turn & follows directions getting off the bus is a behavior. Getting from the school door to their classroom (can be done while running, walking purposefully, with side trips) it's all behaviors. On-task is as much a behavior as off-task. Same with compliant with adult instruction and oppositional. You want at AT eval - not an AAC eval. An AT eval looks to optimize what's out there to the student. (I like the WATI more than the SETT.) This can be part of a moved-up reevaluation. Doing them when the child you see IRL doesn't match the child described in the eval paperwork is a good thing. And remind them that you want an FBA so you can come up with a strategy to address the antecedent to when she elopes. An MD classification will tend to put a student in a self-contained classroom and off of a diploma track. I wouldn't want to change the box that's checked. No matter which box is checked, all areas of suspected disability should be evaluated & addressed through the IEP. I'm in a Facebook group with autistic & apraxic individuals/parents. What I'm seeing is many are not dyslexic. Rather, they are gifted - like reading at age 3 type of gifted. Do a YouTube search for the movie Spellers. Watch this with your child & see how they react to it. (My friend's son's story starts at 46:00. I'd put the link here put that delays my post as anything with a link must be approved.) I call it the hat trick: dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia. Not associated with apraxia, from what I can tell but these tend to be comorbid with ADHD. Ask for the data showing why special ed support was reduced from 120 to 90 minutes. IEP change should be data driven and not 'this is what we do with all IEPs in 3rd grade'. Type up the list and email to the team 7-10 days before you're scheduled to meet so they can be prepared. This also puts things in writing to avoid the he said/she said BS that can happen when you're discussing a bunch of things.

IMO, he needs to sign over educational guardianship to you. I do know he'll need to be 18 & an adult to sign this sort of paperwork. (You can't do it ahead of time but you can have the paperwork ready for his signature on his birthday.) A FERPA waiver might also be expected by the school. Many special ed attorneys offer a free 15 minute consult but they will likely want to set up the paperwork for this if you contact them. (I'm in PA & the age of majority for IEPs seems to be 21 here so I didn't have to deal with this.) Not sure if you can find a free template for this online. How do you know this will be his last year? He can stay in school until 21. What are his post HS graduation plans? Will he need a current evaluation to get accommodations where he plans to be post-graduation? If yes, ask the school to do an eval during the 2024-25 school year so you don't need to pay for one. Also, every child should be providing their parent with POA when they turn 18. Disability/incapacitation can happen in an instant. I remember a lawyer with 2 children had a POA set up for his disabled adult child. It was his typical adult child who ended up hospitalized from a skiing accident & he couldn't get any info from the hospital.

I have seen where schools provide ABA. Public schools need to provide FAPE - free appropriate public education. If the parent is paying and ABA is needed for the student's education to occur, the school should be providing the ABA at their expense. It would also depend on if this charter school is a public school or a private school. I'm getting the impression it's public based on the wording in your post so the school must provide FAPE. In my area, I've seen schools say no to private instructional personnel so my guess is this varies by state - I'm in PA. (Not enough detail to know 100%.)

With goals, sometimes you need to trust the school. They (hopefully) have worked with students similar to your child where they have a decent idea of how much progress to expect in the next year. It's an annual goal so it's always where the student should be a year after the annual IEP meeting. The truth is that with some skills, you expect a straight line but with other skills, the line might be somewhat level and then you get steep growth or you see exponential growth followed by a plateau. If a goal is reached, you can always meet (or sometimes this is done via email) and change the goal to something that's more robust. If they miss a goal by a mile, you might want to question if the school fully identified the issue and the instruction is something that is helping. (In reviewing evidence based remedial interventions, they never work for 100% of students. These students need a different intervention that will help them make progress.) My son had speech therapy at school & made little progress. It turned out that the school never identified his issue - he moved his tongue laterally. I was frustrated and took him to outside therapy & he was cured in 4 months - after over 4 years of school group therapy. With 1:1 therapy, the SLP had an idea what was going on by the 2nd appointment. How often you get progress reports is going to vary with where you live. I'm in PA & we get them when report cards come out so 4X a year in MS & HS and 3X a year in K-5 for my district. The other thing that varies is what the teacher writes. IMO (and I think there is case law to support this) 'progressing toward this goal' is not enough. With a reading fluency goal of 90% words correct per minute and a baseline of 70%, you want the progress report to say that the student read 76% of the words correctly - there should be a number not words saying there was progress. Also, you can put in the IEP that progress reports will come out more often for your child but it might be hard for the school to agree to this. The other thing you can ask for is parent training so you can reinforce what the school is doing at home. This can go in the IEP and it's a minor change so you can ask for this as a no meet revision to the IEP. In looking at the link in your question, it does seem that assumptions are made - like if a child passed reading in 3rd grade, they can read at a 3rd grade level. On this I say, grades are subjective and get inflated where effort gets recognized to encourage the child to persist on learning difficult concepts. This is why you look to have SMART goals - where the M is measurable. You also want a well-defined baseline. If you need to fly to Paris and you're told to go to the airport's international terminal, that's not helpful if you don't know how to get to the airport or you don't know what airport to go to. Lastly, with an older child, you want them to self-advocate. If they are being taught 2 digit division and they don't know how to do one digit division, they should let the teacher know. If they are embarrassed to speak up in class, they can let their parent know so they can tell the teacher. And the special instruction in the IEP should be done by school staff & not a classmate. You might have a group of students working together with a teacher toward a common goal or working together as a group with the teacher supervising this. I almost forgot. Will the school allow you to come in & observe? Sometimes it's easier to come & see what they are doing than to call or email what's going on. (Not all schools let parents observe - especially when it comes to special ed classes.)

To request an IEE, you need to say the school's eval wasn't complete or wasn't accurate. They are going to ask why you waited more than 2 years to say anything and want to do a new eval before paying for an IEE. (You can pay for one at any time. The school won't pay if it's been 27 months since they did an eval.) What I said when I requested an eval for my son was that the information in the school's eval report doesn't really explain the issues we're seeing with him in school. I asked for the school to do a neuropsychological evaluation because they tend to be more comprehensive than a psychoeducational eval that the school does triennially. And they agreed to do it. (I feel I got really lucky here.) It was done by someone who is contracted to do these by my local IU & it did explain my son's difficulty with writing book reports: He's dysgraphic. (I thought the school had evaluated for this and ruled it out in the past but it seems like OT's can't do this.) If low working memory is the issue, it should effect a lot more than just reading and a neuropsychologist should be able to connect the dots to say if this is the issue with math as well. The report might also offer some strategies that your child can use to improve working memory. If your child is masking their disability at school so they aren't bullied, this is using their working memory where they have less for learning academics. I'm not sure if there is an assessment for masking. Lastly, if the data shows that repetition is needed to overcome issues with working memory, you can request an IA to go over any material she is taught. It's possible that an online class would be accessible to your child with the support of an IA to reinforce what's being taught. And this would include any credit recovery classes that might be needed in the future.

No LEA = No IEP meeting. IMO, your school didn't have an annual IEP meeting so you should file a state complaint. They are admitting that there was no LEA given that something was discussed, there was agreement that it's needed and it was removed because no one at the meeting was authorized to make the personnel decision the IEP team agreed was needed. I feel they shot themself in the foot if they put in writing that the CSE director took it out because the SpEd teacher "wasn't authorized to make personnel decisions." You have the proof needed to show the state DOE there was no LEA & therefore no annual meeting.

I read back to your original post. It starts out 'We had her annual meeting...' At every IEP meeting, there is an LEA who is authorized to make decisions on what can & cannot go into the IEP. (They hold the purse strings. This should include the authority to make personnel decisions.) The LEA should have spoken up at the meeting if they didn't see the need for a 2:1. The TA was written into the draft. The LEA should have spoken up at the altar and not after your child was pronounced student & IEP. If there was no one at the meeting who is allowed to make decisions about the things going into the IEP, then you didn't have an IEP meeting back in May when your annual was due. Every IEP meeting must have an LEA as well as other attendees who are required. With no annual meeting in May, the school is out of compliance with special ed timelines. From my perspective, someone at the May meeting who could authorize the TA being 2:1 with your child needed to be at this meeting. If there was no one who could do this, you didn't have an annual meeting. I feel like the school is gaslighting you. Who was at the meeting you had in May? Required members of the IEP team are a gen ed teacher, sp ed teacher, person to explain evals (if evals were done), and an LEA. Parents are not required (they are excusing themself if they fail to show up). Parents can also excuse other required IEP team members but not the LEA.

I have a request. Unless this is a state specific question like for a special ed autism scholarship only available in your state, just post it where this got posted. I live in PA but joined the TN forum to answer a general IEP question. All of my replies with a link to a website - even if it's Lisa Lightner's website - are held up & need to be approved. I've avoided links with some replies because of this.