IEP questions

[letfuller]

My husband and I have a daughter in the middle school setting currently with an IEP for Speech and social skills. To be brief, she has three objectives within her IEP. With this in mind, I have several questions as to the observation or the responsible party/parties for the progress of these objectives.

1) What are the responsibilities of the school/teachers to provide progress of IEP objectives? Are all instructors required to submit a progress report (in our daughter's case, she has 7 different instructors) Our school district does provide progress reports quarterly. However, the first quarter we received a "Making progress" comment on all three pages of objectives with no teacher signature or initials. This paper work was only filled out by one instructor. For the 2nd quarter, only one of the objectives pages was returned with another teacher's comment of "Making progress". Again, no initials and no signature. Is this normal feedback on objectives? Are there any violations for the lack of information?

2) Ultimately, who is the responsible party for over-seeing objectives for an IEP student in an educational program without a pull out class? Are the classroom teachers the responsible parties, the Special Ed instructor, the school principal or Special ed Director?

3) If a team member has been excused from the IEP meeting by the special ed instructor and parents, is it legal for said individual to later sign the final copy of the IEP? In addition, no written input about developing the IEP was provided to us by this individual prior to the meeting.

If there is negligence, how should we proceed? We are so at a loss of what to do.

Thanks for listening!

 

[jmartinez1895]

Have you done a search to see if your local school board has a website? Most of the answers to your question are on my local boards web site, but hat will do you no good. You might also want to call the board ( not the school) and ask them. They will ( or should at least) know how things work in your district.

 

[bookwormde]

#1 The Issue is probably in how the IEP is structured. If there is not specific structure to the goals and specific resource allocation to accomplish them then vague comments are all that you will usually get, since no one really understands or is responsible for this area of IEP implementation. Typically the SLP has primary charge in this area and will be the IEP team member who will coordinate and write progress reports about this. If you do not have a copy I would recommend getting a copy of "How Well Does Your IEP Measure Up!" by Dianne Twachtman-Cullen and Jennifer Twachtman-Reilly.
#2 for overview it is the IEP team. In our area the Educational diagnostician has general school overview.
#3 No individual may excuse a required member or a member who has input on areas being discussed by in an IEP meeting, only the team as a whole may do this, and this member must be supplied an opportunity to give written input and receive a copy of the draft modifications to review and offer amendments and comments to the team.
The easiest thing to do is to just call another IEP meeting and request the missing party to attend "so that a full understating of your child's needs can be obtained and appropriate support, accommodations and modifications can be created". After the 3rd or 4th time you call a follow up meeting they will get the idea that it is important to have input from everyone on the team.

Bookwormde

 

[deerhart]

My husband and I have a daughter in the middle school setting currently with an IEP for Speech and social skills. To be brief, she has three objectives within her IEP. With this in mind, I have several questions as to the observation or the responsible party/parties for the progress of these objectives.

1) What are the responsibilities of the school/teachers to provide progress of IEP objectives? Are all instructors required to submit a progress report (in our daughter's case, she has 7 different instructors) Our school district does provide progress reports quarterly. However, the first quarter we received a "Making progress" comment on all three pages of objectives with no teacher signature or initials. This paper work was only filled out by one instructor. For the 2nd quarter, only one of the objectives pages was returned with another teacher's comment of "Making progress". Again, no initials and no signature. Is this normal feedback on objectives? Are there any violations for the lack of information?

2) Ultimately, who is the responsible party for over-seeing objectives for an IEP student in an educational program without a pull out class? Are the classroom teachers the responsible parties, the Special Ed instructor, the school principal or Special ed Director?

3) If a team member has been excused from the IEP meeting by the special ed instructor and parents, is it legal for said individual to later sign the final copy of the IEP? In addition, no written input about developing the IEP was provided to us by this individual prior to the meeting.

If there is negligence, how should we proceed? We are so at a loss of what to do.

Thanks for listening!

like mentioned above this is going to be very IEP specific. Like for my son's his objectives include ways to measure the goals (like 4 out 5 times on scoring days etc..) So when we get our progress towards goals, we are told either the percentage or amount that he had for that goal at the time (so if he made 3 out of 5 that is reported or sometimes its reported as he hit the goal 70% of the time).

We also have steps through each goal and he automatically moves to the next step if the previous step has been achieved.

as for who is responsible, that is pretty much up to the school. With my son, his SLP does all his speech goals and the rest of the goals the reporting on the objectives comes from his SPED teacher using feedback from the regular teachers and the SPED teachers observations and notes. If I were you, I would have it clearly outlined in the IEP who is responsible for the reporting.

I don't see any legal reason why it wouldn't be acceptable for a person not at the meeting to later sign the IEP. My husband actually signs my son's iep though he is not always at the meetings (we both sign the final copy). The school counselor also signs the IEP though she is not always there and rarely gives any input. We look at it as more that this is a person who needs to know what is in the IEP and signs off on it as saying she has seen and reviewed it (sort of like the principal). It is a mechanism that can actually make the school more responsible because know that person cannot say they did not know about the IEP and what was in it!