Disability Almanac’s Better IEP Quickstart Guide
Let’s start with the unstated key, retrospectively obvious fact of special education:
the quality of the actual (individualized) education program your disabled child[^3] receives is dependent on the quality of the teachers/team delivering that program.
Not the IEP agreement, not your meetings with them.. whatever education happens, happens because of the professional IEP team (NOTE: in future, I’ll refer to the professional IEP team as the “IEP team” – parents may be cheerleaders, but they are not the “folks on the field” in this mostly).
A Better IEP depends on a better IEP team
It isn’t the contract, it is the contractor!
If you’ve ever hired someone to remodel your bathroom, it isn’t what is in the contract that deterimines if a good job, but the person on the other side of the table.
Here are the criteria I use:
- Good Will – desire to do a good job, not about “nice”
- Competent – has the skills neeeded
- Adequate Resources – has the tools, staff, and other resources*
- NOTE – you can only affect the “Adequate Resources” part of an Individualized Education Program through the IEP Agreement!… you can’t “IEP” someone into wanting to do a good job or having the appropriate skills (almost [^4]).
I’ve put together a scorecard for parents (and for teachers and other IEP team members to appraise themselves) [^5].
The goal isn’t perfection here, just honesty. If your school district is resource-poor, an amazing IEP agreement with “lots of stuff” isn’t going to fix it… and isn’t likely to actually happen.
Better IEP Agreements
The Individualized Education Program is what is delivered in the classroom, the IEP Agreement is what you sign (or don’t sign). The IEP Agreement is, effectively, a “contract that amends the general education contract” with the USA that (should – ha!) hold in any school district in the country and is implemented by your school district.
Treat it like a contract. What it says, matters, but is more an expression of focus and to create clarity between you and the school district. It can’t cover everything.
Ironically… if you have a great IEP team, the IEP Agreement doesn’t matter (much).
… and if you have a terrible IEP team, the IEP Agreement doesn’t matter much.
As noted above, You can’t “IEP” someone into doing a good job… and the IEP Agreement (mostly) defines the resources that the school district is bringing to bear to help your child get a good education.
Too many schools focus on IDEA Compliance, too many parents focus on more services and stuff. While, formally, the IEP Agreement is a compliance contract, it is THE formal tool to help you (both parents and school) achieve appropriately ambitious educational objectives for your child (and PLEASE BE AMBITIOUS!).
Here are the attributes you should look for in a better IEP agreement:
- Correct – accurate, what the student needs to access the agreed to educational objectives
- Complete – covers everything to hand to someone else /new
- Clear – so that anyone who reads it could understand it
- Concise -..but not longer than necessary
- Correct – complies with the law in a transparent manner with clear accountability.
(Yes, Correct is there twice… once from more of a parent’s perspective, and once from a more legal compliance perspective…you can choose which is which ;) ).
(One way to help you review the IEP Agreement is to look at it as if it was going to be handed to someone completely new to “do the job”… and see if you think they could do a pretty good job with the appropriate resources based on what is written).
As a parent, you need to focus on how the IEP achieves your educational objectives for your child. It is an inherently dangerous document – BEWARE!
The IEP Agreement allows the complete reshaping of the “General Education Contract” between your child and the school district BUT, unlike a car or house contract, there are no Guardrails to protect against an educational program that …. isn’t educational.
That is up to you.
The Procedural Safeguards that we are regularly provided with… safeguard the procedures, not your child’s education. They give you tools that can help you protect your child’s education, but leave it up to you.
Better IEP Meetings
The very “short” version of a better IEP meeting has 3 elements:
- Record the Meeting – it is your right as a procedural safeguard. Use it. Do this immediately when the meeting is scheduled and remind them repeatedly up to and at the beginning of the meeting when you hit “RECORD”.
- Don’t Sign the IEP Agreement at the meeting – I actually tell the school this immediately when the meeting is scheduled. It takes some of the stress out of the meeting itself.
- Have a goal for the meeting – what do you want out of the meeting? Make sure it is covered with adequte time (create an agenda with time slots for the meeting before the meeting).
Don’t negotiate the IEP Agreement at the meeting. It is not a great use of time. There are too many people who are not involved and it gets stressful… so don’t do it. Ask questions. Do as much “Agreement negotiation work” as you can outside of the meeting, and don’t be afraid to sign the IEP “with Exceptions”… very detailed exceptions [^6].
I mostly see the purpose of IEP meetings as a way to get the IEP team to WANT to educate my child… build good will between our child, us, and them.
… and get clarity as to what we are agreeing to (that the written language matches our mutual understanding… and that (good) informal practices get captured as well as possible)… this is your tool to communicate with future IEP team members.
SIGH – I’ve had IEP meetings where it feels like the only time our school IEP team members talk to each other is at our meeting :( … (fortunately, not at the moment).. if that happens, encourage them to work together.
Better Relationships
IEP Meetings and IEP Agreements are our formal tools, they are not magic. I used to think that having a long meeting was a good thing and getting “more” services into the IEP was my priority (or even pushing hard to agree on everything).Disability Almanac’s Better IEP Quickstart Guide
I don’t think that anymore.
I try to focus as much as possible on the informal relationships with as many of the IEP team members (and other school staff) as possible to get them to WANT TO DO A GOOD JOB for my son.
I do (occassionally, much less so than I used to) escalate if I think a staff member is a problem… but this is inherently tricky.
I don’t want to be the one doing the educating (and if I did… why am I doing this when I could be homeschooling or some such???).
So, my goal is to help the team succeed… which starts with doing what I can to make them WANT TO SUCCEED.
This is one of the many areas where some special education families (and schools) use the IEP as the “default hammer” for everything.
Instead, we should try to work the system just as our general education peers do.
The Better IEP Model
My bottom line is simple, but reversed from how I started in special education.
- The quality and enthusiasm of the IEP team is the most important thing.
- Building relationships that support both of those objectives is the key to success.
- Clarity of what we want (and hopefully both want together) is what the IEP Agreements and Meetings are for.
And, just like with personal relationships, you can’t change people (probably).
Introduction
How do we work together (parents, teachers, speech and occupational therapists, district staff, and others) to define and deliver better educaction to Students with Disabilities (SWD) / Disabled Learners (DL)?
Through a Better Individualized Education Program (IEP) of course.
After sweating through 9? years (and counting) of my son’s special education in 2 school districts and 5 schools and meeting with dozens of parents both informally and through 120+ (and counting) weekly coffees (and a whole lot of research and reflection)… and a lot of frustration with the “parents training” that we is available…and, surprisingly relevantly, several decades working in Information Security and on contracts both large and small …
Ta Da.. “Better IEP Quickstart Guide”
… Ideally a couple of pages to point you (primarily parents, but I think this will help school folk as well… this isn’t some set of “secret judo techniques”!).
IEP vs. Education
A central confusion of Special Education [^1] is that parents tend to think that IEPs are a “Tool to define and deliver a good education for their disabled child”… they are, really, a means of amending the “General Education Contract” to comply with IDEA [^2].
Better IEP
Ideally, what parents and school staff should try to do together is to use the IEP to deliver a good education. But, the tension between compliance and better education underlies everything.
_ —
[^1] – “Special” is a fraught term in the adult disabiltiy community.. and with good reason.
- The things that are called “special” education, needs, etc. are basic rights that everyone has.
- Especially in school settings, “special” too often means segregated, separate, and unequal.
[^2] – the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
[^3] – I’m writing this from the perspective of a parent (it is easiest and I am one), but this document is as applicable to teachers, staff, and school district personnel. I will address professional IEP team members directly – don’t worry, it will be obvious. There are no secrets in this system – it isn’t about “beating” the other folks.
[^4] – I’ve periodically attempted to authorize “training at a conference in Hawaii” for some specific skill area that could help an IEP team member (Geshtalt Communication for my son)… this has never actually worked, but the concept is sound :) .
[^5] – IEP Team Scorecard – Bug me until I post a link here!!!!
[^6] – Ping me for my template for documenting your exceptions. FYI – our exceptions document has been as long as the IEP itself. The “teeny tiny” block that they provide on the signature page is… a place to get started. You are the only one signing the IEP (NOTE – no one on the school team actually does). So, only sign what you are comfortable with and that serves your child’s educational goals.
