Individualized Education Strategy

There is something fundamentally crazy at the heart of special education.

Parents are told they have a hammer (Procedural Safeguards), a saw (Individualized Education Program Agreement), and a two-by-four (IEP Meeting)… and then they have to figure out for themselves that what they are supposed to do is to convince the school team to build a house (an actual educational program for their child).

…so, how do we build an Individualized Education Strategy?

(This is a part of my Better IEP Quickstart Guide).

No one is going to have higher expectations than you

My son’s autism is pretty.. intense. I worry whether he’ll ever be able to live on his own, financially support himself, and I kind of dread what might happen to him when my wife and I are gone.

However…

One of the early books I read during our autism journey was Ido in Autismland.. about the journey a non-verbal autistic young man. More recently, I found out about all of the college programs available for students with intellectual disabilities in the US at Think College.

There is so much I don’t know (and I think … we don’t know).

There are possibilities.

Not guarantees.

So, I work to have relentlessly high expectations.

… back to school and IEPs.

The Big Goal

Whenever I’ve been asked what I want for my kids… my somewhat snarky, but actually sincere answer is for them to “Move Out”…

.. be independent, happy adults.

But, that isn’t the job of the school.

So, what is your Big Goal for your child?

Big Goal:_______________________________

… write it down.

Do you have any other Big Life Goals for your child? (I can only manage one myself…but I’m not going to stop you!)

Additional Big Goals:

… and… can you turn it up a notch (or more)? and have even higher expecttations?

It should drive what you are expecting out of your school.

The Big School Goal

Public schools typically support three basic goals for general education students:

For disabled students, there is some extra support for getting a job (“unskilled job” training), and life skills (basic independent living). Sometimes, these job skills and living skills can become the primary content of educational programs pretty early – middle school or even elementary school in some cases.

While there are a number of “vocational training” programs for disabled students (during regular school or during post-secondary as supported by their IEP under IDEA), it is unclear how often these turn into sustained employment. Some companies simply participate in these programs for performative reasons and because the student workers are either free or their salaries are subsidized.

While these vocational options are always available, our approach is to stay on the high school diploma track as long as possible… so our Big School Goal is:

A high school diploma or as close as possible.

As we are currently going into middle school, we don’t think it is appropriate to even consider the vocational or life skills options… we have plenty of time for those later (after all, a student with substantial disabilities in the US can continue public school through age 22…).

Big School Goal:__________________________

Shoot for the Best, Plan for the Worst

I am not a natural optimist.

I worked in Computer Security for 3+ decades. I was paid to think and plan against the worst case (both disasters and actively malicious bad guys).

AFTER you’ve looked at your best case, highest most ambitious goal, flip things around at look at what your worst case (or perhaps “best worse case”) scenario.

What if my child is never going to get a high school diploma?

What if my child will never be able to live independently?

… I worry about these possibilities. But, what I try to do (emphasis on TRY), is not to become paralyzed.

If your worst case assumption comes true – what are your big goals?

Worst Case Scenario #1:___________________________________________

Alternative Big Goal #1: __________________________________________

Alternative Big School Goal #1: ___________________________________

This can be powerful. For our son as we are starting middle school, our “current year” and “current school” goals remain the same. As we see it, if a diploma and even vocational training are not vialbe options, we still have a lot of time in the school system (until age 22 thanks to IDEA) to decide to focus on vocational or life skills.

There seems to be no downside to waiting until late high school or postsecondary school to make those changes to his program.

This reinforces our confidence in an ambitious strategy now – there is no downside, and a lot of upside to staying ambitious.

… and gives us extra impetous to push back against any efforts to divert things away from a diploma and towards vocational or life skills now.

(Your mileage may vary a lot of course).

Implications

This is hard stuff. Thinking about a challenging future for your child. Wondering what will happen to them when (and it is always a when) you are no longer there.

It is tempting to just table the problem for another day… and that can be the thing you need to do sometimes.

But, it is worth taking a deep breath and look into the other implications:

• 1. Financial Planning – what can I do to make sure that my child has the best quality of life, given the worst case challenges they may face Disability Financial Secrets.
• 2. Policy Change – our systems are pretty rough and in some cases cruel for disabled adults… what can I do starting today to make those systems work better Deliberate Democracy.

Current School Goal

Things get easier when you have your higher level goals in place.

As I’ve noted above for us, whatever the long-term educational situation, we remain firmly focused on doing what needs to be done to get a high school diploma… and as we move into middle school, we’ve decided that Math and English are the priorities, which is driving everything we are doing for our son’s IEP.

Twice, we’ve made the determination that our school and class weren’t working (you can’t “IEP” someone into doing a good job). One time, this led to us moving to a new school district, and the other to changing our school.

Are you in the right place?

Are you going in the right direction?

1 Current School Goal: _________________________

What are your answers to:

• Good will
• Competence
• Adequate Resources

… can you change them where you are at?

… can you change where you are (or will be)?

Transitions

While schools think about transitions between certain grades or changing schools, it usually makes sense to look at EVERY transition. School, Grade, Teacher, Team member.

.. and how that affects your path towards your goals at every level.

When is your next (expected) change coming?

What are you doing to prepare for those changes?

.. and what about preparing for unexpected changes (staff transitions are a perpetual challenge)?!?!?

Current Grade, Class, and Other Goals

Your school is going to come up with a set of IEP goals… they may or may not match with your educational objectives (hopefully, they aren’t in conflict), but you may want to push for different priorties to match your big objectives.

We’ve been focused on formal typing skills to support better communications and de-emphasized handwriting (handwriting and cursive are commonly used in our elementary school for completing class work). This has led to several Occupational Therapy IEP goals as well as accommodations for completing work using a keyboard and not handwritten answers.

… but they were driven by OUR goal to improve classroom communication.

Current Grade Goal #1: _______________________

Current Class Goal #2: _______________________

Other Goal #3: ___________________________

… it wouldn’t be surprising if you have several of these goals, we are in the realm of tactics :).

Don’t be reactive. It is possible to work with your school team (and even the IEP) to incorporate what you need to feed your long term vision for your child.

One area that we are getting ready to face (or aren’t ready to face!) is the multiple, separate classes in our secondary schools (middle school and high school). We probably should have at least ONE goal of ours for each class.