Parent Mentors of Ohio

The IEP
Why is it Such a  Dreaded Meeting?

There are few meetings that can cause the emotions that an IEP meeting can. It's almost as if the mere words set some parents and some school districts up in "defensive" mode. If you understand the process and follow it, it needn't be that way. Unfortunately, these dreaded meetings usually happen only once a year and it doesn't give parents a chance to become as familiar with the process as they need to be. 

Teachers and other school staff usually have their IEP meetings at a certain time each year (either in the spring or the fall) and they tend to become so automated with the process that they really can't relate to the parents and where they (the parents) are emotionally.

It's no wonder that IEP meetings are stressful. We have two different groups, each with their own experiences that shape the way they handle these meetings. Staff, who are probably on their 102nd IEP meeting of the month, and parents, who are coming back for an IEP meeting after a year. We also have each group bringing their last meeting's tone to this meeting. If parents have had a previous meeting that was difficult or emotionally draining, they are coming to this meeting with a defensive attitude.

If staff has just finished a meeting with a family who was difficult, unable to be satisfied or uninformed, they will bring that tone to their next meeting. Although none of this is intentional, it does happen. There's not much we can do except realize that it happens and try to look at each meeting as unique and individual.

We need to realize that there is a process that needs to be followed. Each state will have the process they follow laid out in the way they have their IEP forms designed. Keep in mind that states follow the rules and regulations set forth by the Federal Government. It is safe to use the regulations from the feds as a guideline, keeping in mind that there are minor deviations state-to-state.

We will go through the process, step-by-step.

The IEP
Who Qualifies, Who Decides, and What Do They Decide?

Children who qualify for special education services under IDEA have an I.E.P. (Individual Education Plan) which is  a written statement of decisions made together by parents and school personnel regarding an individual child's special education program.

Children who qualify have to be referred for an evaluation by a teacher who suspects a disability, OR an evaluation may be requested by a parent who suspects a disability.

The school psychologist or an independent evaluator will test and provide the documentation that determines whether a child qualifies for special education or related services.

At the initial, or first IEP meeting, the school psychologist or a person who is qualified, must be there to explain the results of the evaluation to you. BEST PRACTICE would be if the school psychologist or the guidance counselor would meet with parent(s) a few days before the initial meeting and go over the results of the evaluation.

What would make my child qualify for special education or related services?

Categories of Disability under IDEA

• Autism

• Deafness

• Deaf-blindness

• Hearing impairment

• Mental retardation

• Multiple disabilities

• Orthopedic impairment

• Other health impairment

• Serious emotional disturbance

• Specific learning disability

• Speech or language impairment

• Traumatic brain injury

• Visual impairment, including blindness

If your child qualifies under one of the above categories, then within 30 days, an IEP meeting must be held. 

The IEP must be developed by the team. It is not permissible for the school to present a completed IEP for the parent's signature at the meeting. Exactly who is this team?

• Parent(s)

• Child, when appropriate

• The child's special education teacher

• A regular education teacher who will be working with the child

• A representative of the school district, other than the teacher, who is qualified to provide or supervise the provision of special education and who can commit the resources of the school district.

• Evaluator, psychologist, or a person knowledgeable about the evaluation procedures and the results of the evaluation used with the child, if a child has recently been evaluated.

• Representative from any agencies who may be responsible for paying for or providing transition services.

• Other individuals at the discretion of the parents or the school district.

Content of the IEP

The IEP will contain the following information:

• Present levels of educational performance. How is he/she currently doing in school? 

• Annual goals. This is what your child can reasonably accomplish in a year. Individual steps, or short-term objectives are used. Major milestones, often called benchmarks, are also a way of measuring progress and may be written in the IEP.

• Special education and related services to be provided, including supplementary aids and services. Communication devices, aids, changes in the existing program so it will fit your child's educational needs/level are a few related services.

• Participation with non-disabled children. This tells how much time your child spends with non-disabled children during the day. If there are times when a child is being educated separately, there must be an explanation included.

• Participation in state and district-wide assessments. If a child can participate with individual modifications or changes, it needs to be documented on the IEP. If a child cannot take these tests , there needs to be a statement stating why these tests are not appropriate and an alternate method of testing needs to be used instead.

• Dates and location. This is simply when services begin, where they will be provided and how long they will last.

• Transition service needs. Transition at age 14 is now when transition services begin. 

• Measuring progress. The IEP needs to state how a child's progress will be measured and how it will be reported to parents. It has to be reported as often as other non-disabled children's progress is.

Related Services

You hear about related services, but what are they? Does your child receive any of them? 

• Transportation

• Speech-language pathology

• Audiology services

• Psychological services

• Physical therapy

• Occupational therapy

• Recreation (also therapeutic recreation)

• Early identification and assessment of disabilities in children

• Counseling services

• Orientation and mobility services

• School health services

• Social work services in schools

• Parent counseling and training

• Assistive technology

• others as may be required to assist a child with a disability to benefit from special education

More extensive information on related services can be found at: http://www.nichcy.org/pubs/newsdig/nd16txt.htm

A Real Look at the IEP Meeting

It's time. You can't put it off any longer. It's time for the meeting. You have:

• last year's IEP

• a list of your child's strengths

• a list of areas where he/she needs help

• any documentation you may have from other evaluators, dr.'s, etc.

• a list of things you want to talk about

You arrive on time and you walk into the room with your spouse, and any other service providers or professionals who may have input into the process.

People smile and introduce themselves. The people who were listed on the invitation are all there. There are no surprise guests that the school has invited. The meeting begins with the Principal asking about your vision for your child. Of course you are prepared with your answer. You explain what you see your child doing in the future. There is discussion about how his/her academics tie into your vision and how the current course will help to make that vision a reality. 

In Ohio, the mission of education is "to prepare all students of all ages to meet, to the best of their abilities, the academic, social, cultural, civic, and employment needs of the twenty-first century by creating learning communities that emphasize the lifelong skills and knowledge necessary to continue learning, communicate clearly, solve problems, use information and technology effectively, enjoy productive employment, appreciate aesthetics, and meet their obligations as citizens in a democracy." (Ohio State Education Board, 1992)

Quite a mouthful, with all sorts of implications and room for interpretation. Parents will interpret a statement like this with much broader meaning and attach more liability to a district than the district itself will.

Take the phrase " communicate clearly" as an example. A parent might interpret this to mean that the most up-to-date, high-tech, computerized speech board is what this means. A district may feel that a picture board which indicates life's basic functions is all that is necessary. A disagreement involving the level a student is presently performing at and the level they might be able to perform at given the latest technology can evolve and each side's interpretation and vision will differ and impede progress. That is why it becomes crucial for parents to have a well defined vision for their child. If the vision is agreed upon by all, it can become a point where you can return to help define goals and objectives.

Parents have a more personal investment in their children. IEP goals can be major issues, as they well should be, in the eyes of parents. As a parent myself, the sanest (and safest) advice I can offer is, "Know which hill you want to die on."Know which hill you want to die on."

Does that statement imply that IEP meetings are battles and that you have to be prepared for one? Many parents have experiences that indicate that parents and school personnel can never and have never agreed to anything. Other parents have experiences that say just the opposite. They have developed partnerships with schools that have worked and that have benefited the student. Regardless of your experiences, my advice remains the same. There are only so many things that can be accomplished in any given amount of time. I've spent a great deal of time developing my own priorities for my life and for the lives of my children. It's not a one-shot deal. I can say that the main goal is do the best I can for them. In fact, it's been a long-running comment that I want my gravestone to say "she may not have changed the world, but she gave it her best shot."

In short, I want to do the best I can, but as events evolve and conditions change and people remain as human as they are, my best has many different faces. When my children were younger, it was difficult to concentrate on each of their IEP's (one daughter has autism, the other is visually impaired) equally. I would work harder on one child's one year, and concentrate more effort on the other's the following year. Perhaps I made them more difficult than they needed to be. I like to think that learning about the disabilities and becoming familiar with current trends was responsible for much of the complexity I experienced. In all honesty though, I believe I expected too much from them and the school. It has taken me many years to sift out the important issues from the vast array of issues that surround my children.

A good example might be my vision for Krystal, my youngest, who is blind due to an extremely early entry into this world. She was born at 23 1/2 weeks gestation, weighing a whopping one pound, two ounces, and is blind as a result of her prematurity. I want her to grow up to be independent and successful. As I spend time exploring my vision, I see a husband, children, a successful career, two vehicles in the garage, a beautiful house, pets and a place of respect in the community. That is my personal vision. The vision I take to the school is one of her crossing the street alone, with her seeing eye dog in a big city. That implies that she is capable of living alone in a big city and that the reason she is traveling is to go to her job. That is vision enough for the school and to develop IEP goals. The two cars in the garage has no place at school. I'm not even sure that it has a place in my personal vision. Why would a family of possibly one sighted individual need two cars? I believe it is a symbol of my original dream for my family. Two cars is the American way, part of the American dream for success. I'm not ready to erase one of the cars from my vision, but I'm also smart enough to keep that part of my vision out of "school" vision.

Another example is my vision for Kimberly, my soon-to-be-fifteen year old with Autism. She will be entering high school this fall. There was a time when attending a school dance was a major vision. That was when she was five and was into everything. Now my vision has changed. Kim will have enough money to support her, but it's becoming evident that Kim will need outside help to manage her affairs. Group homes have been considered, although quite briefly. It may be that a group home will be the ultimate destination, but it's not one I'm ready to place in my vision. Right now she's in a house similar to Krystal's with the pictures of husband and family much vaguer than the pictures I see in Krystal's vision. I believe my vision for Kim at her IEP meeting for entering high school will be to be able to hold a job. I think that's probably as definite as I can comfortably share, faced with a new school, new staff to get to know and new policies to learn. One of my goals will be to find an ally within the school who I can trust and who can help me understand the particular hierarchy of that building. We'll have four years to learn who and what we can share comfortably.

Hopefully, you can see where I've chosen the selective visions. Next, I've learned to prioritize goals. It may not be a well-known fact, but if you can concentrate on three-to-five important goals, it's actually simpler to pick a few goals, master them and go back and add to the IEP during the course of the year.

Now, back to the meeting. You've shared your vision. We'll look at goals, benchmarks and objectives next.

Writing Goals

Goals set the general direction for instruction and assist in determining specific courses, experiences, and skills a student will need to reach his or her vision. There is a direct relationship between the goal and the needs identified in the IEP. Goals are also descriptions of what a student can reasonably be expected to accomplish within a 12 month period with the provision of special education services. There are four critical characteristics of a well written goal: it is meaningful, measurable, able to be monitored, and useful in making decisions.

A goal must be meaningful. It should be a necessary skill for the present and for the future. The family needs to agree that it is important. Sometimes a family might not understand the importance of a certain goal. Many times I've been asked what children learn by playing. A teacher might need to explain what skills a child learns while playing in a structured environment.

It also needs to be reasonable, specifying a level of performance that the child needs to achieve. An example might be that a child needs to learn how to fill out a job application. When this task is broken down over the period of the school year, you have your short term objectives and/or benchmarks. The accomplishment of the goal also needs to be related to and significant to a behavior.

Goals should be written so they are measurable.  Learning to read can be measured by the reading level a child begins at and at the level they are expected to achieve over the course of the school year.

Goals must be able to be monitored. Based on the present level of performance, the goal needs to be monitored frequently and repeatedly over the year to ensure that the child is making progress.

Well written goal are useful in making decisions. By monitoring the goal, an IEP Team can make adjustments and appropriate changes to a child's IEP to achieve optimum success.

The IEP Team discusses formal and informal assessment data to determine annual goals. The students, parents and regular education teachers can provide the informal data.

Goals provide a system for measuring the student's progress toward long-range expectations. After the IEP Team develops measurable goals for a student, they must develop effective strategies to realize those goals, and measurable, intermediate steps (short-term objectives) or major milestones (benchmarks) that enable families, students, and educators to monitor progress. 

A good IEP will be written so someone who did not write it could use it to develop appropriate instructional plans and assess student progress. This is often called the "Stranger Test."

Social relevance provides another question, "Is this skill/behavior one that the student's peers engage in?" If the answer is "Yes" then this goal, short-term objective, or benchmark (major milestone) is probably a valid one.

Information about the student's likes, dislikes, interests, preferences, and vision for the future must be considered in writing IEP goals. This information can be provided by the parents, past teachers, or the student. Many parents routinely have their children attend their IEP meetings. Others may choose to wait until the student is old enough to understand and have input into the process.

Every decision affects the student's future options in areas such as graduation, college admission, job possibilities, and independent living. 

How Many Goals Should Be on an IEP?

The number of goals depends on the student's needs. You need to consider:

• prerequisite skills, 
• immediate needs,
• general applicability 
• information provided by parents and general education teachers

The goals need to be challenging and able to be achieved within a year. As more students are included in the general curriculum, the focus must be on selecting goals from the standards and benchmarks of the local district. A student's performance should be measured against the district standards and benchmarks. As districts develop assessments to measure their standards and benchmarks, all students need to be included. 

Areas that students need to gain competency in are:

• Academic Skills that address reading, writing, spelling, math
• Self-Help Skills that commonly address eating, dressing, bathing, shopping
• Motor Skills such as riding a bike, climbing stairs
• Social / Emotional Skills that help a student be more involved such as sharing, making friends, saying "thank you", trying new things, smiling
• Vocational / Prevocational Skills such as following directions, completing jobs, using tools, career-exploration

Benchmark or Short Term Objective?

When and how do you use them?

IDEA 1997 says: "the IEP must include a statement of measurable annual goals, including benchmarks or short-term objectives related to meeting the child's needs that result from the child's disability to enable the child to be involved in and progress in the general education curriculum, and meeting each of the child's other educational needs that result from the child's disability".

Benchmarks are statements of what content is to be learned or what skills are to be performed. They represent expectations that are developmentally appropriate for the child. They relate to progress of a goal and are general statements that represent milestones to the goal.

Short Term Objectives are measurable, intermediate steps toward a goal. They are arranged in sequence and include the conditions under which the skill is to be performed. Where benchmarks are general, short term objectives are specific statements. Conditions, behavior and criterion are stated when writing benchmarks.

Benchmarks or short-term objectives, or a combination of the two may now be used to measure a student's progress toward achieving IEP annual goals. IDEA states that "once the IEP team has developed measurable annual goals for a student, the team must develop either measurable intermediate steps (short-term objectives) or major milestones (benchmarks) that will enable parents, students and educators to monitor progress during the year".

The annual goal is for the student to be able to get to all classes independently.

An example of benchmarks for increasing independence and achieving this goal for a student would be:

• Student will get to classes and the cafeteria with the help of the aide.

• Student will be able to go to homeroom and his/her first class independently.

• Student will be able to go to homeroom, first class, the cafeteria and the first class after lunch independently.

• Student will be able to add going to the second class of the day independently.

• Student will be able to go to all classes independently by the end of the school year.

Short term objectives for the same student might be:

•  Student will locate homeroom without the help of the aide 5 out of 5 times without becoming upset or confused.

• Given a map, student will be able to show the order of classes he/she goes to 10 out of 10 times without becoming frustrated.

• Student will be able to ask other students or a teacher appropriate directions for getting to a particular class if he/she gets lost.

Advantages of Benchmarks 

• Benchmarks establish expected performance levels at different points during the IEP year.
• Benchmarks allow for regular checks of progress that coincide with the reporting periods for informing parents of their child's progress toward achieving annual goals.
• Benchmarks reflect the direction of student progress toward meeting IEP goals. 
• help link IEPs to the general education curriculum.
• facilitate increased communication with general educators through the use of a common language.
• promote collaboration among all educators. 
• provide for adjustment during the year without reconvening the IEP team.
• correlate with the IEP reporting periods for the purpose of sharing progress.
• establish a more user friendly process for team members and parents than the short term objectives IEP teams have historically used.

Some things to keep in mind about short-term objectives:

• include a number of steps in the sequence of moving a student toward each annual goal.
• can be listed as 3 or 4 steps for each reporting or evaluation period. 
• not as specific as lesson plans, but rather indicate the breakdown of intermediate goals a teacher will teach to help a student reach the annual goal.
• must be stated in behavioral terms and criteria for achieving the objective included. 
• Persons responsible for implementing specific objectives should be listed (eg: teachers, speech therapist)
• dates for beginning and ending work on each objective. 
• based on annual goals
• based on a commonly accepted sequence of skills
• stated in observable behavioral terms
• include the conditions under which student will perform and to what criteria
• include persons responsible for implementing objectives
• include dates for beginning and ending work on each objective; (option) state methods and materials to be used to reach each objective.

Reports to parents need not be lengthy or burdensome. The statement of the annual goals and short term objectives or benchmarks in the child's current IEP could serve as the base document for briefly describing the child's progress.

What IDEA says:

Appendix A to Part 300 - Notice of Interpretation describes short-term objectives as measurable intermediate steps and benchmarks as major milestones that enable parents, students, and educators to monitor a student's progress toward achieving the annual goals that are part of the IEP at intermediate times during the year. Appendix A adds: "...IEP teams may continue to develop short-term instructional objectives, that generally break the skills described in the annual goal down into discrete components. The revised statute and regulations also provide that, as an alternative, IEP teams may develop benchmarks, which can be thought of as describing the amount of progress the child is expected to make within specified segments of the year. Generally, benchmarks establish expected performance levels that allow for regular checks of progress that coincide with the reporting periods for informing parents of their child's progress toward achieving the annual goals. An IEP team may use either short-term objectives or benchmarks or a combination of the two depending on the nature of the annual goals and the needs of the child." [C.F.R. Part 300, App. A, Q. 1.]

The IEP Team needs to write benchmarks (major milestones) or short-term objectives to accompany the goal for the student. The team should write a benchmark (major milestone), and if a benchmark does not work, then a short-term objective needs to be written.

Benchmarks (major milestones) are written by stating the content to be learned or the skills to be performed. They can be general, measurable statements representing the milestone.

One way for an IEP Team to write benchmarks (major milestones) for a goal is to examine the district's standards for the general education curriculum. As the IEP Team examines the district's standards, they could identify district benchmarks appropriate as stepping stones to the goal. The IEP Team would examine the district's benchmarks to identify those skills the student needs to acquire or be able to perform to reach his or her goal.

District benchmarks would be a reference point for the team. Two or more district benchmarks may be combined, or the IEP Team may decide to divide the district benchmark into smaller steps. It is important the selected, district benchmarks assist the student in reaching his or her goals.

A second way to write benchmarks (major milestones) in the IEP is to examine the goal in relation to developmentally appropriate standards. As the developmentally appropriate standard is examined, the IEP Team determines the major milestones along the way to accomplishing the standard and identifies those as benchmarks (major milestones) for the student. As benchmarks (major milestones) are identified they need to provide information that the student is progressing toward his or her goal.

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