IEP


 * IEP**: Individual Education Plan: is a written plan developed by the parents and the schools special education team that specifies the students academic goals and the method to obtain these goals.

Below is a video detailing some items parents and instructors must deal with while in an IEP meeting. media type="youtube" key="qUNKzYeZRLE" height="344" width="425" Things to consider: > > Example: How children with speech disorders are identified in the public school systems. > The first step of identifying students is a referral from the main classroom teacher who checks off a number of observations about a child such as the student doesn’t use vocabulary well, doesn’t use all sounds correctly or fails to participate when asked. Sometimes a teacher may make the wrong observation and referral based on misunderstanding children’s developmental stages of speech. For example, a teacher may say that one of his or her kindergarteners replaces [//r//] with the [//w//] sound. However, a speech therapist would be quick to correct the teacher by pointing out that the [//r//] sound is not natural until a child enters second grade. > Once the referral is passed, a Student Study Team, or SST, is put together to discuss the student to see if he or she needs to be assessed by a speech therapist. According to my mother, Susan Woods, a speech therapist in San Diego, this team consists of the classroom teacher, parents, the resource teacher and anyone else who works with the student. If the student is deemed not to have major dysfunctional symptoms, the SST will recommend tactics and classroom interventions the teacher may use in the classroom. On the other hand, if the teacher has already tried many different approaches, such as rephrasing questions or initiating new learning approaches for the student, but still receives the same response from the student, the SST will agree that the student should be evaluated. The therapist, based on the symptoms, is in charge of the evaluation process and must send home a Permission to Assess form to receive permission and approval from the parents. The parents do have the right to prohibit allow their child from receiving assessment, but their refusal would result in the child not receiving any help from the speech and language school program (Woods) > Within 60 days after permission is given, the speech therapist must observe the student in the classroom, assess their language disorder and write a report that will be given to parents, teacher and anyone else working with the student (Woods). The next step of this process is the IEP, or an Individualized Education Program, meeting which is an integral part of any special educator’s work. An IEP team consists of the student, if appropriate, the consulting teacher, resource-room teacher, school psychologist, parents, school system representative and a speech and language specialist. Goals and benchmarks are set by this team for the student to reach at the end of four months (first trimester), second trimester and year. > To give this process context, take the example of a student named Sally who has an articulation disorder. Both the teacher and the speech therapist have observed the Sally produces a /θ/ rather than a /s/. This [//th//]-lisp is a result from physically putting the tongue in the wrong place: the inter-dental place of articulation, rather than the alveolar area of the mouth (Bergmann). The IEP team would then lay out the goals and benchmarks of simply producing ///s/// in isolation within the first four month trimester. By the second trimester, Sally should be able to use /s/ in sentences, and by the first year, she should be able to use ///s/// correctly in conversations. Every time Sally meets with her speech therapist, data is collected to see if she is making progress towards her goals by giving her 25 trials to produce the ///s/// sound. This allows the speech therapist to either slow down or speed up the lesson plans. The level of master is given when 85 percent of trials are correct (Woods). > By law, a second IEP, two years after the initial IEP, must be set in order to evaluate the student’s progress. “If the original goal is met, the IEP team will hold a meeting early to discuss how the goals were met and whether or not new goals must be initiated” (Woods). Using Sally as the exceptional learner again, say she met all of her goals by the end of the second trimester, not the end of the year, but she still had issues with other disorders. A second IEP meeting would be held and set revised goals for Sally. However, the team would still need to meet upon the anniversary date of the initial IEP to evaluate how the student is doing. Once a student stays in the program for three years, the speech therapist must send home another parent approval and the student must go through testing again to qualify. By the end of this stage, the therapist would be conversing with the classroom teacher to see how he or she is doing with language in the classroom. To be released from the speech program at an elementary school, the student must pass the goals and tests with 85 percent and have an IEP clear him or her of any other disorder diagnosis (Woods). > Goals may vary as different student may have other physical or cognitive disabilities. Woods stated that with working with Down Syndrome students the goals change, “The goal is not to speak full and complete sentences with me, but to label twenty new words and when given stimuli, use those words expressively.” A main goal for Articulation and Expressive Language disorder students is to start by answering “//What?”// and “//Where?”// questions for a comprehension level due to the fact that other questions are at a higher level. > As more classrooms begin to integrate disabled children into mainstream classes, teachers and parents alike must anticipate working with and observing students that may have physical speech or cognitive disorders. The consequences of not diagnosing, evaluating, and giving therapy to an expressive language disorder child not only hurts the child’s chances to enter into society at a functional level, but in turn may hurt the child’s family, academic personnel and peers because these people do not receive interaction from the child. By having teachers understand and diagnose expressive language disorders early in a child’s life, students will be able to partake in the school’s speech programs, which set them on the path to becoming functional members of society and hopefully helps the student to conquer the disorder. > (Woods, Susan. Personal interview) > > Great video for parents going to a IEP meeting: > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYeMBtmA5oc Sample IEP goal sheet: http://www.hishelpinschool.com/images/rubricgoalhappy.jpg
 * the child’s strengths,
 * the parents’ ideas for enhancing their child’s education,
 * the results of recent evaluations or reevaluations, and
 * how the child has done on state and district-wide tests.