Patricia S. Phelan runs The Law Office of Patricia S. Phelan - a practice dedicated exclusively to the field of special education law and advocacy.  Ms. Phelan has been practicing law for eighteen years and is an experienced litigator as well as a parent of a child with a disability.  For guidance about your child's rights under the law, please contact Ms. Phelan by email at PSPESQ@aol.com or telephone at 845-398-3273.  For more information about The Law Office of Patricia S. Phelan, go to http://www.phelanspecialedlaw.com/.

Once you have read your child's IEP, follow these simple steps to better understand the IEP. First, copy the IEP. File the original in a binder you have set aside for that purpose.

Working with the copy, highlight each heading, separating the eight categories. Then look to see if the IEP says one thing in one place and the opposite in another. Highlight any inconsistencies. Also highlight anything that seems different from your recollection of what was said at the IEP meeting. Write notes in the margins.

Other areas you might want to highlight include:

• Any reference to parent training.
• Anything to be done by the parent.

It is crucial to a child's educational success that parents are on board with what is occurring at school. Parents must also take steps outside of school to carry over what their children learn in school.

Summarize your IEP

Once you have reviewed the IEP in this manner, take out a plain piece of paper. You are going to summarize your IEP for a quick-reference guide.

• Services and Programs

Make a list of all services and programs your child will receive according to the IEP. Include how often your child will get this service (frequency). Write down how long the service will last each session (duration). Say how many children to teachers will be in your child's group (ratio). (For example: speech and language - 2 times a week x 30 minutes; 3 students: 1 therapist). This will give you a simple list of what services your child should be getting.

After school starts, you should speak with the teachers to make sure your child's services are actually taking place as directed in the IEP.

• Parent Responsibilities

Make a list of any specific tasks that you are given. These might include parent training, reviewing homework, etc.

• Child's Goals

Write a brief description of each goal your child will work on. Mark down which teacher is supposed to tell you about your child's progress toward each goal. Number these goals consistently with the numbers in the IEP so they are easy to correlate.

This brief list gives you a quick reference to what your child should be working on at school.

You can communicate from time to time with your child's teachers.

You should have an open relationship with them. Be careful, however, not to be too intrusive. Balance is important. Ask the teachers for any information they may have to help your child meet his or her goals outside of school.

Let the teachers know if you have any questions or concerns about how your child is doing. This approach will help you make sure your child continues to advance on each goal even before you receive formal progress notes.

If your child does not seem to be advancing, you should ask to meet with your child's teachers. If necessary, you can also ask for a formal IEP meeting to review the educational plan with the team.

Summarize the PLOPs

If you have not done so already, when you prepared for your child's IEP meeting, make a list of his or her Present Levels of Academic Achievement, Functional Performance and Individual Needs (PLOPs).  As you learned in an earlier Part of this Series, this is a summary of your child's academic, social, physical, and management needs (supports needed to help your child learn). 

In order to help you to record your child's PLOPs, download a PLOPs tracking form from my web sight (http://www.phelanspecialedlaw.com/).

This is a valuable tool to use not only to determine if your child's IEP is accurate, but also to hand to people working with your child to summarize your child's strengths and needs.

Determine whether your IEP is Accurate

The IEP was created at a team meeting. That meeting probably happened weeks or months before you received the document in the mail. It is important to make sure that the recommendations the team made during the IEP meeting are correctly stated in the written IEP.

Parents should take the following steps:

• Review any notes you took during the IEP meeting.
• Compare the notes with the written IEP.
• If you taped the meeting, dig out the tape, review it, and compare it to the written IEP.
• Be aware that you are allowed to tape in many states. There is nothing under either Federal or New York law that says you cannot openly tape an IEP meeting.
• Check with your school district, however, to see if they have a policy about taping.  If they do, politely ask for a copy of the policy, in writing.  Even if your school does have a policy against taping, they still must allow you to tape if their policy does not let you sufficiently participate in the IEP process.
• If you do tape, give the school district advance notice.
• After the IEP meeting, you may have wisely written a "thank you" letter politely explaining what was agreed to. Now is the time to compare your copy of that letter with the written IEP. If you did not write a letter, remember to do so next year! Always say thank you.
• Consider speaking to others who were at the meeting. Ask them what they remember. Compare their recollections to the information in the written IEP.
• Compare the PLOPs form you created with the description of the PLOPs on the IEP.

If you are completely happy with the IEP at this stage, write a short note thanking the chairperson of your meeting. It is a good practice to document successes as well as problems.

On the other hand, if you have any concerns about the written IEP, you must explain them in a letter to the school district. Your concerns might focus on whether the IEP is written correctly. You might also be concerned about the level of services recommended.

Letter to the District

Here are some guidelines for a letter, should you need to send one:

• Explain that you received the IEP.
• Thank the school district for its attention to your child's educational needs.
• State that you hope to continue to work together with the district on your child's needs.
• Explain that after reviewing the IEP, you have some concerns.
• Specify your concerns.
• Suggest a solution for these problems. You might request that the district simply correct mistakes in the written IEP. But you also might need another meeting to change the services recommended.
• Ask that this letter become part of your child's educational file.
• Address the letter to the chairperson of the meeting. If the director of special education did not chair the meeting, address it to the director, as well.
• Make plans to deliver this letter by hand to each recipient.
• Before you deliver the letter, copy it. The duplicate is your "file" copy.
• On the back of your file copy, write the day and time of delivery.
• Try to personally hand the letter to each intended recipient.
• If you must give it to someone else, make note of the name of the person who receives it and keep it for your files. (Also describe what this person looks like and what he or she is wearing.) Be sure to ask this person to give your letter to the person for whom it is intended.

The goal is for you and your school district to be able to quickly fix any concerns you have. If obstacles arise, ask yourself whether your concerns are significant to your child's special education program. If they are, you might consider consulting with a special education attorney. An attorney can effectively help you figure out your options and advocate for your child's needs.

In my next blog, I will address some organizational strategies to help you keep good records of your child's performance.

For additional resources, including helpful books and links to other web sites, I encourage you to access my web site at www.phelanspecialedlaw.com.             

  *I would like to thank Pete and Pam Wright for their assistance in editing certain portions of this blog.