Parents spend a lot of time thinking about their child’s IEP and often do not think about IEP compliance. This changes once they are not seeing results or their student reports not receiving services. Parents also want to partner with their child’s IEP team and often spend a lot of time and energy working on finding common ground. After a lot of time and effort, the school and parents have gone over the reports together, parents mostly understand them, and parents then participate in writing IEP goals to help support the student’s individual needs. Baselines and goals are a critical part of the IEP process as they are the framework for how the school works to support the student’s areas of need. Remember: needs drive assessments, assessments drive goals, and goals drive services, supports, and placement.
IEP compliance is vital for your child’s education to continue. Otherwise, the IEP may be partially or fully unimplemented, which sets your child back.
After the IEP process is complete and parents have signed the IEP document, they often wait to get progress updates. These used to be sent home quarterly. Now most schools are sending them home 2 to 3 times a year. A few schools ‘forget.’ We recommend parents find out when a child’s progress updates are due and calendar them. If parents do not receive the goal updates within a few days of that date, parents should email and ask the student’s case manager to send them.
Some parents are happy with two to three updates a year. Others would like to know more often in case the proposed interventions are not working, or the student is not responding to them. If not, the student can go 1/3 to ½ of the school year without making appropriate progress, and that is precious time lost that cannot be regained.
Parents can call an IEP team meeting at any time, and ask in advance (in writing) that the team prepare goal progress updates and bring them to the IEP team meeting.
There are some cases, like those above, where the goals may have not been adequately written to address the student’s needs. Other times, parents have well-written, strong goals and baselines, and either the school staff is not providing the service at all or is not providing the service as agreed. Perhaps the goals are not being addressed at all due to trainees filling in as subs, teacher absences, staffing shortages, etc.
These are all cases where a parent must consider whether or not there is IEP compliance. Is the district providing the appropriate staff? Is the staff following the IEP as written? If not then it is clear that there is no IEP compliance. In that case, we recommend starting with a detailed email to the child’s case manager and at least one other staff member, documenting your concerns. If this is not addressed quickly, then consider filing a complaint with the California Department of Education or calling Aspire Advocacy.
For help at your child’s next IEP meeting, more information about our special education advocacy services, or for a FREE 20-minute consultation to see if we are a good fit for you, call or email today!
As parents, we understand. As advocates, we can help.