PLAYING NICE IN THE SANDBOX

MANAGING DISAGREEMENTS

Managing disagreements and ineffective interactions is a core skill of professional special education advocacy. We must choose whether we want conflict or peace. Learning peace comes from getting out of the inner conflict of attack and grievance maintenance which means getting out of the ego side of the conflict.

Parents come to us with an inner war that is going on already that they are outwardly expressing. We do not...

20 Highly Effective Questions Experts Ask - Make a Difference in Your IEP

Everyone knows that Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings determine the type of support and accommodations required for the student to achieve their educational goals. At these meetings, your child’s team of professionals (educators and clinicians from school), you, and your child, work together to develop an IEP that outlines your child's educational needs, goals, and services.

Parents play a crucial role...

 ADDRESS PARENT IEP CONCERNS

USE  PARENT LETTERS OF ATTACHMENT

WHAT IS A PARENT LETTER OF ATTACHMENT?

The Parent Letter of Attachment  (PLA) is a document that most parents are pretty clueless about. They either have no idea what to do with it and so never do anything with it and there are some that just use it as a way of praising the teacher and it is never used effectively. The PLA section of the IEP is known in some states as “Parent Concerns”,...

 EDUCATIONAL INEQUITY IS THE MOST PRESSING

SOCIAL PROBLEM FACING OUR COUNTRY AND

THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE OF OUR DAY

To solve this problem one must be an expert in IEP development. The goal is to support students learning academically, emotionally, behaviorally, socially, and adaptive skills so that they will be truly prepared for postsecondary success. We must have high expectations with appropriate supports so that they are able to pursue their dreams through self-determination. We...

EDUCATION ADVOCACY SKILLS

"ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION IS OFTEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN HAVING AN ANSWER. A RIGHT QUESTION CAN LEAD TO THE RIGHT ANSWER."

Marie Lewis PhD, BCEA

The world of Special Education leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to transparency and direction.  Some of that is simply a matter of variation as the manifestation of most diagnoses are on a continuum somewhere between mild to severe. In addition there is frequently at least one or two secondary diagnoses...

Please Tell Me That You Walk on Water

This could be the entreaty of those parents who have the distinct feeling that, at the IEP table, their comments are magically heard by team members only in a foreign language. Another common perception is that all comments by parents will be met with rolling eyes, sighs, and harumphs if not another adjustment in the team member seats and a chorus of clearing throats.

While this may be an exaggeration, if you are a parent feeling this way, something...

GIFTED IEP DEVELOPMENT FOR

Professional Education Advocates

Learn effective and professional IEP development approaches.

Discover other's errors in approach and transform a student's life!

Improve YOUR Professional Education Advocacy Skills Now!

A gifted student’s identified educational needs must be met through a plan called the Gifted IEP. It is designed to provide a meaningful educational benefit. The gifted student has an educational need in one or more subject areas,...

DEFINING MEASURABLE GOAL COMPONENTS

If you have a student with an IEP you have read lots of goals, but do you have any idea about how appropriate a given goal is? Will this goal lead to any functional outcomes or is this just one more exercise in frustration? So how can I tell that the goal is a good goal for my child?

Before anything is considered as a goal, it is important to recognize what specific skill is being addressed. That specific skill is not one of the umbrella terms of reading,...

SMARTER GOALS - E

EVALUATION OF THE DATA MUST BE DEFINED AND REVIEWED BY THE TEAM WITH READJUSTMENTS TO THE IEP BASED ON THAT DATA. IF THE DATA IS NOT RELEVANT OR SPECIFIC ENOUGH THE IEP OUTCOMES WILL SUFFER AND CHANGES ARE “BEST GUESSES” VS DATA-DRIVEN.

 When determining what data will be collected and what evaluations will be done, it is the specificity of that information that allows the iep to go from an incompetent legally sufficient document to one that can have...

SMARTER GOALS – R

GOALS MUST BE RELEVANT TO CURRICULUMS: General/Core, Modified, Expanded, & Functional

• General Education - Core Curriculum - Subject centered
  • Use of State Standards or Common Core Standards²
• Modified Core Curriculum - Subject centered
  • Based on ability and priorities
  • Use of transitional IEP development
• Expanded (Functional) Core Curriculum - Problem centered

• Includes General or Modified Core Curriculum
• Based on special skills needed due to a...