Cheryl M. Richardson is a special education teacher and the parent of a special eduaction student.
Can you imagine yourself riding down a long road towards your destination, only to be stopped by a barrier? Welcome to the road our NYS Education Department has suggested all parents and educators take.
The New York State Education Department has proposed that IEP meetings be conducted without the participation of the special and general education teachers or members of the IEP team, – the social worker, psychologist, and related service providers. This change, if voted on, would mean that a child’s IEP could be changed without the knowledge of the participants stated previously. As a special education teacher, as well as, a parent of a child with an IEP, this is an outrage!
As a teacher, it is my professional responsibility to decide on the goals and strategies that my students can reach with the needed adaptations. As a parent, I would want everyone who is involved in my child’s education to be sitting at the table. It is the goal of the teacher to know and implement curriculum for each student in their classroom. How can they successfully do this if they are excluded from the IEP meeting? How can this happen if everyone who is knowledgeable about the child’s needs is not included? How can a child succeed towards decertification, if their related services providers are unable to express if their students have progressed or not progressed over the years? Would you rely on our state education department to make decisions for your child? New York State – don’t allow us to ride on a bumpy road, support our New York City special education students and remove those barriers!
3 Comments:
1 JohnL
· Jun 18, 2006 at 7:19 am
Ms. Richardson, I share your alarm. Please point to the proposed policy document. I’d like to read it.
2 Kombiz
· Jun 20, 2006 at 2:37 pm
John,
I believe the text is located at NYSED.gov.
3 JohnL
· Jun 29, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Thanks for the reply and the link. On the NYSED site I found a document with a bullet to which I think you must be referring. It reads:
Is that the same as the concern you raised? Is it a general exclusion from the IEP meeting?
I wonder if the proposed change is in line with the IDEA “tb-iep-meetings.pdf” that I discussed over on Teach Effectively. IDEA has provisions for parents and schools to agree mutually that someone not have to attend the entire meeting. Could that be it?
If it’s something outside those U.S. ED rules, I suspect someone will need to ask for clarification and, if the clarification is inadequate, pursue legal correction.
It’s good to have folks alert to these potential problems.