Student-centered IEP’s.  Nice idea – but I don’t see it happening.

IEP documents are becoming longer, more ponderous, and less focused on what a student actually needs to be successful in school.  In my particular school district in California, I see a lot of very dedicated teachers spending more time planning and writing their IEP’s than actually planning their lessons each day.  Perhaps this is the nature of the beast, but perhaps we’ve slowly allowed the legal aspects of Individualized Education Plans to take precedent over the educational aspects.

Case in point: when I began writing IEP’s 10 years ago, they were done by hand.  With a pen.  And whiteout – lots of whiteout.  Most information was quickly and illegibly jotted down during the meeting.  Participants signed and everything was finished in thirty minutes.  Documents were 10-12 pages maximum.  Forms A and B and a couple of other capital letters for good measure.  Somebody somewhere checked the documents to see that nothing outrageous was promised or said, and life was good.

A year or two later and somebody invented web-based IEP’s and the cascade of paper began to flow.  A new form here and there – nothing big at first.  Forms 1A and 1B, Form 2 part 1, Form 2 part 2.  More boxes to check.  Write a statement rather than simply typing “N/A”.

Considerations if the student is deaf or hard of hearing: N/A.  Doesn’t apply.  My student can hear just fine – I looked up his hearing screening information, put the date of the screening and whether or not he passed in a section on a previous document, so I don’t really need to say much else – right?  Wrong.  I need to write a statement indicating that my student is neither deaf nor hard of hearing and therefore no considerations need to be made in this area at this time.

It’s just an extra sentence, but if you consider that special education teachers are expected to write additional sentences on 10-15 more pages of information than what was required just a decade ago, then you get a small idea of what I’m griping about.

Forms 3A, 3B.  Form 4 – very important form.  Goals for the year!  Form 4 can be six pages long – with loads of wasted space, especially if your student is mild/moderately disabled. A section that should be completely in tune with what the IEP team is trying to do, but is often worded so awkwardly in the name of having something that can be tangibly measured that the actual educational value is muffled.

A page for direct services and a page for supplemental services and a notes page that was originally intended as an area to jot down other things the IEP team happened to discuss.  Now the notes page must summarize (with complete sentences) in detail everything that happened in the IEP meeting, as if the previous 20+ pages didn’t do exactly that.

Our teachers were told a few years ago that administrators needed to be considered first when scheduling our IEP meetings.  Not the case manager/teacher schedules, not the student schedules, not the parent schedules – the ADMIN schedules.  Administrators are part of the team and need to be included, but teachers and parents are the ones who make the most contact with these kids each day, and need to be considered before people they may only see once or twice a year.

I do actually have some suggestions on how to improve and streamline the process, but you’ll have to wait for that.  It’s getting late…