Have you ever felt dismissed, talked over, or doubted in your intervention? When I walked out of the school after my first IEP meeting, I had this awful feeling of defeat knowing that I wasn’t taken seriously, but worse, I wasn’t able to advocate for my student they way I wanted to and knew I could. Keep reading to learn about the key to advocating for your students in IEP meetings.

Today we wanted to take a little time to discuss how to interpret evaluation results, specifically how to determine whether a students standardized, norm-referenced test scores fall within the average range.

When we look at interpreting evaluation results, there are a number of things we need to consider but the first thing we absolutely must consider is whether scores are falling into an expected area or not. This requires that we go back to our statistics class in understanding the standard bell curve.

When students are struggling - it’s hard to know where to start and what the most important steps are in providing support to get them to where they need to be.

After working with hundreds of students, and evaluating thousands of students, we’ve realized that the most important thing that parents and educators can do to support struggling students actually has nothing to do with intervention or tutoring, accommodations, modifications, IEP or 504 Plans…

So often we hear from frustrated parents that they are receiving a run-around from their school. As a parent, when our child is struggling we want answers.

However, it can be complicated and sometimes it feels like you’re being told different things by different people!

In order to close the gap, we need to have appropriate goals based on individual student needs. As part of an IEP goals are set in specific areas. If a student is struggling in a specific area (e.g., language skills, motor ability, reading, writing, math, etc) they should receive goals in those specific areas.

As you know, we are obsessed with helping students reach their highest potential. In order to do this you must follow the ASSESS -> DESIGN -> IMPLEMENT framework. First, we must assess students with a combination of formal and informal assessment measures. Then we must design an appropriate plan and finally, we must implement the plan at the highest level.

One of the most challenging things about walking into an IEP meeting for both parents and educators is that there are so many things you need to be considering.

This Week:

We are so excited to share with you this printable that we have that helps us to organize IEP Services.

As a parent, one of the most important things you need to do if your child is receiving support services from the school is to make sure you are organizing all of that paperwork! Whenever you have formal documentation it can be incredibly valuable long-term for your child.

For example, it can help you qualify your child for ACT/SAT accommodations or college supports if that is the direction they want to go. Alternatively, it can help your child qualify for supports in their job or career later on.

Does this sound familiar to you…..

Parent: How was your day?

Kid: Good.

Parent: That’s great! What did you do?

Kid: Nothing.

So often parents ask us the purpose of all the testing that is going on at school. It may seem like the academic calendar is based around preparing for the tests and then preparing for the results of the tests to come in, and just anxiety all around for students and teachers. So we wanted to take a moment to talk about the different types of testing that may be going on and the purpose of each different type of testing.

After you have fought long and hard for your child's IEP - you want to make sure that the goals your child's intervention team are working on actually make sense. It's easy to fall into the trap thinking that once your child's IEP is in place everything will be taken care of, but unfortunately, more often than not - it just isn't the case. In case you missed it - we talked about 3 Reasons Your Child Isn't Understanding What She Reads.

Students with dyslexia need to be taught in the way that their brains learn best. As teachers, it is our responsibility to learn how to meet the needs of this unique and special learning style. Research tells us that people with dyslexia often have average to above-average IQ’s. 

The reason that they struggle in the school setting is not that they lack the intelligence it’s because people with dyslexia learn differently.

“Oh, she’ll catch up,” is what Jane recalled her daughter Susan’s teachers saying throughout first and second grades. Susan, now 12, was in the lowest reading group in her classroom but teachers assured Jane that Susan was very bright and would catch up shortly.

In truth, Susan wasn’t catching up. As peers began moving past her in reading, Jane became more anxious and worried.

Is your child in the gray area?

“She has trouble spelling and reading fluently, but she’s doing okay for the most part

“He’s about a year behind, but don’t worry, it will click soon…”

“She has a hard time with reading grade level text, but she is fine compared to other kids in her class who struggle so much more…”

“I understand he has a diagnosis of dyslexia, but he’s not that far behind…”

Now that school is back in session, we are getting this question quite frequently. There is a long answer (which we will begin to get into) but the short answer is that it is complicated but not impossible to get help for your struggling student from the school if you know the right questions to ask.

We wanted to walk you through the steps of getting the help you know that your child so desperately needs. Because this can be a complicated process we decided to break it down in the same way we break tasks down for our students.

Once you have intervention in place to be sure your child is closing any skill gaps:

How do you get the right support from the school?

Talking with your child's school team is of paramount importance. You want to be sure that while your child is getting the help they need privately or through school-based intervention, that they are not continuing to fall further behind in the classroom.