Dana Marie (00:01.487)

Hi everybody and welcome back to the Empowered to Advocate podcast. This is Dana Marie. I am joined here with Michelle and we have a really important episode for you today. As we near the end of the school year, we're realizing that this conversation has come up over and over many times with different parents and caregivers, with different school teams.

And so we wanted to make sure that we covered it before the end of the year is over. We think it's a nice reminder for folks as well, as we move towards the summer extended school year and then obviously the new school year and the fall. So we're calling today's episode roadmap to developing an IEP. So I'm going to throw it over to Michelle. What do we mean by that?

Michelle She Her (00:49.634)

So I think that this is also a really great episode for educators. Even some special educators, there seems to be this misunderstanding about where an IEP starts from and where a team should actually be developing different parts of the IEP. Obviously there's definitely overlaps. It's not like a complete linear progression.

But especially over the years, if it's an annual, if it's like a third reval, if your child has been on an IEP since preschool and now they're heading into high school, there can get to be parts of an IEP that get like, people will just go right to the services or we'll just go right to the placements or a placement is kind of assumed, but a placement is actually the last part of the determination of the IEP process when we are developing.

and we won't really dig into this today, but if your child is going to be 14 during the develop, the IEP year, the actual first part of the IEP process should be the development of the transition planning form. And that is also oftentimes done after the fact. And I think in middle school, it's not terrible for it to have been kind of done maybe.

with the special ed teacher or another trusted adult and before or after the team meeting and then add it into the IEP because they're just getting used to it. But it definitely shouldn't be something that's like, Oh no, I forgot the transition planning form, but anyways, that's for another episode. Cause then we, I mean, it could be four episodes, obviously, but when we're thinking about developing an IEP, something that is also often forgotten about for many folks is that.

IEPs are developed for students who have disabilities. So you have a student who has a disability who requires specialized instruction and or specialized services in order to access the general curriculum. Okay. So everything starts with the disability. What is the child's disability? What is the student, the learner's disability or disabilities?

How is that impacting them to, what is it like, how, what are the barriers that disability is creating to accessing school? And then how are we building this plan to support, to bring those barriers down, to remove those barriers and also think about the students' strengths to help them overcome all of that so that they are successful in school. So.

Dana Marie (03:42.511)

So when we identify an eligibility meeting, a disability, and like Michelle said, whether or not the student requires specialized instruction, because also remember you could have a disability and not require specialized instruction, and in that case that student would not be eligible. But when we do determine that a student is eligible for special education, they have a disability, we understand what the specialized instruction is.

As a school team, as an outside team, as a full team, we should not be jumping directly to what services they need, what placement would be most appropriate for them. Like Michelle said, we really need to start with that disability and what the disability-related needs are. There is a part in the IEP, in the PLEP, where you actually write what the disability-related needs are because the student has this disability and has these needs. These are the things that need to be addressed in the IEP. From there, we're gonna identify how we're addressing them, right? What is the specialized instruction that they need to address it? Do they need instruction in decoding and encoding because they have a specific learning disability in reading and gaps in those areas? That is a specialized instruction, specialized service for that student based on their disability. From there, we can then move on to what are the sort of related accommodations that are also necessary for the student to make progress, right? So what are the accommodations? What are the specialized pieces of instruction that are solely based on the disability that the student has? From there is when we can actually build in some goals for the students. for this particular student over the course of a year that they can be working on. And so Michelle, I guess my question is, how do we take what we know about the disability, the disability-related needs, the specialized instruction that that student needs to build appropriate goals for them?

Michelle She Her (05:56.258)

Well, it all comes back to data, Dana-Marie, and having an understanding of what the grade level standards are, what is being taught. If it's a sixth grade student, what is being taught in that sixth grade ELA class? What are the expectations for the end of sixth grade in ELA, the end of sixth grade in math, the end of sixth grade science, social studies, whatever? Pretty much we typically try to focus on ELA and math because being able to... progress in those core areas is then going to help students progress in social studies, science, exploratory subjects like art, music, things like that, right? So if your child can read, write, do arithmetic, arithmetic, it's now 1822 people, but if they can do math, then they're more likely to be able to make progress and access their other content to areas.

Michelle She Her (06:53.302)

the goal areas, we need to know what students are supposed to learn in the grade that they are in. If the IEP runs from January to January, you're thinking about typically two goal grade levels. So that's the first part. Then you're looking at the data that shows where the learner currently is. What is their current performance level? And we don't mean they're doing okay. The student can't read.

That's not helpful data, right? We wanna know is the student able to read words like in Massachusetts, many districts, and I think actually across the country, many districts utilize the Dibbles, which helps identify reading fluency, which is oftentimes a key indicator if there is some sort of, like if a student is at risk, if a student has a disability, it can be a big screener for referrals for testing, and to help determine if an intervention is required. So, looking at how many words per minute a student can read, and then what they should be reading by the state standards, and then addressing a goal they'll increase their oral reading fluency by 10 words per quarter. We want something that's achievable. We want something that's challenging, but that is achievable over a year. And what are the big rocks? Now, if a child is struggling because of it, we'll just stick with the SLD and reading example here, is struggling to access the grade level content because they're SLD and reading, but it's not oral reading fluency or decoding, it might be reading comprehension, it might be a disability and reading comprehension. A goal area for oral reading fluency isn't appropriate because they're reading at grade level, they're decoding at grade level, right? So a more appropriate goal would be, right now they're able to answer questions

who, what, where, when, why questions about a instructional-level text read independently with 50% accuracy. An achievable but challenging goal might be at the end of the year, they're able to read and answer those questions of an instructional-level text with 75% accuracy. Right? So we're constantly looking at data. If we don't have data to inform our decisions,

where we want a learner to go. So we know the student's disability. We know the student's strengths. We know what the expectations are for that grade level. Then we need to know where is the student currently in relation to those standards so we can set goals for them to start to progress towards meeting those grade level standards.

Now, how do we get them to reach those grade level standards? How do we help them achieve those goals?

Dana Marie (09:54.603)

And you may notice that we are already, I think, eight or nine minutes into this conversation. It's the first time we're bringing up services and that's purposeful. That's really purposeful. What we often see is that school teams, and we understand why this happens, but they'll say things like, well, we have this particular pullout service. Does this child fit in there? We have this particular intervention. Does this child fit in that intervention?

We have this class, this specialized instruction class. Does the child fit in there? And limited resources, many other reasons are at play there in that conversation, but it doesn't follow the roadmap of how we actually get to identify services and placement for a child. So like Michelle said, we have the disability, the disability related needs.

the goals based on the student's strengths, where they are in relation to standards, et cetera, now we're ready to ask the question, where, when, how, and why can we work on that goal, right? So what is the most appropriate to work on that goal? Is that goal something that needs to be worked on with a, well, stick with the SLD reading, a reading specialist?

outside of the classroom once a week or twice a week or three times a week? Is it a specific intervention? Right? So let's give another perfect example. Let's stick with this reading example. If we've identified that the reading disability is in comprehension, reading comprehension, we should not be putting on the IEP that the student is being pulled out three times a week for Wilson reading that works on more specifically decoding and encoding. This child presumably has these literacy skills, these early literacy skills, these decoding and encoding skills. They need a different intervention to meet their needs, disability needs, their goal needs, et cetera. So this would be the appropriate time to start thinking about who the best person, who the best specialist is to help support this goal and where is the best setting to do that for how long? And like Michelle said, all of that based in the data. What is it actually showing us about what this child needs in this moment? Of course it can change in a year from now. Of course it can be adapted at the next annual review or reevaluation. But in this moment, what is the data showing us about what service this child needs or services? Which...

brings us to, which is so interesting. And we talked briefly about this in the episode on least restrictive environment, but I think it's important to mention again here. At the beginning, Michelle already sort of brought up placement by saying that it's not where we should start, right, we shouldn't just assume a child's placement and then go from there. we should go through all of these other pieces of the conversation, the development of the IEP. And then the last thing that we should actually talk about is the placement, right? So I'm gonna throw it back to Michelle, just kind of circle this out a little bit.

Michelle She Her (13:31.842)

Yeah, so like we've talked about before, that we always are looking at trying to keep a student, a learner, least restrictive. That means we wanna keep a student as much as possible in an environment with their other grade level peers, in their neighborhood school, learning amongst their friends that they might live next door to or down the street from, as much as possible. Obviously, depending on the need of the student and what their unique needs are.

Other settings might be more appropriate than a full inclusion setting. So just for a quick review, we have full inclusion, partial inclusion, substantially separate, and then we start looking at a district. And then residential would be the most restrictive environment for a learner. Our goal is really to try to keep a student at full inclusion or partial inclusion as much as possible with them being able to make progress.

How do we determine that? When we look at the student's disability, what their needs are, how much intervention they need in order to reach their goal. So the intervention being the service that's being provided by a service provider, speech, OT, special ed teacher, et cetera. We're looking at how much service a student needs to make progress and where that is gonna take place.

So in Massachusetts, an IEP grid looks like there's three parts. There's an A part, a B part, and a C part. A part means consultation. That's where the service providers are talking to one another and or speaking with parents. Or even the student. It could be a consult with the student. From there, we are looking at grid B, which is when services take place within the classroom the general ed classroom. So you would have a classroom with students with IEPs and without IEPs learning. And then the specialized instruction for ELA or math or even speech or OT could be taking place in that general education classroom. Then we have the C-Grid. This is pullout services. We wanna try to limit the amount of time that a student is being pulled out of the general education classroom, because when they are pulled from the classroom, they are then missing the instruction that's then happening in the classroom. Right? So that's why sometimes it's like, well, I want my child to have speech every day. But every time they're pulled from the classroom for speech, they could be missing core instruction, which is then going to have them fall behind in other areas. That doesn't mean that the two times a week is a bad thing. So it's like finding the balance of it's also easier to find opportunities in the day when it's less likely to impact their access to content, right? So we're looking at that C grid. That is when a student needs pullout. The pullout services have to be justified. Why? What is it for the student's disability that's impacting them for what they need? Why do they need outside of the generally classroom? So this might be for a student with a hearing impairment to learn reading in a one-on-one setting to really minimize the auditory distractions that could be happening in a larger classroom or even in a small group. Because if you have a hearing impairment or deaf, like you need a super quiet learning environment where you can be super focused to really be utilizing if you do have hearing that hearing to help you hear the sounds or to feel the sounds to help you learn to read. That's one example. Or students with ADHD might need student support or academic support outside of the larger group to, again, minimize distractions. A student might need counseling one-on-one or in a small group to maximize confidentiality of topics that might come up during, or role plays or social stories or peer interactions that might come up that is better served in a smaller group than in the larger setting. You might have a student who requires a, based on their disability, based on their goal areas, based on trying things in a more, a less restrictive environment, they might really need the benefits and all of the different scaffolds that are built into a substantially separate therapeutic setting where there's like a counselor and like the team is working within that small group.

But that's determined once we do all the other pieces. Then we look at this student needs this amount of time in the C grid. This is what is then determining what percentage of the amount of time a student is out of the general ed classroom is what then determines the placement.

Dana Marie (18:39.959)

And I think what's really important, one thing that we do a lot of is we sit with parents and caregivers and we go over IEPs, we go over IEPs that have maybe been in place for a while or draft IEPs from a new meeting. And one thing we say to them and to one another is there should be just a really super clear connection. You should be able to look at the services in the service delivery grid and then look at the goal areas and then go back and look at PLEP-A to the disability related needs and what the child's disability is, and there should be a really clear connection between all of those things. If you go back and you look at PLEP-A, the disability and the disability related needs, and it says that the student has a disability in the area of reading comprehension, and then you go and look at the goals, and there's no reading comprehension goal, that's probably a pretty good indication that more work needs to be done to align the IEP so that it's actually meeting this child's needs. If the child has needs with emotional regulation that are related to their disability, or if they have multiple disabilities, and you go and you look at the accommodations, and you look at the goals, and you can't see where the support is coming from for their emotional regulation, whether it's a pull out service like Michelle said, or accommodations built into the IEP. So you should be able to look at all of the different parts of your child's IEP or any child's IEP and see how decisions were made, how services were implemented, how placements were determined, how goals were developed based on the information that you started with.

Michelle She Her (20:33.802)

Yeah. It should be super aligned. It should be super clear, and it should really be focusing on the big rocks, the big rocks that are going to make the biggest difference for the learner in accessing the grade level content. And more service, more pullout isn't necessarily always better. Sometimes we think more is better, right? Sometimes it's not. Sometimes having much more targeted, shorter pieces of intervention are more beneficial for the particular student's needs. Sometimes, you know. it can be easy to get into a, well, the schedule looks like this, or 30 minutes become the norm and 30 minutes for a therapy tend to, it is research-based and it seems to be best practice for students to receive that chunk of time. But also sometimes if you are a kindergartner with high support need autism, right, and you are just learning to sit for five minutes.

For instruction, a 30-minute session of speech may not be the best utilization of speech, right? So this is where we might see a team get really creative with four 10-minute sessions of speech. So they're getting highly targeted intervention across the week. So it's more sessions, but much more intensive amounts of time that then can be carried over through consult with the SLP and the special ed teacher and the paraprofessionals in the classroom to then carry over the skills that are learned so that they're practicing those skills and generalizing those skills. Because this is also really important. We want learners to be generalizing what they're learning outside of their therapies. If a student is learning how to form their letters in a more efficient way in occupational therapy, but they're doing great and their data is showing that they're doing that amazingly in their one-on-one or small group OT sessions, but then they go to class and they're not demonstrating it in class. It's like, okay, so how now can we help the student then generalize those learned skills from the therapies into their larger classroom?

And we will leave you today with our reminder that you are probably, if you've listened to us a lot, probably sick of us actually hearing this reminder, but a reminder that if you are meeting with your child's school team just once this year, or you've only met with your child's school team, it hasn't been needed or necessary to meet more than once for the annual review meeting, the best way as a parent or caregiver that you can determine what is working and not working for your child is through the detailed progress reports that your child's school sends at least a few times a year that tell you what the progress is towards their goal areas or their goal if they only have one. So making sure you're getting those progress reports, making sure you're understanding what they're saying, making sure you're reaching out to the school team if you don't feel like those progress reports are really...giving you enough information or data about where your child is progressing towards their goals. So that's a good way kind of built in throughout the school year that you can take a look at the IEP and the process and ensure that it is still appropriate and working for your child. If you found this conversation helpful, or if this is just so many things to think about, we are both, I would say, visual learners, and we appreciate other visual

And so we have something to share with you as well that is more of a visual that shows this roadmap. So take a look at that if this is a lot of information and you wanna be able to see it all right in front of you, make sure that you take a look at our visual representation of this conversation as well. And as always, this is something that has come up in conversations and meetings this school year and many of our topics that we talk about come from you. questions that you ask us, conversations that we've had from you. So if you have any other questions or things that you want to make sure we cover here on the podcast, as we trend towards the end of the school year, please reach out, drop us a message, drop us a note, drop us an email and let us know what are the topics that you're interested in hearing about. And with that until next time, thank you so much for joining us today. And we will see you soon.

Michelle She Her (25:24.002)

Thanks everybody