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Special Education is Complicated

Updated 11/28/2021

My daughter was placed with me as a newborn from foster care due to prenatal exposure. She qualified for the Early Start Program through the Regional Center in California. The Regional Center provides assistance to children and adults with developmental disabilities and at-risk infants through age three. Here is what special education parents need to know in order to successfully advocate for their child. 

Early Years

Miss Bee attended seventy-six physician, therapist, and social worker appointments during her first year. There were many challenges and foster care rules to address. Shortly before Miss Bee turned three we were referred by the Regional Center Early Start Program to our local school district for assessments. The district determines if services are to continue or not.

Educating children with disabilities requires caregivers to be informed, advocates. Parents must learn their rights, understand special education law, and use it. 

What Happens at Age 3

Age three is important. If developmental delays and medical issues have been identified by then, your child is turfed from one bureaucracy to another. Parents have little say and minimal control.

Shortly before Miss Bee turned three, the Regional Center notified me that their psychologist would conduct a final assessment. Previous reports from the Regional Center staff identified developmental delays.  Despite these reports, the psychologist noted there were minimal deficits.

This was a red flag. This report was wildly off base. I should have appealed her report because it greatly diverged from her colleague’s annual assessments.  This report was sent to the school district.

Missed Services

Global delays in almost all domains had been documented, however, Miss Bee was discharged from the Regional Center. Sending us to the school district was appropriate. Discharging us from all developmental services was not. Just because your child turns three, doesn’t mean their needs magically change.

Services such as speech therapy are often severely reduced by the district.  Instead of 1:1 twice a week for an hour, for example, young students often end up in shortened group speech therapy. The progress stops and regression begins. 

Five years after being discharged from the Regional Center, the UCLA ABC Program diagnosed Miss Bee with an intellectual disability (ID). Remaining with Regional Center and their effective service providers in addition to the school district would have benefited Miss Bee. If the school district was funded properly and continued where the Regional Center left off, children would not lose ground. Unfortunately, the system breaks down when reliance on the school district begins.

Paying for therapies the school district or health insurance will not cover is cost-prohibitive for most families. If these budgeting issues were addressed and children received what they needed in their early years, the costs for adults who become fully reliant on social services to survive would be greatly reduced. The system is backward.

Once a Referal is Made

A service provider or a caregiver can make a request to the school district for evaluation. This usually occurs right before the child turns three.  School districts are required by law to evaluate a child when a concern is identified.  

The district’s initial assessment focuses on multiple areas of functioning.  They assess the developmental level, adaptive skills, visual and auditory processing, physical abilities, and speech. There are additional assessments for other identified concerns. 

If the district determines that a child has deficits or delays, an individual educational plan (IEP) is created by a team.  Caregivers become equal members of the team. 

Initial IEP Meeting

The IEP documents the child’s present levels of performance – strengths, and weaknesses. Parent concerns are documented and addressed. Goals are created based on the needs identified in the assessments. Placement and services (speech, OT, PT are determined. Accommodations are also documented.

Caregivers – take classes or do as much research as possible during the sixty days the district has to complete the assessment and meet. They need to understand the IEP process as much as possible. Talk to parents who are already working with special education programs.

The first meeting to discuss your child is stressful and often heartbreaking. The realities of a significant disability set in. Parents are unable to separate their feelings from the process. Bringing a trusted friend to listen and take notes for you is important.

Parental Rights Regarding IEP Meetings

The caregivers(s) are equal members of the team. Your voice matters as you know your child best. Meetings must accommodate the caregiver’s availability.  Interpreters must be present if English is not the family’s first language. The child’s therapists and care providers can attend.

The parents should request, in writing, a copy of all of the assessment results before the meeting. The district is obliged to send them at least five days before the meeting.  Caregivers need time to digest the results and write down questions. The caregivers will have an equal say about goals, accommodations, and services their child will receive.

I had no idea what an IEP was or how this process worked. I naively thought that our district picked up where the Regional Center left off by providing the same services my daughter needed. The reality was far different.

Services and Funding

The Federal Government has never fully funded the States, despite what the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004) promised (to the level required). States and local districts are left with funding the difference.

As a result, school districts are seriously underfunded. Although it is illegal, some districts resort to quotas. For example, if fifteen percent of a district’s students qualify for special education, they approve IEPs for eleven percent.  This is morally reprehensible and harmful for the most vulnerable students in the country.

Qualifying for Special Education 

In order to qualify for special education services, the IEP team determines if a child  fits at least one of the following categories:
Autism
Blindness/Visual Impairment
Deafness
Emotional Disturbance
Hearing Impairment
Intellectual Disability
Multiple Disabilities
Orthopedic Impairment
Other Health Impaired
Specific Learning Disability
Speech or Language Impairment
Traumatic Brain Injury

Deceptions 

 Speech therapy was identified as a need by the initial IEP team. They informed me that speech could only be accessed by attending their segregated special education pre-school program. Miss Bee had been attending a wonderful all-day private preschool. She was with typically learning peers and she was thriving.

I was hesitant to reduce her hours in the private program to accommodate the district program. Miss Bee’s speech deficit was significant. Speech therapy was a must.  The team led me to believe the only way for Miss Bee to receive speech therapy, was for her to attend their preschool.  They misled me.

Immediate Regression

In 2006 the districts’ special education preschool was only for children with disabilities. Although the program was okay, segregation is segregation. Miss Bee had no typically developed and speaking role models during the academic part of her day. Her regression was immediate.

Despite positive progress reports from the district, the standards in the segregated classroom were far lower. The teaching was all about meeting IEP goals. 

Bad Calls

Miss Bee’s initial IEP team focused on her speech delay. The kindergarten triennial IEP team ignored more prominent global delays three years later.  Her teachers noted delays during every parent/teacher conference and report card year after year. Little was done about the delays during the annual IEP meetings.

Although “global delays” were documented in a supplemental assessment in first grade, the IEP team ignored this school psychologist’s concerns.  The school psychologist who assessed Miss Bee in fourth grade documented that there were no global delays.  This was two years after UCLA had diagnosed her intellectual disability and fetal alcohol syndrome.

I vehemently disagreed with his assessment during the meeting. I should have insisted that this statement be removed from the IEP. My lacking advocacy skills and understanding of state and federal education codes and laws, allowed the district to get away with decisions that ultimately harmed my children.

Inclusion, Inclusion, Inclusion!

Full inclusion is important for ALL children. In an inclusion classroom, special education teachers modify the curriculum for disabled students. Special education supports and therapies are brought into the classroom as much as possible. 

Once a child is placed in a segregated classroom it is difficult to return to general education. Social skills especially will be negatively impacted. I regret that I did not advocate for Miss Bee to remain in the private preschool all day.  The District could have provided speech therapy another way.

Grade Level 

Unless the caregiver recognizes that there is a problem, the District does not usually act until a child has fallen far behind. Often, students are one to two grade levels behind before intervention occurs. This is cruel.

 If a students’ reading comprehension is two grades behind in third grade and the team writes a goal is to catch up one grade within a year, the student will begin fourth grade two levels behind. This is NOT progressing. 

The goal, in the absence of a cognitive disability, must be to achieve grade level by the next annual meeting. The goal needs to state the child will be on grade level by the next IEP. If they won’t write it in the goal, request it go in the notes. If they still refuse, write it into your parent concerns section. They cannot edit anything you write. Remediation must be daily and intense. Make sure the quarterly benchmarks are written into the goal and break down the progress by quarter to reach grade level by the next annual IEP.

Reading Advocacy

Significant progress must be demonstrated with evidence by the first quarterly update report. If the quarterly report is not sent on time, ask for it. Don’t stop asking until you receive it. Ask for a copy of the assessment documentation that determined if there was progress or not. You need to see the evidence – no guessing. If your child did not meet the first benchmark after three months, call an IEP immediately. 

If what they are doing not working, insist that they change programs. Remind them that your child needs to be caught up within the year. The IEP is a legally binding document. Nothing is more important than your child’s ability to read on grade level.

Waiting years to address a student’s reading deficit causes significant harm. The student begins to feel stupid. Behavioral issues start and pretty soon you have a depressed child. The inability to read on grade level affects every aspect of your child’s education.

Self-contained, segregated classrooms increase the reading comprehension gap. Even children with ID can improve their ability to read with the right support and programs. If the ID is mild, the goal might be to reach functional literacy (6th grade). Set the bar high. De Minimis is illegal thanks to the US Supreme Court.

Mental Health Issues

Before Miss Bee began second grade, the IEP team compelled me to her placement in the segregated classroom. Despite reading specialist intervention, Miss Bee remained significantly behind her peers. 

The teacher was wonderful, however, separation from her friends was detrimental. Exclusion from general was common.  Staff would not allow her to sit with her friends at lunch. She was surrounded by lower-functioning male students all day. Miss Bee’s mental health declined.  Mental illness soon emerged.

Continuum of Special Education Services

Caregivers must understand the continuum to ensure that their child remains in the Least Restrictive Environment “to the maximum extent appropriate” (IDEA 2004).  This becomes tricky when schools have inclusion models. Students must try each level. Full inclusion was not available when my children were young.

The continuum was as follows:

A. General Education Classrooms (FULL Inclusion)
B. Individual/Small Group Setting Tutoring within the general education classroom
C. Resource Room (pull-out limited time out of the day) with a modified curriculum in a small group setting

D. Self-Contained Classroom (segregation)

D. Separate Facility or Non-Public School Placement in a school servicing disabled students
E. Home Instruction – often for children with a serious illness that prevents them from attending school
F. Institutions, Hospitals, Residential Schools

If I had children in elementary school today, I would insist on a full inclusion placement with needed services provided in that classroom and as little pull-out time as possible. Access to the same curriculum as the general education students is a must with modifications as needed. 

Exclusion

The segregated classroom was terrible for Miss Bee. There was no social studies, science, or health education curriculum taught or even existing in our district. It was all about the IEP goals. She did not participate in the grade-level projects. There was no building a Mission, creating a lunar model, and no herbivore/carnivore/omnivore diorama.

My son participated in all of these grade-level projects and my daughter, in none. She often missed grade-level assemblies because her classroom was multi-grade. The office staff often forgot to notify the special education teacher about these events. PE was not with her peers.  Convenience was their priority.  Visiting art teachers circulated to lead projects in the classrooms. They forgot the special ed classes. Miss Bee’s class did not consistently participate in the schoolwide gardening projects unless I complained loudly.  

High School

The segregated classroom in Miss Bee’s high school was horrible. I fought for her removal from that warehouse for movie-watching instead of instruction (the Hollywood kind that induced nightmares) classroom as much as possible.

After a lot of drama, Miss Bee got to choose her electives and the counselors had to make it work.   Higher-level SDC classrooms with an actual curriculum were an appropriate placement except for math. Miss Bee learned stuff in these classrooms.  She retained some of her new knowledge. I spent two and a half years fighting the IEP team constantly to keep my daughter safe and learning. Our experience in Florida, despite the pandemic, was completely different and better.

Time for Professional

I had to retain an advocate to assist with correcting a woefully inappropriate transition plan. The advocate also determined that Miss Bee should have been receiving speech and language services every year due to her low assessment results. She was receiving 30 minutes of consultation a month.

Our school in Florida was horrified about the lack of speech and language therapy. She offered language therapy. As a result of this one service and a great exceptional student program, Miss Bee gained two more grade levels of reading comprehension by the time she graduated from high school. 

What Parents Need to Know

Students with an intellectual disability learn when they receive the right educational interventions. Don’t allow anyone to set the bar low. My daughter is living proof that you can teach an older teen new tricks!

The goal for children with a typical intellect despite learning challenges must always be to reach grade level. Once a child falls behind, the team needs to catch them up within a year.

What I have learned is what special education parents need to know after navigating this system myself should earn us a degree!

 

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