I know we talk a lot here about the difficulties people have with their school districts. The real truth is that 90% of the IEP meeting I've had for my son or that I have attended to support the parents, go swimmingly. The child is properly labeled, adequate interventions are suggested and approved, the IEP Team reads, understands and appreciates any doctors reports. Also, preschool services are even better funded than school age services, so there is usually less argument about what the child needs. Every child is different, so getting the services someone else's child has is not the goal (sorry if this is self-evident). The goal is to get testing that shows your child's areas of need and to get the appropriate interventions. Legally, the school disrtrict has to give "appropriate" services, not "the best." However, it's worth keeping in mind the fact that the teachers and administrators of a school district KNOW they will eventually have to appropriately EDUCATE your child, so it is also in their best interests to prepare your child for kindergarten by finding ways to develop his skills to the best of his abilities. Most districts WANT the interventions to be appropriate and to help the child improve because otherwise THEY will have to deal with those issues for as many as 17 years in the k-21 part of school.
Hopefully, the doctor's report will include a dx (or at least an indication of the possibility of being on the autism spectrum...it's sometimes hard to pin down an EXACT dx at a young age) and recommendations for intervention, tho doctors are not always in the loope where interventions are concerned. Still, the report will be very helpful. The school district will do a psychological, an educational observation (watching how your son plays) and a speech eval at the least. There may be other formal educational tests they will give. At the meeting, the results of all of this will be brought to the table. In some states, children don't get specific labels until kindergarten. In NY (where I live), a child is known as "A Preschool Child with a Disability" However, if your child has an autism spectrum medical dx and your state DOES label at such a young age, go for "autism" as the label (this covers autism, PDD-NOS and Asperger Syndrome). It's the most accurate and will give your child protections against inappropriate discipline for issues that are manifestations of autism (this applies most as he gets older).
I applaud you for wanting to learn as much as you can about advocating for your child. The best book I know of is From Emotions to Advocacy and can be ordered from www.wrightslaw.com You are a member of your child's IEP team but so are the others. Ideally, you will ALL learn to work together to help your child reach his potential. There are bad apples out there, but for the most part the IEP members I've known over the past 13+ years have really, really wanted to help the children. We do our part when we bring as much information about our children as possible to the table.
Good luck and keep us posted.
If you post your state I'll look it all up for you and send you the links. You read it, I know you think it's written in French, but it's not that bad once you get into it. lol And then ask questions. If you have a whole month to do this, you can learn alot if you really want to. Give me your state and look stuff up for you.
I know that wrightslaw.com is probably very helpful but that is one sight I don't have any luck finding my way around in. I feel like I just go in circles and whatever I am looking for gets slightly answered but to find the whole answer, you have to buy something. IT may just be the way I am using the site, but I don't find it very user friendly. I think if you can use it, it does have tons of good info according to people who can use the site. I'll find you some stuff off your state depts site.
Wray -- I would recommend joining COPAA as a member. If you go to www.copaa.com there are parts of this advocacy site that are open to anyone, but there is a listserv that is open to JUST members. It costs non-lawyers /yr. and it's the best I EVER spent. You can post questions to the listserv and guess who are members and who sometimes answer questions directly ? Pam and Pete Wright! I am not sure if you can join if you're a teacher. You CAN join if you're a parent (I know you're not, but wanted to post that anyway).
I have a meeting with the head of early childhood special education this month. Then, my son will be evaluated (the first meeting is to determine what type of evaluation(s) he needs). Then, we will have the IEP meeting to determine placement.
I went to that site a while back and I can not join. But I don't understand. See, there's a place that special ed teachers could get TONS of questions answered by people who are VERY familiar and hands on with the law, but can't get access. Makes no sense to me.
On the other hand, I do see the reason for parents to have a place to go and ask their questions without someone always pointing out a teacher's side of things, or the school side of things.
I'm sorry....I forgot that teachers are not allowed to join, nor any school personnel. I guess they feel that advocates and parents are on one side of the table and teachers and other school personnel are on the other (which is literally true). If we were all on the listserv together, there would probably be too many debates and not enough questions simply being answered. If you look at THIS board, you and Karolysgirl are the only two school employees who post regularly. You and she are the exceptions -- teachers who want to know more and be on the parents' side. And you are the only one who doesn't also have an IEP child of her own. Maybe there are some special ed teacher listservs that have advocacy threads.
You can go to www.copaa.org and read the public areas. Also, keep trying Wrightslaw. You may have trouble searching specifics on their site but there are TONS of free and informative articles that you can come across if you browse around.
Just posted a link to www.schwablearning.org on the Parents thread. It's an article about the changes in IDEA but the whole site is excellent and worth signing up for. There's a forum for posting questions and there's lots of valuable information on that site.What part of Illinois are you in? I'm in Bloomington-Normal.