My only advice to you is to make your IEP as SPECIFIC as possible. My husband is a special ed teacher and everyone on the child study team hates when parents are specific on their goals, accomodations, ect.
I remember when my son was youger and we attempted mainstreaming him, he had a one on one aide. You would figure that he would have this one on one aide all day but no. At lunch time, recess, and during specials such as gym, art, music, library, ect. they weren't planning on giving him an aide. (Those were to be her free period and lunch). They wanted to provide my son with his aide when it was convinient for their schedule and not really when he needed them.
These unstructured times were when my son needed her the most! The art teacher or gym teacher had no idea how to deal with a child with special needs. The lunchroom was always overstimulating for my son and they just expected him to be fine in a room with over 200 loud kids. It's not like they didn't recognize that he needed an aide. They agreed he needed one.
Anyway my advice is spell it all out as specifically as possible. If your son requires a one-on-one make sure you find out when he'll have the one-on-one, if the teacher is absent the substitute should follow my son's one-on-one's lead not the other way around, no more than X amount of students during group OT or speech, the bus ride shall not exceed X amount of minutes, ect. (I say bus ride because my son goes to another district and I don't want a 35 minute commute to become a 1 1/2 hour bus ride)
Patty
I was recently advised ( the advisors are coming out of the woodwork, and that is wonderful!!!) to base my goals off the school curriculum, which is found, with a bit of digging, on their web-page.
I also was adivsed a couple other things:
To incorporate a monthly evaluation;
To write 6, 12, 18, and 24-month goals;
PUSH FOR A TWO-YEAR IEP (?)
To also consider SEVERAL districts' curricula along with my SD's.
-- so ... any comments?
Being a special ed parent (more than once) has made me awfully cynical. I'd wonder what the SLP's agenda is in making the suggestion.Here is an EXCELLENT document on goals:
http://www.bridges4kids.org/IEP/iep.goal.bank.pdf
[/QUOTE]Although IDEA 2004 allows multi-year IEPs, I'd STRONGLY advise against it. Think of your children two years ago. Would an IEP from two years ago suit them now? I rest my case.
Here is an EXCELLENT document on goals:
http://www.bridges4kids.org/IEP/iep.goal.bank.pdf
Thanks, Tzoya!
I was a bit suspicious of this recommendation, myself ...
Bumping ... has anyone set goals of other than one year's duration?
Derocas -- thank you for some ideas of HOW we need to be explicit ... that definitely helps! Some things got said in the scores meeting that I clearly will need to spell out ... I think otherwise I would have assumed they would be implemented ...
Goals should always be based on school curriculum standards. It is illegal to make goals that are based below state academic standards. Also, I can't imagine why you would want to have a two year IEP. Generally, you should have an overall one year goal, with two incremental goals. So that means your child should be hitting their incremental goals at about every 4 months, with the overall goal being met by the end of the year. It's important to revisit all the goals annually, and make sure all interventions and accommodations are working effectively. A child's academic and behavioral needs change as they grow and mature. A two year goal makes no sense at all. You need to keep the school on a tighter rein as far as liability goes, and making sure they are showing adequate progress in achieving set goals. If you give them two years, then they always have the loophole of "He needs more time" to achieve his goals, because you've said it's okay! Not a good idea. That's why they call it an Annual IEP.