I am going for my sons PPT and I have a question? He had an in school psych eval last year but I wanted the school to perform a Functional Behavior Assesment(FBA). I believe an FBA is more detailed in that it isolates specific behaviors and finds the cause. The school is saying that he already had a pysch eval, is it within my rights to request an FBA and should it be done prior to our PPT? They are telling me that we will discuss all of this next week at our meeting, I have an advocate coming with me I'll have to ask her what she thinks. Any input would be helpful... Thanks
If this is the annual review meeting, it will start with Present Levels of Performance. What infomation do you already have about his behavior? Is that enough to gauge his current level of behavior? If not, a FBA may be necessary to understand fully his present level of performance. The purpose of an FBA, as you may already know, is to find the FUNCTION of the behavior. The function is vital to know in order to come up with an appropriate behavior plan. When you get the FBA -- before or after the meeting -- depends on what you want to do with the info. I wouldn't postpone the meeting to do the FBA. I'd have the meeting and table it if it becomes clear that the FBA information is vital in order to write the IEP for next year. You can always agree to whatever CAN be decided and then meet again once the FBA and resulting BIP are prepared. If knowing the function of the behavior is central to deciding placement for next year, then it might be important to get that done first.