Hi - I had this concern in one of my posts under the thread "IEP Meeting Tomorrow" bt I am starting a new thread specifically to solicit advice for this concern because the more I think about it the more bothered I am bothered by it:
My other slight concern is that the IEP says in part "consider alternate forms of assessment such as oral response, consider reducing the number of responses required, monitor the need for a scribe..." I mentioned my concern about the wording of this at the meeting. I am a bit uncomfortable that it is too vague. I am thinking I would want something more concrete because how does one measure "consider?" It feels like I can't "make" them allow DS to respond orally, all that they can be 'made' to do is "consider" that. YKIM? Of course, they were very nice about it and said (paraphasing) 'oh it's a balance - these are something we need to sort of make decisions about on the fly.... like we gave DS a test the other day we decided to see if could d the writing instead of orally and he did great but if he seemed fatigued we would step in and change the mode of output either scribe for him or let him answer orally.... they said something about needing to find the balance between "not enabling but supporting" (which kind-of made me cringe even though I do see ther point.) They asked me to "trust them." (They also apologized for our bad experience last year - last year's school is in the district but a different school. That school psych was at this meeting as well as the new school psych). In their defense, they have been doing this ("considering" and "finding the balance") this entire month - DS reports that when he gets tired the teacher/aid does scribe for him and allows him to give oral answers. So far, DS is super happy and all is well - what they are doing is going very well. So, they do seem to be finding the balance and doing a good job of that. However, the vague wording concerns me. What are people's thoughts and advice on this?
Oh and I haven't signed yet. I told them we weren't ready to sign I wanted to look over the report and think on it more. Why sign before you have to! It's always a good idea to take some to think before signing anything, imo.
