Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy 2E IEP Educational Goals?

Greetings everyone. After a 2 year fight with our 2nd grade son's school we have finally had an eligibility finding in our favor that classifies him under Specific Learning Disability. He is on the autistic spectrum and his evalutations clearly showed a learning disability with reading comprehension scores on the WJIII in the 28th to 34th percentile; he has a FSIQ of 133. Subtest score spead on the WISC IV greater than 1.5 standard deviation also bear out comprehension issues. Our problem now is the focus of the IEP which is completely behavior intervention based with no educational goals beyond meeting grade core curriculum standards, which he is barely meeting in reading at this time. However, the basis of the classification is that his achievement is significantly below his expected ability. The school of course says that they have no obligation to adjust his educational approach or provide goals beyond meeting the average for his grade level. We of course find this to be absurd if not outright discriminatory. If a child with an 80 IQ was performing ~43 points under their expected ability level the school would be required by law to provide curriculum modifications with educational goals that are commensurate with the child's ability level. How is it not discrimination to not provide that same level of service to a gifted child? Has anyone out there had any luck with this situation as it relates to IEP mandated educational goals?
Thanks in advance!

It will depend strictly on the laws of your state and any written policies in your district. In Michigan, we have no gifted laws so this is perfectly acceptable and the "law of the land". My DD had a 33 point discrepancy but there was no obligation for the school to provide anything but the standard education. There is a small section in IDEA that wasn't changed with the updates in 2004 that we were able to use to get a dual enrollment for my DD. I considered that a great victory, even though it lasted for just a year.

Reconvene that meeting. Goals and objectives are INDIVIDUALIZED, hence the name. It sounds like they are writing what I call a generic IEP. If he is labeled LD then there need to be academic goals to address the discrepency. If they want to id him as AU then there should still be academic and life skill areas addressed. You should have some type of SPED resource in your state especially for autism spectrum. find and contact them to help advocate.

ARC did our advocating, in case it helps in your area.

We're still in the middle of this battle with our DS12, but our parent information rep suggested this: "I would not hesitate to tell them you are thinking about filing a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR)."

Luckily, our son's problem isn't an unwillingness to provide specific educational goals, but we're struggling to even get special education services in his self-contained GT program. the SPED services are obviously required, but the GT program is not required by law, and since it doesn't easily fit together in his school, it's been a struggle to get the services for which he qualifies.

In other words, I feel ya!