I was wondering how long it took for everyone to get their IEP. My child was tested in Sept/Oct 2013, and approved for an IEP in February. Since then I have been back to the meetings and rejecting because they put in goals like: xxx will improve his writing as measured by teacher. I am going to my second rejection meeting today, but honestly this is insane. My child is at the end of 4th grade, is this normal? After each meeting it takes the team leader at least 3 weeks to send me the rewritten IEP. So now if everything looks good I am looking at September 2014.

That's long. (Why the enormous gap between testing and the qualification meeting?) Is your child getting services now, or are they waiting for the IEP to be in place? S/he should be receiving appropriate instruction and services under RTI (response to intervention) in any case, but implementation varies substantially from district to district.

You may find it useful to have an educational advocate who is expert in writing measurable goals. We have gotten good at it as parents, but it took some years. We do a lot of rewriting in the meeting itself to get the job done, but sometimes it does take many meetings to get it right.

Even after it's right, it continues to evolve as needs change.

Um. Check your state regs.

You should have had an IEP meeting within 10-15 school days (depending on the state) of testing being completed. The whole process, from signed consent to evaluate to finish (or to the first rejected IEP meeting, in this case), should take no more than 60 calendar days, or 45 school days.

Oh, wait, just noticed you're in MA, which I do know something specific about. The time line is: 30 school days to evaluate, 15 days to hold the first IEP meeting, 3 days to issue a draft IEP, (or 10 days if a summary is provided,) 10 days to respond to the parent's rejection of the IEP, repeat the last few steps until an agreement is reached or it goes to the DESE.

Find an advocate.

PM me if you want names.

Do they not know how to write an IEP? You can't write IEP goals that are so subjective.

I have been to many an IEP meeting and mine were dialogs between the resource teacher, teacher and others where we hashed out ON THE SPOT the specific goals. Now I did have a fairly accommodating school and I wasn't asking for anything that unusual so it wasn't usually a huge fight.

It defiantly sounds like time to bring in an advocate of some sort, and/or take this to the district level.