Hi all. Me again. Trying to get this done by Monday. Sorry to keep bothering everyone!

I drafted the following letter to the IEP team regarding modifying the vague accommodations in DS' IEP. This is just a draft (and I will be adding more to regarding jumping through the hoops to get district to cover/provide vision therapy but i thought I'd just burden you all with this part as this is the part with which I really need some help. Let me know what you think, please! And special thanks to Polarbear, as I lifted a lot of it from one of her posts! Here it is:

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It was a pleasure meeting with all of you on Friday. DH and I are so impressed with what an amazing and dedicated group of professionals we have at (Elementary School name} and in the [School District name]! We feel so very fortunate to have such a dedicated team working with DS.

As I mentioned at the meeting, we are, however, uncomfortable with the way just a few of the accommodations are worded presently. Specifically, the accommodation listed under the section titled "Participation in State and Local Assessments" on page 13 in IEP. This accommodation currently reads as follows:

"Student will participate in local assessments with the following accommodations: - Schedule extended time, provide opportunities for breaks and movement, chunk into smaller segments, monitor the need for a scribe, consider alternate forms of assessment such as oral response, consider reducing the number of responses required."

While we certainly see the positives of leaving some flexibility in the document, DH and I are concerned about the practical problems that could arise when attempting to implement accommodations so vague. We may have a teacher and assistants who are doing the "right" thing and finding the right “balance” now, but what about next year? What happens when a substitute is in the classroom? We are concerned that letting DS use handwriting for an extended written response until he gets tired would trigger anxiety and cause a negative impact on the entire test. I also think that putting the burden on DS to ask for an accommodation, particularly during a testing situation, is not fair and runs the risk that the accommodation will not be given. Although the IEP does not state "student must ask," DS is somewhat being put into that position as the accomodation is written currently - if he gets tired while writing and a teacher or test monitor does not notice, he has to ask for his accommodations. While we realize that this is the first time we are drafting an IEP for DS and, consequently, we are all trying to figure out exactly what he needs and finding that “balance” about which you spoke at the meeting, state/local standardized testing time is not the time to experiment with finding a balance; rather, it is about allowing DS, while using appropriate accommodations, to demonstrate his knowledge and true abilities without the interference from his disabilities.

Therefore, we propose modifying said accommodation to read as follows:

"Student will participate in local assessments with the following accommodations:
- Schedule extended time (at least time and a half), provide opportunities for breaks and movement, chunk into smaller segments, use test formats with reduced written output formats (e.g. multiple choice, matching) to accommodate for slow writing fluency, provide a scribe or provide oral response as an alternate forms of assessment for any assessment that may require written answers of more than five words, and , consider reducing the number of responses required."


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Last edited by marytheres; 09/30/12 07:43 AM.