Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Stuck in a useless IDEP process

I'm frustrated. I think at this point I'm giving up on AIG services at DS's school. I feel like they are meeting the district requirements just to say they meet them and are not focused on providing actual K-2 services.

DS is in K this year and my advocacy goals this year I thought were simple. I wanted to get him officially AIG identified and then go through the process of what that means (basically, writing up the IDEP) without asking for a lot this year. In a sense I wanted to sit back and educate myself and build relationships with the school.

Well, I did get him AIG identified so that is good. The rest? I'm going to say complete failure.

We submitted qualifying gifted test scores for DS at beginning of September. I had some other posts on that but it was a nightmare just to get those submitted and push through the process of having him AIG identified. He had 98%+ for math and LA both ability and achievement to qualify and he did.

Supposedly his official gifted services started Nov 1st and all kids in this early identification category are supposed to have an IDEP (like an IEP). They told me it would come soon then holiday breaks ... End of Jan I emailed and asked if we could go ahead and complete the IDEP for him. End of Feb he still has no official IDEP. I can't get a straight answer from anyone and there seems to be no official timeline for the process so they can drag it out all year.

One concern is that it has taken all year to get his IDEP for this year. Since it's his first year identified I can see taking well into the first semester but by start of second semester he should have it. At this rate I have no idea if his IDEP for this year will make its way to me before the end of the school year.

Another concern is they are saying it's not a big deal because they're already implementing the IDEP. I'm frustrated because it cuts me completely out of the loop. In our district the whole thing gets written and approved by central office at the district and then at the end you can agree to it or ask for changes to it. To me it really doesn't feel like we're working together to do what's best for DS. They haven't given me a way to provide any input all. (And I'm not allowed to see the interim copy of what they're already implementing.)

I've lost faith in the process in part because of the AIG teacher and the principal's lack of focus on AIG. The AIG teacher is always blaming central office for delays and when I call them they don't even have the paperwork yet. Unrelated the principal doesn't seem very interested in the AIG program. They have a different half time teacher each year so it's kind of a mess, but I don't have the full history just bits of info from here or there.

Part of this year's work was to figure out how AIG K-2 services work at this school. Is it reasonable to decide they don't work and I'm fighting an uphill battle and just... stop? It's so much time and energy for me just to get a rubber stamp type document that says his teacher is differentiating in the classroom (she's not). What IS the point?

I don't even know what I'd ask for. DS needs to be grade accelerated in math, but there's a different process for that. As I see it if his classroom teacher wants to differentiate she will... if not, having someone else forcing her to because of an IDEP seems like an uphill battle. Am I missing something here?

Anyone else have an IDEP/IEP they actually find useful? If so, what kinds of things are in it?

Just today the IDEP came through. Supposedly. Should be in DS's bag tonight. Response from AIG teacher was they did their best and they "met all Central office requirements." So their best is to simply meet the requirements?

So done with this process. At this point hard to care what the IDEP says.

I just wanted to say that you aren't alone. So many parts of your story match my experience with my two kids over the last few years.

Some things that we've tried (to varying degrees of success) -
- volunteer if you can - being able to be in the class and see what is actually going on was very valuable. That said even if you can make your schedule work, many schools/teachers don't allow this so it can be a challenge. I do think that volunteering (and showing them that I'm not an insane person who only makes demands) helped.
- spend time advocating for a good teacher match - honestly some teachers are never going to get it (or they are going to take forever to get there and I don't have time). If there are 3 teachers teaching a grade I ask the school to place my kid with the teacher that actually will/can differentiate the most. Of course this assumes it is a big enough school that there are more than one class per grade.
- research your options for gifted programming both in your board and in anything else that is possible in your area (again - depends if there is more than one choice...). In the end moving schools was the best thing that we ever did for DS and we're now hoping to move DD.
- my DS's horrible behaviour when he wasn't challenged was a blessing in disguise. It allowed me to approach the school with ideas from the angle of "I think it will help you if you try.... with DS"
- join forces with other parents in the same boat. It is harder for them to ignore the needs of 2 or more kids than it is for just one.
ETA - we picked one thing to start and then worked from there. For both of my kids it was math and the repetitive work sheets that were too easy. We started with that and then slowly built from there.



In all honestly most teachers have little to no training on gifted education needs unless they have made a point to search for it. If you have a kid far to the right of the curve they might never have come across a child like yours before. If they have taught a gifted kid before many don't realize that gifted is actually a huge range and think that one gifted kid is like another. Most of them are juggling the needs of multiple IEP's in a single class. There are so many reasons that it is hard to get amazing differentiation in a class but it doesn't mean it is impossible.

At the end of the day IMHO it comes down to the teacher. We've had amazing differentiation without an IEP and we've had a pretty good IEP that was completely ignored. Our best IEP was 3 years in the making - we slowly improved it every time it was reviewed and the school was much better as they got to know the kid and started to see what I saw.

Good luck!

Yes I think we're realizing we will likely need to move to the gifted magnet in later elementary. I wish we didn't need to choose between language immersion and the gifted programming, but I think that may be the case. Our last chance to make it all work at our local school is single subject acceleration, so we'll see how it goes over the next year or so.

I can relate to so much of what you wrote and it's really helpful to hear. Thank you!

I think we're mostly doing the right things but need to figure out how to avoid burnout in the process. It's exhausting.

This sounds like what goes on in our district regarding IEPs or 504's for special ed students. They don't want to write them, don't follow them, and do the bare minimum they can get away with. We don't have IEPs for gifted. We ended up finding a school with a "unique" format that allows for acceleration (basically team teaching based on ability rather than a traditional format where a kid is with the same teacher all day). They schedule certain subjects, like math, at the same time everyday so they can easily move kids to higher level grades if necessary. Until we got to this school it was hopeless. The district did have a magnet type program for highly gifted kids in 4th-6th grade but it was very disorganized and I couldn't really figure out what DD was doing there.
I doubt you are going to be able to get classroom teachers to differentiate the work the way it needs to be done, so I would push for subject acceleration and the school allowing him to attend higher level classes for certain subjects. This has worked well for DS with math (he goes up 3 grade levels, then comes back for the rest of the day). He is very bored in terms of social studies/science, but at least not forced to do math that he learned years ago.