IEP stands for “Individualized Education Plan”. It is designed to clearly describe the goals that a child who has special needs will be helped to achieve in a given school year. That team is supposed to include the child’s parents and teachers. However, there are certain things that keep parents out of the decision making process. Most schools do not intentionally make an effort to keep parents out of an IEP meeting. The majority of parents do their best to make sure that they are involved in the decisions that are made regarding the education of their children. Despite this, … Continue reading →

The beginning of a new school year brings an alphabet of abbreviations for parents of children who have special needs. If this is the very first school year that your child has been connected with a special education program, things can get a little confusing. Here is a quick list to help you understand what all the abbreviations mean. Special education teachers, and the paraeducators that work with them, tend to shorten many of the terms that are used in “Special Ed”. This is because they use them so often, that it it becomes easier to put these terms into … Continue reading →

A teacher in California has been accused of filling in the answers on a standardized test for a student. The elementary school student was a child that has been described as “struggling”. It has been suggested that the teacher was trying to disguise the fact that this student needed special education help. This particular situation took place in 2009. The teacher was administering a Mathematics Assessment Resource Service (MARS) test. This is one of many standardized tests that are given to public school students across the nation. The student ended up with a score of 35 out of 40. The … Continue reading →