Providing accommodations on IEPs can impede student’s functioning out of school without them.
by Jamie Farniok -
This is my busiest time of the school year getting testing completed and all of the students with Individual Educational Plans (IEPs) have to have annual review meetings. I attend every one of those meetings. When students have IEPs we carefully monitor their areas of weakness and address those weaknesses with goals. To be able to determine where the weaknesses lie, either I do testing or the teachers are doing curriculum based measures in the classroom. We use that data to determine what progress the students are making and how we can continue to improve their progress.
When students reach the age of 14 ½ we are required by federal law to write a transition plan which takes into consideration what the student wants to do after they leave high school. We write goals in the IEP that help the students reach their goal. So, many times their goals are to explore career and training options, but sometimes students have a good idea of what they would like to do after high school and we can gear their class schedule toward classes that will aid them in reaching their goal. Many IEP students go on to higher education and in those cases we gear the accommodations written in the IEP so that they can help in college. Colleges do not conduct IEP meetings, but they do give accommodations for students who are truly disabled.
Putting accommodations into an IEP can be a daunting task because while we want to aid students in completing assignments and taking tests, we also want to help them function as independently as possible.
via WEST CENTRAL BLOG: A School Psych’s View III – Monmouth, IL – Daily Review Atlas.
I read the entire blog entry and the blogger (who is a school psych) relates 20-20 hindsight vision regarding the accommodation of reading to a student ” none of us thought about who would be reading his mail to him after he graduated.” Accommodations are meant to assist a student access the curriculum while the his IEP goals are worked on and, hopefully, met. A student who graduates from high school unable to read his mail has not been let down by accommodations on his IEP, but by not meeting goals for reading fluency, comprehension etc. While the student is working on those goals with his teachers, intervention specialists etc, should he be penalized for his disability by forcing him to struggle to read a test on Science, History etc? I would suggest the blame falls on those who did not assist him in meeting his goals, not on accommodations he received.
Okay, so don’t give accommodations and the same students may never learn anything so what good will that have done? Of course, when the teachers aren’t held accountable for actually giving a student the accommodations such as giving the student notes ahead of time and they don’t learn anything in the first place, then that doesn’t help either. That high school diploma is the basis for any gains later in life and if we don’t accommodate while the student is learning the basics we might as well forget sending them to school. Accommodations aren’t meant to last forever, but to support the student so that they can actually learn, so this is a post that is quite frankly…stupid. Obviously this writer doesn’t understand the reason behind the accommodations – they aren’t there to artificially inflate a student’s abillities, but to support while the school gives them the strengths they need. Obviously this school system isn’t giving the students what they need while supporting them, they are just giving them a crutch. If the student needs a reader, then they should be getting support to learn reading and comprehension, not just giving them a reader. Why do we have so many problems with kids graduating without the necessary skills, because school psychologists like this one have no idea (even when it is their own child) of the fact that education is the goal, not accommodations, and they dont’ know how to educate so that the accommodtions are no longer necessary.