Education

Putting the Individual In IEP

By Anthony Rebora — December 17, 2007 1 min read
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Sam at clean up on aisle life marvels that, after three-plus years in teaching, she finally attended an IEP meeting that seemed constructive:

Everyone had read all the anecdotals, focused on the child's needs and behaviors and successes, and was expressing opinions and ideas in a productive manner. It was textbook in its beauty, and I feel that we reached the best possible decision for this particular student, as well as exhausting many, many other options.

The experience, she says, has helped overcome some of her growing pessimism about the proccess:

I am one of those teachers who has started to come to the conclusion that the IEP process is frequently a useless document, especially since it is in no way based in reality once the bureacratic rules of the NYC school system have gotten involved. Friday's experience proved to me that the IEP can indeed be an "individualized education program," rather than wasted words on wasted paper.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Blogboard blog.