By Frances Shefter, Esq. (and mom)
Parent’s Guide to Reading an IEP Series:
Part 1: Present Levels
Part 2: Annual Goals
Part 3: Accommodations
Part 4: Supplementary Aids and Services
Part 5: Special Education and Related Services
Part 6: Progress Reports
Part 7: Not Making Progress?
Part 8: Placement
Part 9: Extended School Year (coming soon).
Part 8 of the Parent’s Guide to Reading an IEP
Over the past several weeks, we have been working through your child’s IEP one section at a time. We started with the Present Levels because they identify your child’s strengths and needs. From there, we looked at goals, accommodations, Supplementary Aids and Services, Special Education and Related Services, progress reports, and what should happen when your child is not making expected progress. Throughout this series, I have encouraged you to look at the IEP as one coordinated plan designed to support and educate your child.
Now we are ready to talk about placement, and there is a reason placement comes this late in the series. Before we can decide where your child should receive their education, we first need to understand what that education needs to look like.
By this point in the IEP process, the team should have identified your child’s needs in the Present Levels and developed goals to address those needs. The team should have determined what accommodations are necessary to remove barriers, what Supplementary Aids and Services are needed to support your child throughout the school day, and what Special Education and Related Services your child needs. All of those decisions should be based on your child as an individual.
Once the team has developed that plan, then it is time to talk about where the plan can be implemented.
This is why I become concerned when the placement conversation starts too early. Sometimes I hear the name of a classroom or program before the team has finished determining what the child actually needs. Other times, the team may have developed the IEP, but when placement comes up, the discussion suddenly shifts to what a particular program typically provides. You may hear, “Students in this program receive reading intervention three times a week,” or, “That classroom doesn’t provide that service.”
That is when I bring the conversation back to the IEP we just developed. If the team determined that your child needs daily specialized reading instruction, for example, that need should not change because a particular program typically provides reading intervention only three times a week. Instead, the team needs to consider whether and how that placement can implement the services your child needs.
The placement should fit the IEP. We should not be changing the IEP to make it fit the placement.
That distinction is important because the question is not, “Which program does my child fit into?” The question is, “Where can this IEP be implemented so that my child receives the support and education they need?”
What Does Least Restrictive Environment Really Mean?
This is also where Least Restrictive Environment, or LRE, comes into the conversation. Parents often hear LRE and think it means that a child with an IEP should always be in the general education classroom as much as possible. Students with disabilities should be educated with nondisabled peers to the maximum extent appropriate, and the team should consider whether a child can be successfully educated in the general education setting with appropriate supports before moving to a more restrictive setting. However, that does not mean general education is automatically the right placement for every child all day long.
What matters is whether the placement is appropriate for your child. A student sitting in a general education classroom but unable to understand the instruction, participate meaningfully, or make progress is not necessarily benefiting simply because they are physically present in the room. On the other hand, a student should not be removed from general education simply because providing the supports they need would require the school to do things differently.
This is why I encourage parents not to get caught up in labels like “general education,” “resource,” “learning center,” or “self-contained.” Those labels may tell you something about the setting, but they do not tell you what your child’s education will actually look like. I want to know what happens when your child walks into that classroom.
If your child needs explicit, specialized reading instruction, when will that happen and who will provide it? If your child needs help with executive functioning throughout the school day, how will those supports be implemented? If your child needs frequent prompting, visual supports, movement breaks, or behavioral supports, who is responsible for providing them and how will that work in this setting?
I also want to know what your child will be doing during the rest of the school day. If your child is removed from general education for specialized instruction, what will they miss? Will they still participate in science, social studies, specials, electives, lunch, recess, and other activities with nondisabled peers? If they are missing instruction to receive special education or related services, how will the team make sure that solving one problem does not create another one?
We talked about this same balancing act in Part 5 when we discussed services. Sometimes a child absolutely needs a service, but the team also has to consider what the child will miss in order to receive it. Placement requires the same kind of thoughtful discussion. The goal is not to maximize or minimize time in any particular setting. The goal is to develop a school day that meets your child’s individual needs.
Look at What the Placement Will Actually Provide
Once a placement is being discussed, I encourage parents to get specific. The name of the program is not enough for me. I want to understand how the IEP will actually be implemented there.
For example, if your child needs 60 minutes of explicit, specialized reading instruction five days a week, how will that happen in the proposed placement? If the program typically provides reading intervention only three days a week, that does not necessarily mean the program cannot work. Maybe the school can provide the additional instruction another way. But the answer should not automatically be to reduce your child’s services to three days a week so that the IEP fits neatly into the existing program.
The same is true with Supplementary Aids and Services, accommodations, behavioral supports, executive functioning supports, and related services. If the team determined your child needs them, I want to understand how they will be provided in the proposed setting.
This is also why I encourage parents to ask what their child’s actual day will look like rather than relying only on a description of the program. How much of the day will your child spend in general education? When will specialized instruction happen? What will your child miss during that time? Who will provide the instruction? What is the group size? How will the Supplementary Aids and Services be implemented throughout the day?
You do not need to know every program in the school system to ask those questions. You already have the most important document in front of you: the IEP. Use it to guide the conversation.
If the team can explain how the placement will implement the IEP and the answers make sense based on your child’s needs, then you have useful information to consider. If the answers keep coming back to what the program normally does rather than what your child needs, I would keep asking questions.
A program can be a wonderful program and still not be the right program for your child.
That is also why a diagnosis alone should not determine placement. Two children can have the same diagnosis and need completely different educational settings because their strengths, weaknesses, goals, services, and supports are different. Just because a program is designed for students with a particular disability does not automatically mean it is appropriate for every student with that disability.
As with everything else we have discussed throughout this series, we need to keep coming back to the individual child.
Data Detective 🔎
Let’s look at an example. Your child’s Present Levels identify significant needs in decoding and reading fluency. The IEP includes goals in both areas, and after discussing your child’s needs, the team determines that your child requires daily explicit, small-group specialized reading instruction.
The school then recommends a particular program and explains that reading intervention in that program is typically provided three times a week.
I would not immediately assume that the program is inappropriate. I would go back to what the team already decided. If we determined that this child needs specialized reading instruction every day, how will that service be provided in this placement?
There may be a very good answer. The school may be able to provide additional instruction outside of the program’s regular schedule. There may be another way to structure the child’s day so the IEP can be implemented as written. Or, after looking more closely, the team may decide this is not the right placement.
What I would not want to see is the team changing the child’s services from five days a week to three days a week simply because that is how the program is structured. The child’s needs led us to the services, and the services should help lead us to the placement.
That is the connection I want parents to look for.
How Shefter Law Can Help
Placement discussions can feel overwhelming because parents are often hearing program names and classroom descriptions they have never heard before. You may feel like everyone else at the table already understands the options and you are supposed to know which one is best for your child.
You don’t have to know that.
I encourage parents to start with what they already know—their child and the IEP. Ask the school why it is recommending the placement and how that placement will meet the needs the team identified. Ask how the goals will be worked on, how the Supplementary Aids and Services will be implemented, and how the Special Education and Related Services will actually be delivered. Ask what your child’s school day will look like and what opportunities your child will have to learn and participate with nondisabled peers.
Many parents can use those questions to have a productive placement discussion on their own. My goal with this series is to give you enough information to feel comfortable doing that.
Sometimes, however, you may understand the proposed placement and still disagree that it can meet your child’s needs. Maybe you have asked the questions and the program cannot provide the services in the IEP. Maybe you and the school have very different opinions about how much support your child needs or whether your child can be appropriately educated in the proposed setting. Those are situations where it may be helpful to have someone else review the IEP, the data, and the placement options with you.
At Shefter Law, we can help you understand the proposed placement and prepare for the conversation with the IEP team, or we can attend the meeting with you when additional support is needed. But before assuming you need an attorney or advocate, start by asking the school to help you understand how the proposed placement connects to your child’s IEP. You may be able to advocate for what your child needs simply by keeping the discussion focused on the plan the team already developed.
Final Thoughts
Throughout this series, we have been building the IEP piece by piece, and placement is where many of those pieces come together. The Present Levels identify your child’s needs. The goals address those needs. The accommodations and Supplementary Aids and Services identify the supports your child needs, and the Special Education and Related Services describe the specialized instruction and services that will be provided. Once the team understands all of that, it can determine where the plan can be appropriately implemented.
That is why I encourage parents not to start by asking which program is best. Start with your child. Understand what your child needs and what the IEP says should be provided. Then look at the proposed placement and ask whether it can actually provide those things. Think about what your child’s entire school day will look like, including not only the specialized instruction they will receive but also the opportunities they will have to participate with nondisabled peers and the instruction or activities they may miss.
Then ask the same question we have been asking throughout this series: Does this make sense for my child?
If it does, you should be able to understand how the team got from your child’s needs to the proposed placement. If it doesn’t, you do not have to walk into the meeting with another placement already picked out. Ask questions. Ask the team to explain how the proposed setting will implement the IEP. If something still doesn’t make sense, keep the conversation focused on what your child needs rather than on what a particular program normally provides.
You know your child. You understand more about the IEP now than you did when we started this series, and you do not need to become an expert on every special education program to be an effective member of the IEP team. You need to understand your child’s needs, understand the plan, and feel comfortable asking whether the proposed placement can actually implement that plan.
Coming Next Week…
In Part 9 of the Parent’s Guide to Reading an IEP, we’ll look at Extended School Year, or ESY. We’ll talk about why ESY is not simply summer school, what the team should consider when determining whether your child needs it, and how to look at the data when making that decision.
Parent’s Guide to Reading an IEP Series:
Part 1: Present Levels
Part 2: Annual Goals
Part 3: Accommodations
Part 4: Supplementary Aids and Services
Part 5: Special Education and Related Services
Part 6: Progress Reports
Part 7: Not Making Progress?
Part 8: Placement
Part 9: Extended School Year (coming soon).