Monday, April 26, 2004

Sloppy IEPs

I got my son's IEP Saturday, and while it's generally acceptable, it's riddled with little typos and cut-off sentences and obvious clerical screw-ups. I used to blame this sort of thing on typists in the special-ed dept., but I know that now our district is using a very cool computerized system that pretty much puts the whole danged thing together for you, so it's just a general lack of caring and attention on the part of the child study team personnel that allows these little bloopers to slip through. How hard is it to proofread this stuff, anyway?

I'm also annoyed because some things that were left out of his IEP last year at my request are back in -- like "counseling goals," without any clear explanation of who is in charge of these goals and how they will be acheived, and no discussion of them at our IEP meeting -- and things that were in last year at my request are not -- like the behavior plan I wrote for him. There are references to behavior modification without any behavior mod or management plan in the document -- despite the fact that the district paid a behaviorist to observe him and write a plan. It's just sloppy, sloppy stuff.

Fortunately, my guy will most likely have the same teacher and therapists next year as he did this year, and I trust them all completely. But you know, this is a legal document, and why can't it just be done right? I suspect it takes just as much effort to do a sloppy job as a good one. Now I have to call and talk to the child study team leader and ask for all these changes to be made, and the whole thing's going to have to be processed and printed and passed out again. Yeesh. On the other hand, they've cleverly sent this thing out at the beginning of a week off from school, so I have to wait until next Monday to complain. Maybe they hope I'll lose steam by then. Or maybe I'll just get madder.

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