School monitoring

[Guest guest]

Hello listmates,

Lets say your child has a good placement and the school comes up with an IEP

you can compromise on - How do you make sure the IEP is being implemented

appropriately?

Do you go in and observe every now and then? or do you rely on their 'data'?

How do you know that the data is accurate?

Let's say one of the objectives is 'Child will reciprocate greetings upon

entering a new setting' and you get notes in the communication book that

" Child is doing wonderful with greetings " and when you ask for data it says

mostly " independant " - how do you make sure they are telling you the truth?

Yes, the IEP does specify 'measured by teacher observation and checklist'

If I sound paranoid, I am. The few times (2x in 7 weeks) I've observed at

school, I've not seen anybody target any objectives on the IEP, they were

just helping her through the day. I didn't see good prompts ( doing tasks

for her instead of prompting her to do), no prompt fading strategies,

reinforcement was being used to keep her seated and on task, but no

reinforcement for the IEP goals which are mostly social skills and Language

skills, no consistency whatsoever and not even attempting to get a better

response out of her! Don't get me wrong, most of the teachers have my

child's best interests but just don't know what they are supposed to do.

However the most important teacher 'the autism teacher' who is the ring

master acts like she knows everything and is not receptive to feedback. This

attitude is rubbing off on the aide too. She claims they've been working on

all the objectives and is prepared to show me the data. I am sure she will

make the data look good. She writes very little in the communication

notebook and barely mentions any disruptive behaviors. I accidentally hear

about these behaviors in great detail from other teachers or bystanders.

I've sent a nice but firm letter to the county sp.ed director about my

concerns. They've sent in a school psychologist to observe at different

times during this week but won't let me observe until the psychologist is

done. I suspect the autism teacher and the aide are putting forth a good

effort in front of the psychologist.

Am I expecting too much from a public school?

Thanks for reading.

Mahija