Kristina Chew autism.typepad.com Prior to my son Charlie’s diagnosis of autism in July of 1999, I knew even less about special education than I did about autism. I literally didn’t know anyone — family members or friends — who had ever been in special ed. I had less than zero idea if any of the public schools I had attended back in the 1970s and 1980s in California had special ed classes. I’m sure they did; to say that I was ignorant is an understatement. Now I realize that my lack of experience and knowledge about special education back then speaks to a general attitude about special ed, a sense that it’s great that our society provides it, but best not talk to about it; that special ed is for “those kids” who don’t do well in school, or have behavior problems, and so forth. So here is a bit…
Tag: special ed
Daniel Dage http://specialed.wordpress.com Note from the author: This article is part of a larger series about Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and the IEP process in which I go over each part of the IEP in-depth and describe the process from both a teacher perspective and a parent perspective. By far, this article seems to be the most read and searched for of the entire series. However, in actual practice I have not attended many IEPs where the goals and objectives were actually the subject of enough scrutiny by the attendees. Most of the time, the biggest issue of contention is during the discussion of placement. What most parents (and an embarrassing number of teachers) don’t realize is that goals and objectives are what are going to drive the students’ placement and services during the coming school year. While a Behavioral Intervention Plan (BIP) is the most abused part of the…