Your Child's IEP Goals Should Be To Succeed In Regular Education

Your Child's IEP Goals Should Be To Succeed In Regular Education
http://www.concordspedpac.org/articles/RM-Your%20Child%27s%20IEP%20Goals%20Should%20Be%20To%20Succeed%20In%20Regular%20Education.pdf
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Special Education Law Reed Martin, J.D.
Taken from Reed's manual: Getting Your Child's Regular Education Teachers
To Do What The Law Requires Them To Be Doing For Your Child

When your child's annual goals are related to academics that are objectively measurable,
the goal should be to raise the student to grade level equivalency -- just like any other
student in regular education. A common problem for many students with special needs,
as acknowledged by Congress in the 1997 IDEA, is the lowering of expectations by regular education teachers. Students are often allowed to progress at a slower rate so you should make sure the goal for your child is to achieve one grade level of growth for each year of instruction. If your child's disability makes that difficult then that is exactly what evaluation is to explore, it is exactly what the IEP committee is to discuss and it is exactly what the Comprehensive System of Personnel Development is required for -- to acquire and disseminate promising educational practices that will enable your child's teachers to attempt to enable your child to have the same rate of accomplishment as other children in the class. It is common to see regular education teachers expecting students with special needs to have a difficult time and to be performing below grade level. So if your child's evaluation shows a deficit, for example in reading of several years below the grade level of the rest of the class, then your goal should be more than one year's growth for one year of instruction -- it should be to get up to grade level. Your child has a right to the same goals and expectations of everyone else in regular education. Being behind in reading will drag your child behind in everything. Worse, being behind in a regular class can lead to teasing by other students in the class and that must be addressed as well. Recent federal court cases such as Leslie B. v. Winnacunnet Coop. Sch, Dist., 28 IDELR 271 (D.NH 1998) showed that regular education teachers could be liable, as well as the school district being liable, when a student is allowed to fall behind and allowed to be teased to the point that they can no longer attend school.
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