Eligibility Meetings. Paperwork without personality.

“No Questions or Comments please.”

Ever walk out of an Eligibility meeting and get a sense that it was rushed? That maybe the academic, cognitive, speech, occupational, and/or behavioral evaluations that were reviewed were skipped over so much that when the question was finally asked, "Any questions," no one really knew what to ask?

Are you taking your time to explain
and implications of the standard scores
& percentiles in the  evaluation report?
How do you know?

Admin: Hi. Thank you for coming this morning. Today is the Eligibility meeting. I have  an agenda. If you have comments, please talk to me afterwards. We have to stick with the agenda so we can let the teachers go back to their classrooms. 

Parents: uh. sure. 

Admin: ok. everyone, please introduce yourselves...Now, you've already had the procedural safeguards, right? I think our SSC gave it to you at the SST? or did she send it home with the PWN? Anyhow, if you have any questions, let me know afterwards.

Evaluator:....oh, so Billy's standard score was within the borderline range, with a score of 52, in the area of functional communication, community, and social skills. There are descriptors at the bottom of my report. 

Dad: What page are you on? oh. found it. okay.

Mom:  score of what? 52? is that out of 100? 

Social Worker: um...yeah.

School Psychologist: Actually....a standard score is....

No matter how you look at our current model of special education, you’ll recognize very quickly that you no longer are dealing with people but a machine constructed by laws, regulations, agendas, loopholes, and checklists. Whether you are a teacher, administrator, parent, or student, it is very clear that the warm and fuzzy, personable relationship that schools and families should share is replaced by state mandated regulations, government procedures, and a very cold almost rehearsed dialogue.  

Today was another Eligibility Meeting for Special Education and it took a couple outspoken parents to remind me that this process should never be rushed.

As special education teachers, school psychologists,  speech pathologists, Occupational Therapists, Principals…. It may be “just another meeting” but to parents it’s a big deal. This is their child we are talking about for goodness sake.

Teachers are reminded constantly of the laws they must follow in their day to day lesson planning and curriculum. The creativity that once drove them is diminished to a list of rules. The once independent teacher and enthusiastic professors begin a role of paper pushing and data inputting. Instead of using their own professional judgment when a student is behind, they have a number of hoops to jump through.

It’s not just the teachers who are losing their luster.

Parents who have a child who they feel need support have hoops to go through themselves. They are thrown acronyms (IEP, SST, SFT, OT, IDEA, RTI…), given a short version of their procedural safeguards (parent rights for students who are going through a special education evaluation or are in special education) and in my experience, often look like I did in my statistics class….

"wait. whaaaaaat? A standard score of huh?”

We have to remember that Eligibility or IEP meetings should never be rushed, the procedural safeguards are hard to understand, and we should always treat parents as if they were close friends.

The process of special education is a machine but if we gain trust from the parents and make an extra effort to be personable, patient, and understanding (on both sides), then we can be better educators, parents, and brighter futures for the kids who bless our campuses (and communities) every year.