A parent requested the following accommodation after his teachers repeatedly mentioned his Individualized Education Program (IEP) to the class:
“Teachers should not intentionally allow other students to know that XXXXXX has an IEP and receives special education services.”
The parent didn’t understand that privacy is a right, not an accommodation, simply because the privacy violations modeled by the teacher pointed in the opposite direction.
This article is an extension to the article “Accommodation Break Down: Testing to Completion”.
It includes a few different options I wish I’d included previously, as well as a few more pits you’ll want to make sure you avoid.
This is the accommodation that warrants its own evolution chart.
In my experience, it has the dubious honor of being the most-changed, least-followed, and most misunderstood accommodation that I’ve ever seen played out.
“Copies of Teacher Notes”
This is another accommodation I thought to be straightforward.
How could it possibly be interpreted any other way than the teacher providing all teacher notes to the student in advance of the class?
But wait boys and girls, there’s more—always more to an accommodation than any of us expected.
“Testing to Completion”.
Seems like a straightforward accommodation, right?
Student is given the test.
Student is given as much time as is needed to complete the test.
How could it possibly be interpreted any other way?
What could possibly go wrong?
The flash pass accommodation is a life saver. Unfortunately, it wasn’t on my radar until middle school. It’s an accommodation I’d recommend for both older and younger ages.
What is a Flash Pass?
A Flash Pass allows a student to leave class without having to 1) ask permission or 2) provide an explanation.
This accommodation addresses the amount of time a student will be tested.
For example, one student might need breaks after ever 30 minutes of testing, while another student might not be able to test more than 1.5 hours per day.
It is the responsibility of the school to provide accommodations. It is not the responsibility of the student to request accommodations.
Young students might not know their accommodations, while high school-aged students might be embarrassed to request accommodations in class, where their peers can hear them make the request.
In all age groups, the students might struggle with advocacy skills, which result in the student being afraid to ask for accommodations—or in a student feeling it is useless to ask for accommodations, because the school will still do whatever it wants to do.
A teacher asks her students to write a report about a topic of their choice. She states two requirements for the report:
1. The report must be one page in length.
2. The report must focus on a topic she taught in science within the last month.
Did she provide clearly-defined expectations?
No.
The accommodation for clearly-defined expectations should provide exactly what it sound like: clearly-defined expectations.
For the student’s IEP or 504, the accommodation must be written as clearly as it is expected to be implemented.
Accessible text is text that can accessed by the student. This might be a format such as Braille, digital text, large-format text, or audio.
If your student needs accessible text, ask the questions posed in this article as this accommodation is developed,
“Reduced Load†is an accommodation that is wordsmithed like a politician’s speech. It doesn’t matter if your gut reaction to it is good or bad. Either way, you’re left wondering what it really means.
Will “Reduced Load†Impact the Student’s Grade?
Yes and no. It depends on whether (and how) the local education agency (LEA) spins it.
This post features videos, video chats, and slide shows related to Fairfax County Public Schools special education instruction.
It includes information about IEP development, too, such as Lourrie Duddridge correcting the use of the PLOP page for present levels instead of a place used to document meeting minutes.
At about the 1:54:56 time mark, Lourrie Duddridge states: “We’ve been looking at a lot of present level of performance pages (PLOPS) and we need to just remind everybody that those documents are really for documenting the student’s present level of performance. How are they doing in their educational environment and what we propose as a team, and that those statements are written in objective measurable terms, and that we’re using appropriate data on those pages. What the page is not for is summaries of what happened–minutes of the meeting. And we’re seeing a lot of that on our present level of performance pages and what it does is clutter the IEP, and then we get present level of performance pages that are 20 pages long, because we have documented so much stuff that really isn’t relevant to the proposal itself.”
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