The Wrightslaw Way

I am a high school psychologist. What is the law for students who have already been tested 2 times. Colleges and our state Voc/Ed  Services tell me I need to do a WAIS AND achievement testing every three years - no matter what -  even if the student is placed appropriately.
1) When should I do [...]

New Book! Wrightslaw: All About IEPs is at the printer now!
Shipping second week of December                        $12.95    Order now

Answers more than 200 frequently asked questions & introduces key legal issues
Outlines your rights & responsibilities and explains the law in plain language you can understand
Provides the reference source of information, the law, regulation, [...]

This time of year the football chant is ringing in our heads - “We’ve got the pow-er!” This year, get some of that advocacy power!
“Key changes in the special education arena this year have given parents more decision-making power regarding their children with special needs. For example…

Last week we posted about using an IEP Parent Attachment to add input to your child’s IEP.
We heard immediately from Daunna who wrote:
The question was “How can I deal with [the school's refusal to include a parent attachment]?”
Judy Bonnell’s parent attachment form is a great idea, but it’s not really an attachment unless the school [...]

School has started for some or is just around the corner for others. Time to check out the fall lineup for Wrightslaw conferences.
September 18, 2009: Indianapolis, IN - IDEA 2004 and NCLB: What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You! sponsored by the Autism Society of Indiana, and DisabilityGoTo, Inc. Speaker: Wayne Steedman.
October 16-17, 2009: Virginia [...]

The implementing federal special education regulations for IDEA 2004 became effective in October 2006. Additional regulations were published in December 2008.
In June 2009, OSEP published a revised series of question and answer (Q&A) documents prepared by OSERS to address some of the most important issues raised by requests for clarification on a variety of [...]

Did you receive academic test results for your child that were much lower than you expected?
In some cases parents say they received no scores for certain subjects or were told their child “either scored so low she could not be graded or she was not given the test.”
What can you do? First, focus on [...]

If a child is wheelchair-bound and needs a catheter, is this something that belongs in the IEP?
Exactly whose responsibility is it to handle catheters for wheelchair-bound students? I would think it qualifies as a medical procedure and that a nurse would need to do it?
Does the child need these services to attend school? [...]

What can you do if a school team refuses to evaluate a child?
What can you do if the school team insists that an evaluation will not provide relevant information for educational planning?

When the school doesn’t want to test a child, can you force them to evaluate?

I am a special education teacher. I have some concerns and questions about how students are receiving the mandated special ed services.
1. Is there a legal definition of self-contained classroom setting?
2. What constitutes a change of LRE when there has been no official meeting to place a student in a particular setting?
There is no legal [...]