Frank: I am a teacher. During recent iep meetings our new resource teacher has made inaccurate and in some cases outright false claims about student progress in the gen Ed classroom. When I have pointed this out and disagreed with the statements, the resource teacher has gone to district SPED administrators and said I am being argumentative and disruptive, contradicting him in front of parents. He has tried to bar me from iep meetings. District SPED has told me I must stop being argumentative. How do I get outside or third party advocates, state officials or ?????? to investigate this issue.
Frank –
It’s unlikely you’ll get someone to investigate, but I think there’s other things you can do.
Perhaps you can go to the special ed administrator and ask how they think you should handle it when you disagree with the accuracy of the other teacher’s statements. This may make him/her see you as reasonable. You may even ask that he/she attend future meetings.
Some states offer facilitators or ombuds who can attend Team meetings, to help things run smoothly. Perhaps you can request this for future meetings (usually parents and school must agree to this).
If all else fails, maybe you can put the inaccurate statements in writing (along with your impression of the truth) and provide this to the administrator after the meeting.
Perhaps you can file a state complaint on behalf of the student and family — I’m not sure about this…. Perhaps you can reach out to the parents and help them figure out some objective way of documenting the true situation.