{"id":12407,"date":"2015-02-19T09:00:45","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/?p=12407"},"modified":"2015-02-24T11:59:44","modified_gmt":"2015-02-24T15:59:44","slug":"inflexible-school-policy-we-do-not-retain-not-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/inflexible-school-policy-we-do-not-retain-not-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Inflexible School Policy&#8230; &#8220;We Do NOT Retain! Not Ever!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/gallery\/share-button-gray.png\" style=\"border:0px\" alt=\"Share\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#FFFFFF\";var hupso_border=\"#FFFFFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"wrightslaw\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"Inflexible%20School%20Policy...%20%22We%20Do%20NOT%20Retain%21%20Not%20Ever%21%22\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"border: 1px solid #000000; margin-bottom: 3px; float: right; margin-left: 8px; margin-right: 3px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/images\/bs\/girl.student.tired.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"122\" height=\"163\" \/>My 8th grader is deaf, has dyslexia and a language delay.\u00a0 Her current center-based deaf ed program has a teacher of the deaf and peers who all communicate directly with her.<\/p>\n<p>She feels safe, has friends, and is finally making progress. The school wants to &#8220;promote&#8221; her to high school. For stability, I think she should remain one more year at the center.<\/p>\n<p>School says &#8220;absolutely not.&#8221;\u00a0 We do NOT retain\u2026period.\u00a0 Our policy is to NOT hold students back\u2026ever.\u00a0 <strong>Can I ask the IEP team to make this decision?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Short answer: Yes, the IEP team can &#8211; and is legally required to &#8211; design an educational program that is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/info\/iep.individ.chklist.htm\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">individualized<\/span><\/a> and designed to meet your daughter&#8217;s unique needs.<\/p>\n<p>This includes decisions about where your child will be educated = <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/?p=394\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">placement<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-more-tag mce-wp-more\" title=\"Read more...\" data-wp-more=\"more\" data-wp-more-text=\"\" data-mce-placeholder=\"1\"><strong>If the school district has a policy on retention, it needs to be flexible enough that the IEP team can design a program specifically for your child.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-more-tag mce-wp-more\" title=\"Read more...\" data-wp-more=\"more\" data-wp-more-text=\"\" data-mce-placeholder=\"1\">The IDEA requires IEP teams to make<strong> individualized decisions<\/strong>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>The IDEA does not include any exemption or exclusion for one-size-fits-all school policies<\/strong> because these policies <em>cannot meet<\/em> the unique needs of all students including students with disabilities.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, most school policies are often designed to make life easier for school administrators. It&#8217;s much easier to say &#8220;we don&#8217;t do that&#8221; than to take the time to make individualized decisions.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00a0The school\u2019s policy is to advance all students including students with special needs so they don\u2019t suffer the social stigma of retention.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Every child will not feel &#8220;social stigma&#8221; if retained.<\/li>\n<li>Social stigma will be less important than feeling safe enough to learn.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In general, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/info\/retain.index.htm\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">research on retention<\/span><\/a> shows it is not an effective intervention for children. Social promotion is a problem as well.<\/p>\n<p>One-size-fits all programs and policies do not work.<\/p>\n<p>This is why the law requires schools to provide services that are individualized to meet the unique needs of each child. Many schools don\u2019t seem to understand the requirement that they must individualize instruction and educational programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My 8th grader is deaf, has dyslexia and a language delay.\u00a0 Her current center-based deaf ed program has a teacher of the deaf and peers who all communicate directly with <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/inflexible-school-policy-we-do-not-retain-not-ever\/\">Continue Reading \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1275],"tags":[1236,106,659],"class_list":["post-12407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retention","tag-invidiualized-iep","tag-retention","tag-social-promotion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12407"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12422,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12407\/revisions\/12422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrightslaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}