From: "Suzanne Heath" To: "Steve Johnson" Subject: Re: Question Date: Sunday, January 23, 2005 11:08 PM By "direct consultant teacher services" do you mean instruction from a teacher who has special education certification? A question you could ask the other team members would be, "If the child is getting special education ( "specially designed instruction, at no cost to parents, to meet the unique needs of the child with a disability....") and failing, doesn't that indicate that the IEP is insufficient to meet his needs? Logic would say that it was. The IEP team cannot decide ahead of time that they will only offer certain placements on the continuum. If a child is "supposed to receive 2 hours a week" of indirect services then the placement was predetermined. The team needs to make that decision. This book has a good index and analysis of the IDEA law. It makes looking things up easy if you need to do it fast during the day. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/offer-listing/1892320037/qid=1106535210/sr=1-1/ref=sr_pb_a//103-0771427-6859069?condition=all http://www.wrightslaw.com/bks/lawbk/spedlaw.htm This publication lists the required parts of the IEP and quotes the law that applies at each step along the way. http://www.ed.gov/print/parents/needs/speced/iepguide/index.html You say that "when one issue is taken care of another pops up". It looks exactly like that to me. The overall atmosphere at the school you have described in your e-mails is "No one can make us educate these kids and we will find a way to make sure it doesn't happen." It has to be very draining to work in that atmosphere. Sue ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Johnson To: Suzanne Heath Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 9:57 AM Subject: Re: Question Suzanne, I really appreciate all of your help regarding the special education program in our school. It just seems as though when one issue is taken care of another pops up. We are now being given what I feel to be an unfair criteria in recommending special education students to direct consultant teacher services. The criteria states that the student must demonstrate all three criteria to get direct consultant teacher services including: A. Student failed to meet NYS standards-1 or 2 NYS assessment in content area B. Student has failed this subject or achievement has been 70 or below the previous year. C. Student has significant weaknesses in reading, writing, vocabulary, language processing and organization. The problem that I have with this is that it includes students who are already receiving direct consultant teacher services. It is saying that if we are doing our jobs as a consultant teacher in leveling the playing field for our students and they are scoring in the B range with our services they can no longer get the services the following year. This just blows my mind. Basically for a student to be able to continue their present services they must be failing the course. My question to you is: Can a district really have this type of criteria for placement in a program? I was always told that we take all of the information that we have on a student and provide them with the service that best fits their needs. These new criteria seem to tell us that if we are doing our jobs and our consultant students are passing they do not need to receive services the next year. It is really frustrating how things are run around here. The other option for a student in our district is indirect consultant services. Indirect consultant services in our district do not provide students with much if any services. The students are supposed to receive 2 hours per week. I believe that we need a way to find a way to log the time we spend consulting with these students, otherwise they are being left behind. Sorry to bother you again, but it is hard to find answers to these questions in any of the literature. Thank you for all of your help in advance. Sincerely, Steven Johnson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone.