Don’t Miss Asking these Questions at Your Matriculation Meeting

As matriculation meetings will be starting soon (they typically begin after Spring Break), it’s important to know and understand your child’s rights to inclusive education. I find that most parents don’t know that the federal law (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) requires that all IEP teams consider a regular education placement EVERY YEAR – not just when the school staff deem your child as being “ready” – whatever that is :/
 
As you begin to think about next school year, which may or may not involve your child’s current school, it’s important to think about the following particulars.
 

Instructional Placement

• At your IEP meeting, does the team begin by describing what there is to offer at your home school – which may not have a “special program”?
• Is the general education classroom with and without a paraprofessional the first consideration when an instructional setting is discussed?
• Are special education instructional settings, when located outside of the general education classroom, placed throughout the school building within age, grade, or department appropriate areas? Or are they in a portable segregated from most of the campus?
• Do the students in special programs have comparable access to learning material to those available for general education students? I heard from a teacher last week that his special program classroom was not provided with the smartboards that the general classrooms received.
• Are decisions about instructional placements determined on the basis of student needs rather than labels or available services? (This could sound like ,”We place all children with autism in an autism cluster to begin, and when they’re ready, we begin inclusion.”)

Collaboration

• Are teachers and paraprofessionals of special program classrooms considered important members of the school faculty? This may be exhibited by their participation on the School Advisory Council.
• Do general education and special education teachers regularly plan together for the benefit of students with disabilities?
• Are general education teachers knowledgeable of the contents of your child’s IEP… whom they are responsible?
• Do general education teachers see students as “their” students, or someone just visiting? (If your child is going into their classroom for 30 minutes per day, that’s visiting)

Instruction

• Does the school provide a push-in model where a special educator goes into the regular classrooms to provide instruction to students, and collaborate with the teacher?
• Do teachers use a variety of instructional strategies (cooperative learning activities, visual representation of auditory material, person to person instruction vs computer-based, etc.)?
• Is differentiated instruction implemented throughout the school campus for the benefit of all students? Ask the school if the teacher knows how to differentiate for students who learn differently.
• Do teachers understand the difference between accommodations and modifications?
• Is there a campus-wide behavioral support system in place at the school?

Social Development

• Does the school have a plan/program for increasing positive student-to-student relationships (ex: Peers as Partners in Learning, Circle of Friends, etc.)?
• Are special populations students invited to all field trips, assemblies, book fairs, etc?
• Do parents of students with disabilities appear to be welcomed and valued partners at the school?

 
In Florida, every district school is required to have a BPIE – Best Practices for Inclusive Education. Read more here to help you determine if your school has the plan that it should.  

If you need to know how to conduct a school tour, check out this blog piece.

Happy advocating!