If you want positive outcomes, it’s important to do more than just show up once a year! Preparation and continued involvement throughout the year are what it takes to see adequate gains. Otherwise, the odds are that you will be disappointed and we all know you don’t want that. So, accepting the shared responsibility of monitoring and supporting your child’s education is the golden rule, I can promise you that.
Imagine that your child’s education is like being on a cruise ship. He is doing well in school and there are no problems. The teachers are great, the school is accommodating, and all seems to be splendidly ship-shape. Then, suddenly and without warning, you sail directly into an iceberg. In order to not quickly sink the ship that threatens to negate the progress and destroy trust with all of those that we assumed were watching over the course we were sailing, your involvement, responsibility, monitoring and support will will keep your ship afloat.
At a minimum, establishing clear communication and monitoring quarterly progress is pivotal to achieving positive outcomes. This ongoing participation and understanding of procedural process are what increase the likelihood of those desired outcomes. Although there is no guarantee that children with disabilities will learn, there is a guarantee that they will have an equal opportunity to learn.
Using the procedural process http://www.parentcenterhub.org/repository/pa12/ is how we do that. More than once I have heard a parent say that they do not have the time to learn the process, despite the offer of free training. Use the training! It will be much easier to make the time now than it will be when your child exits the system of entitlement and enters into post-secondary world of eligibility. What I mean is that it’s easier now than later, when they are thirty and sitting on your couch with no marketable skills or independent living options. A positive outcome would be that he or she is well prepared with job skills, working, and living independently.
The process exists and there are timelines in place to safeguard against a negative outcome. IDEA requires transitional services to be in place by age sixteen. With advance preparation, we have options in case children with disabilities drop out of school. There is a plan in place to make sure they have the skills to be employed and agencies already identified to help make it happen.
http://www.parentcenterhub.org/repository/transitionadult/
Achieving the three important goals of: being gainfully employed, living independently, and having quality of life, requires due diligence on behalf of parents. Learning procedural process set forth by federal law and applying it individually in the manner it was intended to be done will result in the outcomes you seek. IDEA is a wonderful law that has progressed and evolved over three decades to reach the point where it is today. That happened by parental involvement, much of which was expended by parents that never received the benefit for their own children, but resulted in a positive change for so many others.
There are times when I reflect back on the significant impact my role of advocacy had on my child’s education. One of those happened when out of frustration, I had spent the day on the phone speaking with numerous agencies regarding issues of non-compliance. At the end of the day I found myself in a long conversation with an attorney from a non-profit advocacy group who perhaps gave me the single most effective piece of advice and I vividly remember her words to this day. “Mr. Hawke, if you are waiting for a knight in shining armor to come and rescue you, forget it. It is not going to happen. If you want the things you need, you have to learn how to do this.”
That single statement hit me like a glass of ice water thrown in my face and launched me down a determined course to follow what she suggested. I couldn’t have been given better guidance as evidenced by my son’s successes!
http://www.flafathers.com/stories/graduation%20success%202003.pdf
So let me pass that advice on to you. Step up, learn the process and become involved. Be the difference and do more than just show up. You are your child’s best advocate!
For Parents of today struggling or feeling they do not have time to attend webinars or read any of the many resources available today…. I’d ask you to rethink that.
When I needed to step up to the plate and be an advocate for my daughter (early 2004) it was a struggle to learn what my daughters rights were. Actually I didn’t even know back then that she had rights. I just knew she was struggling at her school and I was getting minimal to no help from the school as to why. When I did learn of her rights I literally had to fight the school to try to have my child’s rights being taken serious. I had to stay vigilant and follow-up non-stop to see evals were schedule, perform, results were given and goals set accordingly.
I attended countless IEP’s to be sure there was a game-plan on setting goals on the IEP. What were the goals, how they would be measured and in what time frame. Believe me things are FAR MORE easier today for the parents than what I experienced and had to go through.
For the parents of today please take advantage of what great resources you now have that were not readily availed to me when I needed help. Most Schools today are far more easier to work with and want to collaborate with concerns, evaluations and more. This is not a luxury I had back then.
Parents please trust me when you take the time to learn your child or children’s rights you do not have to have a law degree to understand their rights. However in taking the time to understand and learn their rights it will pay off. You will be amazed at the power you will have in knowledge. I highly recommend you make the time, even if only a couple minutes a day or week. Once you realize and learn you will feel empowered and the end result ….you will eventually empower your own child to advocate for themselves. When you see the difference in child, their ease at no longer having to struggle so hard as they did before, you will be happy and glad you did what you did by advocating for them.
Please I fought a lot years ago for my daughter and by doing so things have changed, and by doing so it has helped to make things a lot easier for the parents of today.
I started being my daughters advocate at the age of 7 and I didn’t see my daughter become a self-advocate until her senior year in high school. However I have no regrets because seeing her finally becoming her own advocate made all the previous disagreements, struggles, and endless issues with some schools all worth it.
Since then a lot has changed the sooner you get the ball rolling and learn what you can do for your child, the sooner your child can receive help. Isn’t that alone worth investing time and energy into just to see your child less stressed and/or struggling in school?