3955153817_6095f44e53_q[1]I’ve been waiting for a month to receive answers about my child’s education.  My husband and I first became concerned when we noticed that our daughter had very little knowledge of what was being taught even though her grades reflected differently. She would tell us that she usually sat by herself to complete her work and would only get help if she raised her hand.

We also noticed that there was a disconnect between the special education teacher and my daughter when we went to her nine week conference.  She had little data about the IEP goals. We asked her special education teacher to show us the data that she had been collecting on the assignments that she assisted my daughter with.

It took a week before I got any information, and it was only seven sheets even though my daughter had been in school for two months. The sheets had nothing written on them. I asked the teacher to let me know when she was working with my daughter and what type of techniques she was doing to help her. She only sent back the accommodations that were already on my daughter’s IEP plan instead of answering the question directly. I responded that I wanted to see actual data, and I wanted to have examples of how she was accommodating my daughter. The teacher then sent me an email telling me that my concerns have been forwarded to the principal of the school. Two weeks past and I still had no response from the principal.

During this time, we also hired an advocate for our family. The advocate is really well-versed on the laws about the 504, Individualized Educational Plan (IEP), and The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).  He told me that the purpose is to help us as parents to become advocates, so that we don’t need him one day. We talked about how we wanted to handle the situation and decided that we would request an IEP meeting with the principal, special education teacher, regular teacher, and speech therapist. I sent them an email and informed them that my advocate would be coming with me as well. I got a response back within two hours from the principal!

I gave them three dates to choose from over the next two weeks and am awaiting their response. I think it is absolutely a shame that the principal didn’t find it necessary to respond to me until I told her that I had an advocate. This is our job as parents- to do whatever we feel is necessary to get the right and appropriate education for our children. I am looking forward to our meeting and hope that my husband and I, along with the advocate can get the services my daughter needs in place and enforced to continue to succeed in school.

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