Cheat Sheets for Little Johnny or Jamilah

Let's talk IEPs.

It's coming to the time of year when parents and teachers are thinking about thinking about returning to school.

In the social media world, families are once again beginning to share templates for cute little cheat-sheets that summarize the strengths and deficits of their kids with disabilities, listing the accommodations and teaching strategies that have been included in their children's IEPs.

I know that teachers appreciate this. And I know that parents do this all the time.

Such cheat sheets can be helpful. After all, teachers have a lot of children to teach. The children have many needs and the teacher is just one person. Teachers have countless IEPs and 504s, and it's a lot to handle.

But, for a moment, imagine people in other professions making the same sort of statements. Imagine a surgeon saying that it's hard to keep track of the information about all of his or her patients. Imagine a sports coach saying that it's difficult to meet the needs of all of his or her players because there are so many players on his team. Do people show meet with accountants and attorneys with cheat sheets that summarize salient points that they provide with the expectation that the professionals won't read the underlying documents? That would be unheard of.

IDEA is profoundly underfunded. It is a demanding law that mandates difficult-to-meet requirements on school districts. I've researched this for at least a decade, I've communicated with families from around the country, and I've been made aware of only a handful of school districts that are implementing the special-education-and-related-services process very well, without struggles on the part of good teachers to advocate to make sure that all the children's needs are being met appropriately. The environment is particularly difficult for children with language disorders who are in educational settings (elementary schools in particular) with standards that rely heavily on language, regardless of subject.

Something needs to be done to change the educational culture so that the education of children with disabilities is as valued in the population of gened teachers as the education of children without disabilities. There needs to be the expectation that gened teachers will show up at--and participate in--IEP meetings. IEPs need to be made available to all gened teachers. There needs to be the expectation that the IEPs will be read--and heeded--by all teachers.

The cute little cheat sheets are great, but I just want to encourage people to take a step back and, for a moment, give a "wait, what?" response when seeing one of them. When did it become acceptable, even necessary, for a client to assist a professional in fulfilling his or her responsibilities?