An investigation by the Maryland State Department of Education, opened to follow up on complaints from parents of autistic students at a Carroll County middle school, has concluded that teachers for special education students were highly qualified but that deadlines for filing individualized education programs (IEPs) were missed, the Baltimore Sun reports.
“We are pleased that MSDE concurred that our students have been taught by a highly qualified teacher and that even when the classroom teacher was absent, that the substitute was trained and supervised by another highly qualified teacher,” the paper quoted a statement from Carroll County Public Schools as saying. “We note that MSDE determined that some regulatory deadlines were missed and our staff will work to make sure that these deadlines are met in the future.”
A group of parents filed a complaint with MSDE in May alleging that the staff at New Windsor Middle School neglected their children by placing one special education teacher on administrative leave and not telling the parents.
IEPs are created for students who have certain disabilities that require special services. Public schools provide them free of charge to families. Understanding how to use them can help parents be effective advocates for their kids, and so keeping parents informed is important for the schools, students, and communities.
When Congress updated the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 2004, the changes made parents of kids with special needs critical players in their children’s education team. In schools across America, parents schedule regular meetings to work with school staff, including special education and regular teachers, to develop the IEP for their child. The gist of this process is to set goals for the student and identify any special assistance the student requires to help them succeed in school.
In addition to students with autism, other disabilities or disorders make a student eligible for an IEP:
- learning disabilities
- attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- developmental delay
- emotional disorders
- cognitive challenges
- hearing, visual, speech, or language impairment
To develop an IEP for a student, school officials and parents coordinate conferences and other meetings to assess the student’s academic progress and needs. These often include face-to-face meetings at the school, with and without the student present, observations of the student, and analyses of the student’s performance in school—attention, behavior, work completion, tests, classwork, homework, etc.
The MSDE report for Carroll County said that for some students, the school system didn’t follow proper procedures to identify and address all of the students’ social, emotional, and behavioral needs or to ensure that students with IEPs were making the expected progress toward their annual goals.