Paper Work in Education
By bobmnu
@bobmnu (8157)
United States
April 22, 2007 8:28pm CST
I was talking to a Special Education Teacher and was told that she was spending half of of her time doing and redoing her paper work. It seems that the Federal Law Individuals with Disablities Education Act(IDEA)requires an Individual Education Plan (IEP)for each student the teacher is responsible for. Her concern was that each IEP was about 15 to 20 pages and had to be approved by the parent. If the parent do not agree then they can request a due process hearing and they can engage a lawyer who will be paid for by the School District if the parents prevail. Prevail is a legal term that if the parents are succesful in some of their demands then the School District must pay for the lawyer. It is estimated that the Federal government is paying out $2 Billion to local School Districts to help with the cost of Special Education which is estimated at 18 Billion Dollars per year.
Is the Federal Government putting Local School Districts and teachers in an almost impossible situtation. Most parents are easy to work with and only whant what is best for the child. But there are one or two parents in each school district that will fight the district for any reason and will drain the district of resources and take the teacher away from teaching. Should IDEA be forcing teacher to spend their time doing paper work and not teaching students?
2 people like this
1 response
@SageMother (2277)
• United States
23 Apr 07
Since I work in special education things rings a bell here.
The IEP's should be dont a little at a time with the childs work and any notes on their behavior being stored in a file where they can be looked at and used for the re-evaluations that must take place. Yes...it is a lot of paper work. Yes, it takes the teacher's time but the teachers where I live can call in a substitute teacher to run the class while getting ready for these meetings and other documentation.
This is going to get a lot worse, though. As Federal Funds are cut for residential treatment centers, where documentation is easier to accomplish, these students will be in the public school system. Whether or not the teacher SHOULC be forced is no longer the question. It is now "how is the system going to manage"?
@bobmnu (8157)
• United States
23 Apr 07
It is time that all Special Education teachers contacted the Congressmen and tell them that IDEA needs to bechanged. I think the first thing is get rid of the lawyers. I was involved in a due process hearing with a lawyer and the parent had a complaint as to how the school handled a students outburst that involved trashing a classroom and throwing a chair at the principal. The police were called. The first meeting with the parent we had two areas of concern and we were trying to work out a solution. The parents hired a lawyer and at the next meeting the lawyer had a list of 135 concerns including such things as the student (Middle School Age) not receiving the counseling required (1 hour per week) by the IEP. The student went to the counselor during the study period (27 min) twice a week. They also complained about the use of the work contact police and in the behavior plan it stated call the police. After the hearing we were told to change several things in the IEP including seeing that he got the 1 hour of counseling instead of the 54 min. In total we had to change 7 of the items they complained about. Not one dealt with the behavior of the child. The lawyer bill was $75,000. The school appealed to the state and they awarded the Lawyer $35,000. The school district paid $$30,000 in extra legal fees for our lawyer and another $5,000 to $7,000 in lost wages, sub pay, and travel expenses. The district could have hired 2 teachers for what we spent on that one case and nothing was resolved.
I am a former school administrator and have seen County Agencies push thier areas of responabilities on to the school because the school has to provide services and the county has some choice and can set limits. Schools should be able to refuse services to students who can not be handled in residential treatment programs. In my experience schools are being asked to take in the students that one one else can deal with, all because of IDEA requiring school to educate all Handicapped students. Things need to change.
