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Jessica Schleif

Fellows Patrice

Supporting Students with Disabilities

30 July 2017

IEP Piece

Within my Supporting Students with Disabilities class I learned about the different steps

of the Special Education Referral Process which is necessary for the creation and implication of

an IEP (Individual Education Plane). The first step in the referral prosses is not really considered

an official step of this process but it is more or less the act that starts the entire process of

referral, which would be to have recognition that there is a problem in a students learning and

there needs to be some sort of intervention if the students is to succeed academically.

The next and first official step of this process is referred to as Pre-referral, which helps to

determine whether behavioral and educational changes shown by the child could be resolved in a

general education classroom. Which means that the childs teacher will supervise the

development of the student and try various certified teaching approaches in hopes of establishing

whether flawed instruction could be the cause of the problems exhibited. While also evaluating

the usefulness of the classroom changes and accommodations, and determine if they are helping

the student or not. The pre-referral process is also conducted with the use of direct performance

procedures to help save money, time, and other resources in this process. For the children, whose

learning is still a problem will be referred to the next step of this process.

The second step in the referral process would be Referring, which is where a student is

quite literally referred for special education services. A referral can also come from many

different people who may think it is necessary for the student to receive assistance; some of these
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people could be a parent, daycare professionals, public health nurses, doctors, or social service

agencies. The referral step can also be tricky because it can happen at any different time in a

students life based of their individual needs. However, often poor academic performance,

continued misbehavior, or disruption of their learning environment are prerequisites to this stage.

The third step in this prosses would be Identification, which is where a special

assessment is carried out to determine whether the child has a disability that requires special

education services. During these assessments, the childs major life activities such as

interpersonal relationships, performance at school and home are being observed to help

determine a baseline of performance is determined. At this step a team is also created to help

with the collection of data types used to create an accurate report that can be used later to

determine the correct path for the student. This team can consist of parents and other family

members, educational diagnostician, school psychologist, and a teacher, depending on the state

where it is conducted.

The fourth step would be Eligibility, which uses the information gathered from the

assessments to categorize those who have a disability and eligible for special education services

and the IEP committee creates different elements of the services required to plan and implement

an appropriate education framework. However, students who do not meet the qualifications for

special education services remain in the traditional classroom setting.

The fifth step is the Development of the IEP, which includes creating an official IEP team

which includes the childs parent(s), educators, administrators, and other specialists and also a

child advocate who are paid professionals familiar with these proceedings and work specifically

for the child and their parents. Developing an IEP also requires a meeting to occur where the

team will be discussing identifying the resources required by the child, their individualized
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learning style determined, along with the discussing the childs goals both long term and short

term.

The sixth step in this process would be the Implementation, which is where the

accommodations are provided for the instructions and testing, and the use of multidisciplinary

services are provided to support the childs educational program. Some of the providers that the

child may needs to interact with would be an occupational or physical therapists, speech

pathologists, and other special education professionals.

The seventh and final step in this process would be Evaluation and Reviews, which

consists of annual reviews to determine whether the child is meeting their educational goals. If

the goals are not being met, then this is the time when revisions can be made to an IEP to find

new ways for the child to meet their IEP goals and new milestones are determined. In some

cases, a child can even be moved back into a traditional classroom setting.

Simulation Reflection

In my Supporting Students with Disabilities course my class mates and I also participated

in a IEP simulation where we were to act as either one of the members of an IEP team, the

student, or the student who the meeting was for. In the simulation, I was the general education

teacher, who had noticed thing about the student and was wanting to know what I could do to

help the student achieve their academic goals. Which I thought would be an interesting

perspective to try and see an IEP from, and overall it was a great learning experience because it

gave me a sense of what it feels the mental exaction and tedious work that has to go into creating

an initial IEP for a student. One of the other things that I learned from this simulation is that I

prefer working in the special education field a lot because I know of so many great thing that

would help a student like to one in our simulation and it was really hard not to be able to share
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those ideas because they were not in the general education teachers area of expertise. Overall, the

simulation was a rather enjoyable experience and I would love to do one again.

The image below is from the simulation.