There’s a young new teacher who teaches 5th grade. She acts like she is so smart. She and I have gotten along most of the year, or so I thought. These last couple of months she has called extra IEP meetings. I’m the case manager. She has brought up how she wants to change the IEP goals. These were based on assessments used by the special ed team. She thinks some of her kids do better than what the testing shows. She has a grade book that she uses as her evidence.
I’ve seen some of the writing done by some of my students and it’s way below what is expected. She thinks the writing is pretty good though. Based on what? I don’t know. It’s her first year of teaching! She has no rubrics. She corrects all of their mistakes then has them type them. I know because they brought their work to my room. She told me to correct their mistakes. I said how about I have THEM find and correct their own mistakes? Like have them go through their writing and look for capitalization, then spelling (they could use spell-check) punctuation etc. There’s more.
I just got an email tonight from the principal saying this teacher is concerned because she thinks the IEP didn’t get changed months ago. What?! She always talks to the principal. I want to email back that she never talked to me about this concern.
Shouldn’t a principal ask s teacher if she talked to the person first before going to her? I think it’s very unprofessional behavior.
The principal is very anti special ed BTW. Oh, and our last day of school is tomorrow.
Assessments and work product lead to proper goals, but you have to be very careful with work product. If another adult is helping them produce the work, as in finding mistakes for them, can you really use that piece of work as an independent work product. Sure it may be a small part of teaching the information for the goals, but it is only a small part. Without instruction of proper mechanics and application in isolation coupled with application is a product, you can't just use any product as proof.
If she thinks this is good work when it is very below grade level, I would be concerned about what she is expecting from the regular education students!
The P should have addressed this differently. Were changes made to the IEP? Were any of substance? Maybe she thinks that all changes she suggests must be made rather than it be a team decision. While the IEP can be changed slightly without a meeting, that doesn't apply to major changes such as goals only minimal changes such an an adjustment to some accommodations.
You are right on both accounts. P should have had her talk to you first, but I believe that you would have ended up in a meeting with the P either way. You are also right that you should never change goals based on the grade book unless the team does a terrible job with goals and uses graded work for the progress monitoring which is my huge pet peeve because it is always used to fudge progress because the work is rarely independent and grades are always inflated.
It's unfortunate that your principal humors her. I don't think that would fly here. I've never worked with a gen ed teacher that really cared that much what the goals are, honestly. It's just kind of well known that the sped teacher writes the IEP. Like a pp mentioned, I'm wondering how she has time to worry about someone else's job.
I only amend goals if the student meets them early. In our IEP system we can generate an amendment prior written notice that parents can sign and agree to make changes without calling an additional IEP meeting.
Do you have to specify how data will be collected in your goals? We do, and "grade book" is definitely not a choice. You know your P best and if this will end up backfiring on you, but if it were me I'd say something like:
"Thanks for passing this along. I'm disappointed that Ms. _______ didn't bring up this concern to me before seeking out administration. According to the data I've collected for xyz student, he hasn't met his current IEP goal, which means it can't be changed yet. I'm glad that Ms. ________ is celebrating the progress that xyz student has made and I understand she has some grades that show the student has met the goal. However, these grades are based on guided practice assignments where the student received help with correcting his mistakes. In order to fully meet the IEP goal, the work has to be done 100% independently. I have samples that I can show if necessary. I hope this clears up any misunderstanding."
I talked to my special ed coordinator about this and she totally agreed with me. There have been other things with her earlier in the year.
I also found out that she did similar things to another special ed teacher.
It got dropped! I didn’t need to respond any further.
There is drama at the school especially between special and gen ed. The principal doesn’t understand special ed at all so that kinda sets the tone of the school. I’ve taught both myself.
Thanks all for the advice, responses and replies. You all were a great help.
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06-06-2018, 10:03 PM
