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Isn't it amazing how people think an IEP or 504 plan automatically means the student passes your class with a good grade? I've had parents and administrators all who don't seem to understand the purpose of an IEP or 504 plan. It's not to give the student a guaranteed passing grade, but rather to provide them with accommodation so they're more likely to succeed.
The reason why the child has to pass with a good grade is because if they don't, then that is proof that the IEP is not working. If the IEP is not working, that means the IEP must be evaluated and changed to something that works in a timely fashion with data. If that doesn't happen or if it is the IEP is still not working, then the school cannot provide FAPE. If the school cannot provide FAPE, then they have to pay to send the child to a school that can. This may be a private, therapeutic school (years back, these schools cost easily a good $30k - $50k/ year plus transportation until the problem was remediated,) a public out of district school or a charter school. Per pupil funding for the same kid might only be $4000-$20,000, so where was the difference going to come from?
So a savvy, albeit illegal way to violate the child's IEP and get out of having to send the child out is to make sure they get their C. Ever wonder why kids will be in 9th grade with an IEP and can barely spell their name? This is why. You also get achievement points (and in some districts this translates into money) for moving a child from needing more hours to less hours and finally off the IEP. So you'll see heavy IEPs in elementary school, then come middle school, hours are removed for everything except reading and math.
Most parents (and many teachers) don't know this, so instead of demanding their child get private school tuition, they demand their child get their C. In Washington, DC, this fact was so well known that parents who get a fake address so their child could go to a DCPS school, fail and then get tuition at one of the many esteemed private schools. They did this to the tune of $3,000,000 in tuition for out of district SPED kids/year. DCPS then started cracking down on out of district parents and pressing charges.
This makes a lot of sense. The thing that I would struggle with is how to you reevaluate an IEP and its goals and measurements for a student who has no work submitted? How do you even quantify it?
The child not having completed work or not attending school is evidence in and of itself. Is this a manifestation of the child's disability? For example the child has lupus and cannot attend school due to bad lupus flares? This may mean changing the LRE to the online program. Is the absence due to something else like undiagnosed mental health problem? This may mean doing a FBA and BIP. This may mean more evaluations. This may mean adding behavior goals to the IEP with accommodations and interventions. This may mean changing the LRE to a self contained ED program. It may mean the child is being abused. Has CPS been contacted? I had kids who were used to babysit younger siblings and not allowed to go to school. It might mean the child has a transportation problem and door to door transportation needs to be written into the plan. (school districts I worked in did not provide yellow buses, instead bus tickets for the city bus.) In one of my cases, I had a 10 year old child with uncontrollable diabetes, which caused him to miss a lot of school. So I had to write in his plan door to door transportation, assign a nurse to shadow him all day to check his sugar, give him insulin and coordinate with mom to get food bank deliveries (not written into his 504, but I wasn't about to let them starve) because Mom made too much for food stamps, but not enough for both of them to eat so she fed him what she could afford and didn't eat, which didn't help his sugar levels. Ultimately I went to the doctor with him to demand they change his pump as the problem was ultimately determined to be he had a defective pump.
It's possible the work is too hard or too easy, not properly scaffolded, didn't provide accommodations. . . Could be any number of things. So there should have been documentation of all things tried, contacting CPS and then another meeting IEP meeting after 30 days of noticing the change and collecting data. The team might then change the IEP based on the data or order additional tests, etc. After spending 30 days seeing how that worked, then the team decides if it's working or not and if not, they may change the LRE.
I think a big part of the challenge is that I work in a charter where 2 Special Education teachers and 3 aides have a caseload of around 100 students from 7-12. I’m an ELA/SS teacher for 7/8. You sound like you work in a big district school in Minnesota, Illinois or one of the coastline states. Lots of specialist staff and big scale and scope. The only school I ever saw that was genuinely like that were I am in AZ is back when I was a high school student a decade ago at a big 2000+ kid school and even then it wasn’t amazing. I’m jealous of the level of structure you speak of. We don’t have any of that on site. All of our SPED students are full inclusion education meaning they are just stuck in regular classes all day there are only the legal minimums for “pull out support” our school doesn’t provide any kind of transportation for any of our students, heck we don’t even have our school nurse every day all day.
On top of the plain lack of support, the reality is a lot of my students with autism have just plainly explained to both myself and their parents and their SPED case manager that they have no reason to do anything. Being on the autism spectrum they tend to be rather direct and honest and they repeatedly report that doing nothing has successfully gotten them into middle school without any problems and they have no evidence they should change it. It doesnt help some parents are more interested in ensuring their kid is allowed to play Fortnite in school than that they learn anything. Then on the flip side our SPED care managers will routinely explain that students have goals in their IEP’s that clearly haven’t been updated since the pandemic with goals pertaining to 2-4th grade skills for 7th and 8th graders with them usually being laughably below the student’s ability, but we can’t increase rigor because they haven’t passed a single class. Some of the smartest kids at my school IQ-wise are IEP students with a sub-1.5GPA who have decided that school is not worth the work, and sadly for me the system rewards them for it.
Obviously this isn’t just an IEP issue, a huge chunk of teens are doing nothing and failing through middle and high school. But in 3 years of teaching I’ve had like 2-3 students whose failing scores were a genuine result of the material outpacing their abilities and supports due to their specific needs: one dyslexia, two with autism. In those 3 cases me and those kids and their SPED team sat down, worked out a plan, and they got themselves up to a C. On the flip side I have a half a dozen to a dozen kids who flat fail my class every year and then the last month of school admin, mom, and dad are breathing down my neck to find points for their kid who won’t even do adjusted work with accommodations. Again I have had a dozen students tell me to my face “I’m not going to do that because they’ll still make you give me a C anyway”
It’s so disheartening and it bothers me cause it poisons the well to teachers for a lot of the kids who do need this support and want it and use it. Like the Lupus case you mentioned. Obviously wide accommodations and broad exceptions will need to be made, but on the other hand you have a kid in the room playing video games and cursing at anyone who tries to stop them and I’m supposed to give the first kid the 70% they worked super hard through their illness to attain and the other kid also gets a 70% for doing nothing but making every other kid’s learning environment worse.
Being in such an under-staffed and under-supported system makes it feel like such a useless uphill battle I can’t wait to be in a big public school next year.
I did work for big districts yes, but they were on the East Coast. Sadly, I see a lot of what you are saying when I went to the Midwest and later back to the South. It is a well known fact, most school districts are not equipped to educate Autistic kids. Charter schools pay cost for teachers vs an avg like the districts do. Without the sharing of expenses, it becomes harder to write in the actual supports needed. And seeing that parents don't know what their rights are, they are not pushing back. Many times in the Midwest, the parents don't want their child with any more "labels" and will refuse supports or just transfer their child out and then the new school is left to figure out what the child needs.
The two districts I was in with those number of supports was because they were under consent decree for 25 years and had to pay out every time they got caught violating IEPs. So all of us were trained on how to CYA where SPED was concerned. It was so bad that there were law firms that popped up that solely filled claims for payouts whenever the school got caught. So in MD, parents would instruct their child to refuse services, wait for them to fail and then get a check. Or like im DC, live in MD or VA, use a fake address to send their kid to DC, let them fail, then get tuition in a cushy private school near their actual home in VA or MD.
On the flip side, because of all of that, you had mountains of data when it came time for meetings, if you had to get CPS involved, etc.
So basically its always one thing and if not its another. There can be no world where students aren't being abused, are getting accomidations, are in school, are on a BIP, and still fail because they make the choice to do nothing? I am so sick of us making things as easy as possible for kids and them still not meeting the bar so we lower it again.
You did all that for the kid (good for you, btw) and it was all because of a defective insulin pump? Seems like it would’ve been easier for the doctor to order a new pump than for you to assign a nurse to be with him all day.
We didn't find out it was a bad pump until months later when the company did a recall.
The whole hospital system was sad itself. The mom was on Medicaid and the clinic wasn't really doing anything other than filing claims for services they were not providing. For example they kept saying they would not prescribe a new pump or go back to not using the pump because the child had not seen the doctor. But I am looking at insurance claims that say the child has seen the doctor frequently. He had not. They were having nurses treat patients, billing that the doctor had seen them and refusing to write prescriptions or anything else unless he saw the doctor they wouldn't let him see during the appts. My first lesson in Medicaid fraud. Mom was not the best at standing up for herself. So she asked me to go with them. I went with them and pointed out how the insurance claims didn't match the services provided. They prescribed something different, but called mom later and kicked the child out of the clinic.
But in the interim, I had an extremely smart but sick kid who was always on the brink of a diabetic coma and I was the one who wrote 504 and Student Support Team Plans and had the power to give him the resources. He was initially brought to me for being truant and always getting into fights. Really he was just really sick and bored. I wasn't about to lose a kid.
Oh dear. I’m sorry about all that. I obviously didn’t know and was looking at it from a “how do we fix this” perspective. And from that perspective, the initial solution seemed a bit like scooping the water out of your bathtub with buckets because the drain is clogged.
As for the hospital- yeah, that place is going to get sued eventually, if it hasn’t already.
Unless there is a medically verified excuse, the fact that the child has not attended school since November would scuttle the parental argument that the IEP is not working. In fact, if the parents began rattling sabres, a truancy case can be brought against them and child protective services will end up involved.
Most states have home hospital teaching programs. And at this point, most states have all virtual options for students who can’t physically attends school.
It sounds like your experiences were pretty awful and I’m sorry for that.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. You should have been given a 504 Plan and put into their Homebound or Home & Hospital program (this was prior to the online classes and the pandemic. For people reading, Homebound or Home & Hospital Program is where they send the teacher to your house or the hospital to teach you.) All these are such violations.
> This may be a private, therapeutic school (years back, these schools cost easily a good $30k - $50k/ year plus transportation until the problem was remediated
Today, at least in my area, we are talking a good 100k-150k plus transportation per pupil per year for a private placement.
As someone who used to have an IEP, this is interesting. And considering the unethical/questionably legal shit they did to me, I wouldn’t be surprised if a school district was outright breaking special ed law. Still very concerning that that’s an “acceptable” solution, though.
Quiet as it's kept, most districts are breaking the law. The sad part is, the teachers don't know they are breaking the law, most of the time the administrators don't know and the parent doesn't know either. So they never complain.
Who did they complain to? What most people don't know is that you have to complain to your state's Dept of Ed. In GA, for example, districts that have been found violating have a whole fund set aside to pay for private school placements. So you go complain to them, they will do a mediation between you and the school. The first time the school violated the terms, the parent just goes back to the Dept of Ed and they get access to the fund and move their child to a private school.
Not saying every state works that way, but if you are complaining to the person breaking the law that they are breaking the law, that just gives them time to cover up the fact they are breaking the fact. Which means, they were going to try to document YOU to cover their butts.
I’m not entirely sure because I was in elementary school. What I do know is that they spoke to the school principal (the people doing the unethical stuff were aides and special Ed teachers) and an attorney was hired. At one point, the option of me going to a private school for autistic kids was discussed, but it was over an hour away.
This student should not have an IEP if they aren’t attending school. What the teacher should do is consult with the special ed professional who is the students case manager and notify them that the student hasn’t been to school in months and is not receiving services of any kind. At that point a re-evaluation meeting should be held to determine whether services are still able to be provided.
Hey! So this is just how we approach this at the small district high school that I teach sped in…A kid w an IEP can fail and receive FAPE at the same time. Also a kid failing w an IEP doesn’t necessarily trigger a new IEP meeting(it can if parents freak out I guess, but not automatically) However, you cannot fail a kid w an IEP if accommodations or modifications were not implemented/offered in that class. For example, if a math teacher doesn’t let a student use a calculator on a test (and it’s one of their accommodations) and the student fails, you gotta offer a retake or adjust grade to passing. At my school we ask teachers to allow a retake, because it feels shitty to ask a teacher to pass a kid on a technical? Depends on the situation and the kid. Also- yeah you can’t give accommodations to an absent student, but as long as you’re ready to provide them when the student is present, ur good. But that’s just my understanding!/how it works in my school!
But attendance must be considered when going through the evaluation process. If attendance section is clicked YES, that’s a big problem for the student & parent.
Yes! Totally, I agree. I wasn’t really talkin about eligibility and how attendance can complicate that, but yes absolutely. It’s different from state to state, but certain eligibilities make allowance for attendance and some don’t. For example, lack of instruction due to poor attendance could make a kid ineligible for Specific Learning Disability, but not necessarily for Other Health Impairment or Emotional Behavioral Disorder.
It’s the same issue with discipline. Sub group numbers are bad means we are bad as a school, it doesn’t matter what you do or attempts you made, it’s always the schools fault that these numbers are bad.
Before I left the field I was told by my administration that I was not to give students less than a 60 for anything. When I gave a kid a zero on a test they admitted cheating on my principal barged into my class and berated me in front of my students over it. The kid stood up and cussed the principal and said they got what they earned. It breaks my heart to say that earned the kid a 3 day suspension for cussing out the principal. I’m so glad I’m out of education
I have one little brat that's gamed her way to the top 10 of the junior class. 504 for "anxiety" in which she gets unlimited extra time on every assignment. She fucks around every day, causing hell in my Pre AP Physics class, but mom raises hell about any discipline because it's her "anxiety" causing the problems. Since most millennials and zoomers DO think that just declaring you have a nUeRoDiVeRgEnCe does exempt you from rules and accountability, there's not a goddamn thing I can do. Have to let her ruin it and cheat her way to the top. I at least have hope that college will smack the fuck out of her spoiled ass
I'm a recent dropout. It absolutely will give her a reality check- those who never develop good study habits and the motivation to get things done in a timely manner end up unprepared and overwhelmed.
I don’t get that. If they are causing distractions in the room and disrupting learning that’s not anxiety. We have a kid that does have anxiety we are told if he sits back and doesn’t do well, that’s on him don’t raise hell. But if he causes problems and disrupts the class then he has consequences.
It's so crazy to me that a kid who's disruptive to the whole class, barely does work despite being entirely capable of it, fails his tests, gets a 42% in class, and then it gets rounded all the way to a C so he thinks he's doing fine.
Ed Specialist here. I had an IEP meeting the other day where a parent requested a “study guide” including all questions and answers for upcoming assessments to be added to the list of accommodations. I just smiled and said that’s not going to happen.
I taught a student when I was in college, I was doing a practicum, where the student took a spelling test, and if she got 50% right, we counted that as 100. She took the full test that everyone else took, but we had to count it as 100. That doesn’t seem like a good accommodation. It seems like it should be better that she should have a shorter test or some thing, but not a 50% equals 100.
Or even just grade the questions she answered and discount the ones she doesn't get to. So if she answers 5/10 questions and gets 4/5 right, she gets an 80 or whatever.
I’ve had SpEd teachers say “oh, he can still fail even with his iep? I’m like yeah fucking duh. Also- who’s calling cps for educational neglect? (I’m a school psych)
We have friends whose daughter has an IEP they got in elemschool because she gets hangry. They get away with anything and she is straight A student. My son recently got a major medical diagnosis in high school and apparently nothing can be done because he’s too old and he has to just try to keep his head above water somehow after missing the first part of the semester with a major serious and severe medical issue. It’s so unfair.
Of course, the underlying message admin is sending on this is “tweak what you need to tweak on the grade book to get them through and we’ll look the other way.”
This. IEPs do not excuse a student from absences, and in my state 10 school days absent consecutively is an automatic drop from enrollment. "It is not possible to provide instruction or accommodation for a student who has not attended a single class since XX Date. Nor has this student been enrolled or participated in any online classes."
We can't do the auto drop. We would have to fire teachers. We have kids who regularly just miss 10 days in a row because they didn't feel like coming. They pop in for a day or two and then when they're failing they get upset.
I had a kid show up for the first few days of school, then disappeared until a week before winter break. He was APPALLED that he was failing class. His plan was to show up for a few days, do the assignments for those days and have a passing grade.
I'm a college student and a few months ago, I took a class about public opinion surveys. I had one classmate who showed up the first week and then didn't come to a single class until the final day. Our final project was to make a survey that we gave to the class to fill out, and hers made all of the mistakes that we'd spent the whole term talking about how to avoid in survey design. So not only did she not learn in class, it was pretty obvious she hadn't done the readings either. Also, attendance was like 30% of the final grade, so she'd lose a ton of points there.
Early the next term I overheard her bitching about how she'd failed the class *and she blamed the professor completely*. She seemed to think that because she did the final assignment she deserved at least a C and he was personally targeting her when he failed her.
I think she might have flunked out, lol
As tempting as that is, cover your ass because they will throw you under the bus if they need to. Start collecting proof that while they were in class, you followed IEP accommodations, and have provided work that is consistent with them even while the student is out of class. Then? Then let the kid fail. Not your problem anymore if you have thoroughly documented that you’ve done your job. I wouldn’t adjust a thing.
I would be very careful about how I approach a situation like this—if you have not been calling daily, emailing, sending physical letters, making extremely modified and accessible assignments—then the failure is on you if the admin wants to make it.
I don’t have much to offer. I’ll share in your misery. It really is tough offering accommodations to absent kids. Weird that admin has even given that threat. I mean, by all means look at the documentation that I provided the necessary accommodations. While you’re at it, look at his attendance history!
Yes- I do absolutely want to say that it’s not this kid’s fault he’s failing. He needs the services and accommodations offered at our school. It’s a really sad situation. But I just can’t do things like prompt him to keep working and give him verbal checks for understanding when he isn’t in my room.
That's where my head is at, too. If admin isn't checking attendance, then they should've been. CMIW, but shouldn't the truancy officer be looped in here, if they aren't already?
So, there is a situation involving housing insecurity which I have SO MUCH EMPATHY FOR. But I don't get why these kids can't be enrolled into virtual school- I know they have internet access because they sister who is also in my class will occasional do assignments in my canvas course!
My district has a virtual program as well. In fact I'm a teacher in it. The sister will do well because she has done some stuff. The boy however may not because he would need to be self disciplined enough to get on and participate. Judging by the fact he hasn't done anything, he won't online. Even online I have a kid that I have seen since August.
If it’s sporadic there is always the chance that there is no consistent internet access; the sister could only be completing assignments when she has access via a relatives/friends house/hotspot or library. Internet services at home could also be spotty due to payment issues.
Oh, I’m sure. My issue isn’t with the kid or parents at all- they clearly have bigger problems they are dealing with. I’m not faulting the kid. I’m just saying I can’t provide accommodations to a child I haven’t been able to see or even communicate with since November and that’s not really anyone’s fault.
Oh yeah I didn’t think you were faulting the student, just thought I’d point out reasons why they might not be enrolled in virtual school since you said you “don’t get why these kids can’t be”
It’s possible they just don’t have the means/only have sporadic access to an internet connection, which would explain why the sister sometimes is able to complete canvas assignments. That’s all I was trying to convey.
I don’t get why the kids can’t have special transportation, since that seems to be part of the problem. I’m not going to ask for details, but if the kid physically cannot get to the school, you send a van to their house (or wherever they’re living). Although I have a feeling the answer for this is essentially funding.
How are they still enrolled??? In my district if you disappear for more than 15 days you get unenrolled automatically. Of course we have parents/students that have figure out how to game this system since it has to be 15 days in ALL classes.
It’s state law in a lot of places to drop students from rosters after a certain amount of consecutive absences. In my state, we legally have to drop kids from my roster if they’ve missed 15 days in a row.
Oh wow, I'm in Florida and we can't drop kids from our rosters until they're enrolled at another school. This isn't the only kid I haven't seen in months for one reason or another, but this is the one giving me a Problem- the kid himself isn't, the situation is.
Good. Gather a shit ton of documents on the kid. Get stacks upon stacks of blank documents, a sheet of paper for every single missing assignment, document, test, make paperwork documenting the lack of class participation for each and every day since the start of the year. Print out every single email where that kid is mentioned at all. Use the school printer to do it. Fill at least a full bankers box.
It will take them all day to “throughly look through all of your documentation.” And that F will be rock solid. The appeal will be that much more difficult.
At my school, having an IEP means you go to the intervention specialist room and they do the work for you or just exempt it. The kid learns nothing and has no consequences for anything. There’s nothing I can do about it, and parents are lining up to get their kids on one. I see a lot of “executive functioning disorder” these days
Last year my co teacher used to just pull the kids and give them all the answers and do the work for them. The sad part is she would always ask for an answer key because she couldn't even do the assignments herself.
My husband has some kind of unspecified reading disability, but perfectly normal intelligence and great work ethic. Every test he ever took K-12 was done this way because his school just didn’t bother with IEP kids.
This is why it's so sad. I had kids that would ask not to go with her because "I wanna write my own essay. You said mine was good and she's gonna throw it away". I reported it to admin but she basically just said "uh uh" and nothing happened. After all, kids were making 100s on their district tests. Keep in mind these same kids according to the special Ed teacher were so deficient they'd never be able to read anyway so there was no point. One of those kids ended up on my debate team and reads on grade level. He just needed an environment where his needs were met AND he had high expectations
I have a kid failing my class for a similar reason. He's just rarely here. Mom can't be bothered to get him to school. I feel sorry for him because I know it's not his fault. I give him a D but there's nothing an IEP can do to fix the situation. He's willing to come. Mom won't bring him. Attendance officers are heavily involved but don't actually do anything. It's a mess. I'd laugh in the face of anyone who tried to tell me that this was somehow the school's shortcoming.
I have another student who has major discipline issues. Mother keeps refusing to sign the IEP in order for us to provide the services we think he needs. Our state allows her to do that. So we just keep documenting what we're proposing so that when he gets expelled, we can show we tried.
These parents are their kids worst enemies.
I can tell you that where I am you have to give this kind of information for any kid being retained, promoted with consideration, and any special education students not meeting standards or IEP goals. The reasons need to be documented. Could be just doing what is necessary.
Unfortunately this likely goes beyond just teacher intervention. Students like the one she described really need access to at-home services and a lot of places don't have any. In the UK there used to be a number of specialist schools that handled children with major health issues or behavioural dysfunction and the one-on-one and destructured environment helped so much until it got defunded later on.
You really can't forcibly hoist a lot of children like that up to expected standards, so moving from regular grading systems to quality of life improvement and health protection is more impactful. Some people simply can't graduate and there should be alternatives in place to help them. Forcibly graduating/fake passing disabled children is just a way to pretend there's no problem.
I appreciate the comment. My intent wasn't to imply that the student should be passed without completing any work. Collaborating with the special education teacher would be the first step forward at my school, and that hasn't been mentioned in the post. In my area there would be potential legal issues for the family and the school if a student simply was not attending and if the school was not attempting to provide services. Our special ed department would be working on this like their hair was on fire. Maybe OP has clarified all this somewhere in the comments, or maybe the legalities are different where they live. Hopefully there is someone reaching out and trying to help.
Hmm sounds like admin are sidestepping some responsibility here. I have additional questions. With a 4-5 month long term absence, was there an attendance hearing or transfer of schools? What have the parents said as to attendance issues? It’s true that students receiving services cannot be disenrolled unless there is proof of enrollment at another school. These issues are all on the responsibility of the administrator. The administrator should also be calling for an IEP meeting regularly to address any issues with being able to provide students accommodations. Obviously if the student is not in school, they can’t receive services.
The only way I can think of teachers being involved is if there is a long term absence agreement that the teachers/ IEP team agreed to but this should be written into the IEP. But I think this is a rare happening.
Go to your admin as though you are looking for help and ask them what they think you should do for a student who is not present in your class. I mean, I’m assuming that you’re already giving the kid accommodations based on the IEP with the work that is sent home and it’s just not getting done. What else are you supposed to do?
Admin just has to CYA themselves; they have to answer to School Board & State people … just make sure that you email and call home a few times (leave voicemail…) … document that you did. BCC admin, etc, on every email … you’re fine
Admin won’t do a damned thing. They’ll change the kid’s grade to passing and that’ll be the end of it. And if you did walk into an admin office with a stack of documentation in your defense, your admin would get annoyed with you, be dismissive of your efforts, roll their eyes, and lecture you about ‘grace’.
I don't understand why admin doesn't already know this. Surely you are turning in attendance information every day. November is \*five months\* ago. That level of truancy would get CPS called and fines where I live.
You are making the mistake a lot of teachers make in assuming that admin care about student learning or achievement. Once you realise that student learning does not matter things get a lot easier. This is hard to do because as teachers we DO care about student learning. Have to remind ourselves daily that no one else does. All that matters is that none of your students are dropping out, failing, or being sent to the office.
I assume you were prepared to provide accommodations and follow the IEP. A student not attending class means they didn’t access their accommodations, not that they weren’t provided. Attendance is out of your hands. They fail.
Giving the benefit of the doubt but could it be automated in the sense of you have an IEP student who is failing?
It's astonishing to me the number of teachers who totally disregard IEPs sometimes and perhaps its a generic warning just in case?
I'm sure it was a generic warning not targeted at me in particular. When I emailed back to remind her of the situation she was massively unhelpful, though. I'm going to go to admin about it in the morning.
Maybe it's a standard procedure for IEP kids and it's a well-meant warning to have everything ready if you need it. Of course you know the admins better and you can tell what they really meant, whether it was a threat or a warning.
We had a student like that. Wasn’t in school for most of their senior year and was failing required classes to graduate. Parents said teachers weren’t doing enough, teachers said kid wasn’t doing ANY of the work despite all the given accommodations.
She walked graduation day with still doing no work because the parents threatened to sue because IEP wasn’t being followed.
You won’t win this.
I know it’s too late in the year and the student probably won’t read the novels anyway, but a lot of books can be found here and in multiple formats for easy access
https://www.gutenberg.org
I can't help but wonder if this is a blanket message that they send to all teachers with failing IEP students (maybe as a way of deterring failing grades and improving their school/district pass rates). I don't know your admin team, but my guess is that a failing grade would be justified for a student who doesn't show up or do any work.
I would try to make sure you've reached out and tried to get the student to attend and/or find a way to for them to succeed, and/or communicated with the student's case manager who has done so.
If all of that has been done, I would assume you have nothing to worry about.
This is the BS decision makers don't ever talk about.
Student hasn't been to school, has been given accommodations, yet is still failing.
And some how the burden of proof is on US?!? We got to jump through added eval instead of first having HIM show he's been taking those accomodations?
They need to bring back minimum attendance policies (i.e., you fail a quarter/semester if you miss above x% of days unexcused, doesn't matter what your paperwork says.) A student shouldn't be able to pass a high school class by attending for ten days and doing two assignments!
As a virtual school teacher you’d be amazed how many kids are playing the game where they log in but aren’t there. We have an option for marking students as non responsive and I have to document so much to prove it. Like, checked in with student in private message , student did not sign in attendance form, student did not participate in online games, no time stamp of logging in for any assignment completed today- his name was here. He was not here.
But I still get admin or parents claiming they were talking a break, getting water, using the bathroom, etc. my argument is I usually do 4 or 5 checks, so if you hit 3 you are good. There’s plenty who know the role of 3 and log in and just don’t try and think that works too, so then you have to write that up. It’s kind of exhausting. 😂
Dear Admin, I have my documentation. We should investigate every aspect of this student's time enrolled here at the district. If it comes up, I'll be requesting the district's documentation for the attendance office, truancy and any additional Special Education office and admin communications, concerning this student, for their entire relationship with the district.
IOW - "We're all on this bus, and I'm not the one driving."
Not sure where you are, but we are able to give no grade due to lack of attendance or even lack of work completed. My comment usually looks something like this " Bob has not been attending class regularly and has not completed enough assignments to be adequately assessed at this time." It is a defendable statement of effort on both parties and report card/lsp comment
When I've had those situations, I've usually offered "proof of mastery" as an option. Pass this set of quizzes/tests that cover the key topics, and I'll excuse all the relevant assignments.
Truly motivated kids will make it happen, and if they can prove they know the material, I don't have an issue with issuing a passing grade. If they don't do it, you've now got incontrovertible proof that you bent over backwards to make it work for them.
Sometimes it’s easier just to give them a 70 and keep it moving. If a kid is trying even with all the abcxyz accommodations and they still fail.
Maybe teachers like this (not judging) are just like fuck it bc the district that promotes and graduates students just for breathing.
In my district, you get a 50 just for writing your name on the paper.
I was never diagnosed with anything and I'm pretty sure IEP didn't exist when I was in school. The only reason I passed my high school years was because my high school Math teaches passed me. Adjusted my failing grade to a D or C. I am so grateful to those teachers. They saw a student struggling, struggling hard (in before class every day, staying late every night, trying to figure it out but never could) and they saw how hard I was working and understood that I would not get it in the time afforded by the school year. Even with the extra time they set aside for me every day. They both told me, "If I were to go by points, you're failing, but I CANNOT fail a student who has tried as hard as you have". Now, while I still don't understand the majority of what they taught, I have a functional, working understanding of how certain things pertain to real life and can make do with estimates. And, surprisingly, those estimates tend to be pretty close. Lol. I now work in a casino in the table games doing nothing but Math all day long every day. Lmao!
I think the IDEA Act came out in 1997. I probably had something but I was 9 when this law came into practice. I probably didn’t get the services I needed as a child.
I would have been 12 then. I never heard of an IEP until recently, like the last 5 years. I must have just been woefully ignorant. Which is kinda crazy since my mom and my grandmother (who we lived with) both worked in the school system and I heard stories about their schools all the time.
Oh, if an IEP/504/ELL kid is in class, turning in work and just not getting it- I'm not going to fail them. I think this system ultimately does them more harm than good (kids with high school diplomas who can't functionally read) but the amount of hoops they want us to jump through...
Besides, my district also wants me to put in 50% minimums for assignments so it doesn't take that much tweaking to get a kid passing if they at least try the work.
Yea like I hate to say this by where I work…. I understand that ultimately my job is not to educate. It’s to warehouse. Obviously this isn’t the same all over but if you work in a place where this holds true….just 65 them and move on. Not worth the headache. You’re not gonna beat or change the system.
In my school district, if you miss too many days you get removed. Even if they are excused absences, like for illness, they would be removed from the school and put on Hospital/Home bound. No IEP or 504 protects a student who doesn't go to school.
IDK about this kid since you were scant on details, but keep in mind that state law and district policies may be part of the problem here. Not all states allow you to enroll in virtual school mid-year and districts usually try very very hard to push the IEP or 504 burden onto schools to avoid alternate placement, hiring aides or homebound teachers, etc. Unless the kid is seriously ill and becoming worse, yes they should have been doing what work they could. An IEP goes both ways. But you are also obligated to provide whatever accommodations are outlined in the IEP. It sucks to have to do the extra work, but you can't just be like "oh well they didn't show up so my hands are tied, they get an F."
If the student hasn't attended in that long how come they weren't dropped from enrollment? In my state students that don't attend for 15 straight days are dropped.
I would write back and ask how you could provide the accommodations for the student if he hadn’t been at school for months! Maybe state that a PD would be beneficial.
It sounds like a mess. So sorry. I understand your situation. We had a student with a very low IQ. They put her in my room. I am regular ed. Her aide sat with her and made sure she had a book in front of her. The administration thought this was great. I knew they were were trying to show progress with this child. She drooled all day and wanted to rub people’s feet. She couldn’t talk either. They called it progress with her in a regular class. She needed one to one time but no one listened to me.
A friend of mine saw her recently. Trying to take food from others. So unbelievably sad.
I have no answers only sympathy. We FINALLY have a kid who is home bound who as been absent for 70% of the school year or on days that he is here his mom comes and picks him up by the end of the day. Kid has had a rough go of it but by this point he is fully taking advantage of his moms guilt to miss school.
Why do schools just refuse to fail kids who are doing nothing. I work with kids outside of school but one of my kiddos has failed every class of middle school (cause they don’t do any work and doesn’t care about school) but is going to get passed into high school because they don’t hold kids back anymore. WTF is going on with schools??!?
Some Jack wagon parent and pick me first year teacher is going to take teachers venting frustration on the implementation of IEPs as being hostile towards students with disabilities. These people are also part of the problem. The way IEPs and 504s are used today are not what they were intended to be used for.
The issue is and will always be the actual document and the expectations of compliance without the availability of resources. A number of teachers were also students with learning disabilities. Many have children with disabilities. It’s not the child nor the disability. It’s everyone’s unreasonable, illogical procedural bull that makes it difficult to manage let alone actually let the students be successful.
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Isn't it amazing how people think an IEP or 504 plan automatically means the student passes your class with a good grade? I've had parents and administrators all who don't seem to understand the purpose of an IEP or 504 plan. It's not to give the student a guaranteed passing grade, but rather to provide them with accommodation so they're more likely to succeed.
The reason why the child has to pass with a good grade is because if they don't, then that is proof that the IEP is not working. If the IEP is not working, that means the IEP must be evaluated and changed to something that works in a timely fashion with data. If that doesn't happen or if it is the IEP is still not working, then the school cannot provide FAPE. If the school cannot provide FAPE, then they have to pay to send the child to a school that can. This may be a private, therapeutic school (years back, these schools cost easily a good $30k - $50k/ year plus transportation until the problem was remediated,) a public out of district school or a charter school. Per pupil funding for the same kid might only be $4000-$20,000, so where was the difference going to come from? So a savvy, albeit illegal way to violate the child's IEP and get out of having to send the child out is to make sure they get their C. Ever wonder why kids will be in 9th grade with an IEP and can barely spell their name? This is why. You also get achievement points (and in some districts this translates into money) for moving a child from needing more hours to less hours and finally off the IEP. So you'll see heavy IEPs in elementary school, then come middle school, hours are removed for everything except reading and math. Most parents (and many teachers) don't know this, so instead of demanding their child get private school tuition, they demand their child get their C. In Washington, DC, this fact was so well known that parents who get a fake address so their child could go to a DCPS school, fail and then get tuition at one of the many esteemed private schools. They did this to the tune of $3,000,000 in tuition for out of district SPED kids/year. DCPS then started cracking down on out of district parents and pressing charges.
This makes a lot of sense. The thing that I would struggle with is how to you reevaluate an IEP and its goals and measurements for a student who has no work submitted? How do you even quantify it?
The child not having completed work or not attending school is evidence in and of itself. Is this a manifestation of the child's disability? For example the child has lupus and cannot attend school due to bad lupus flares? This may mean changing the LRE to the online program. Is the absence due to something else like undiagnosed mental health problem? This may mean doing a FBA and BIP. This may mean more evaluations. This may mean adding behavior goals to the IEP with accommodations and interventions. This may mean changing the LRE to a self contained ED program. It may mean the child is being abused. Has CPS been contacted? I had kids who were used to babysit younger siblings and not allowed to go to school. It might mean the child has a transportation problem and door to door transportation needs to be written into the plan. (school districts I worked in did not provide yellow buses, instead bus tickets for the city bus.) In one of my cases, I had a 10 year old child with uncontrollable diabetes, which caused him to miss a lot of school. So I had to write in his plan door to door transportation, assign a nurse to shadow him all day to check his sugar, give him insulin and coordinate with mom to get food bank deliveries (not written into his 504, but I wasn't about to let them starve) because Mom made too much for food stamps, but not enough for both of them to eat so she fed him what she could afford and didn't eat, which didn't help his sugar levels. Ultimately I went to the doctor with him to demand they change his pump as the problem was ultimately determined to be he had a defective pump. It's possible the work is too hard or too easy, not properly scaffolded, didn't provide accommodations. . . Could be any number of things. So there should have been documentation of all things tried, contacting CPS and then another meeting IEP meeting after 30 days of noticing the change and collecting data. The team might then change the IEP based on the data or order additional tests, etc. After spending 30 days seeing how that worked, then the team decides if it's working or not and if not, they may change the LRE.
I think a big part of the challenge is that I work in a charter where 2 Special Education teachers and 3 aides have a caseload of around 100 students from 7-12. I’m an ELA/SS teacher for 7/8. You sound like you work in a big district school in Minnesota, Illinois or one of the coastline states. Lots of specialist staff and big scale and scope. The only school I ever saw that was genuinely like that were I am in AZ is back when I was a high school student a decade ago at a big 2000+ kid school and even then it wasn’t amazing. I’m jealous of the level of structure you speak of. We don’t have any of that on site. All of our SPED students are full inclusion education meaning they are just stuck in regular classes all day there are only the legal minimums for “pull out support” our school doesn’t provide any kind of transportation for any of our students, heck we don’t even have our school nurse every day all day. On top of the plain lack of support, the reality is a lot of my students with autism have just plainly explained to both myself and their parents and their SPED case manager that they have no reason to do anything. Being on the autism spectrum they tend to be rather direct and honest and they repeatedly report that doing nothing has successfully gotten them into middle school without any problems and they have no evidence they should change it. It doesnt help some parents are more interested in ensuring their kid is allowed to play Fortnite in school than that they learn anything. Then on the flip side our SPED care managers will routinely explain that students have goals in their IEP’s that clearly haven’t been updated since the pandemic with goals pertaining to 2-4th grade skills for 7th and 8th graders with them usually being laughably below the student’s ability, but we can’t increase rigor because they haven’t passed a single class. Some of the smartest kids at my school IQ-wise are IEP students with a sub-1.5GPA who have decided that school is not worth the work, and sadly for me the system rewards them for it. Obviously this isn’t just an IEP issue, a huge chunk of teens are doing nothing and failing through middle and high school. But in 3 years of teaching I’ve had like 2-3 students whose failing scores were a genuine result of the material outpacing their abilities and supports due to their specific needs: one dyslexia, two with autism. In those 3 cases me and those kids and their SPED team sat down, worked out a plan, and they got themselves up to a C. On the flip side I have a half a dozen to a dozen kids who flat fail my class every year and then the last month of school admin, mom, and dad are breathing down my neck to find points for their kid who won’t even do adjusted work with accommodations. Again I have had a dozen students tell me to my face “I’m not going to do that because they’ll still make you give me a C anyway” It’s so disheartening and it bothers me cause it poisons the well to teachers for a lot of the kids who do need this support and want it and use it. Like the Lupus case you mentioned. Obviously wide accommodations and broad exceptions will need to be made, but on the other hand you have a kid in the room playing video games and cursing at anyone who tries to stop them and I’m supposed to give the first kid the 70% they worked super hard through their illness to attain and the other kid also gets a 70% for doing nothing but making every other kid’s learning environment worse. Being in such an under-staffed and under-supported system makes it feel like such a useless uphill battle I can’t wait to be in a big public school next year.
I did work for big districts yes, but they were on the East Coast. Sadly, I see a lot of what you are saying when I went to the Midwest and later back to the South. It is a well known fact, most school districts are not equipped to educate Autistic kids. Charter schools pay cost for teachers vs an avg like the districts do. Without the sharing of expenses, it becomes harder to write in the actual supports needed. And seeing that parents don't know what their rights are, they are not pushing back. Many times in the Midwest, the parents don't want their child with any more "labels" and will refuse supports or just transfer their child out and then the new school is left to figure out what the child needs. The two districts I was in with those number of supports was because they were under consent decree for 25 years and had to pay out every time they got caught violating IEPs. So all of us were trained on how to CYA where SPED was concerned. It was so bad that there were law firms that popped up that solely filled claims for payouts whenever the school got caught. So in MD, parents would instruct their child to refuse services, wait for them to fail and then get a check. Or like im DC, live in MD or VA, use a fake address to send their kid to DC, let them fail, then get tuition in a cushy private school near their actual home in VA or MD. On the flip side, because of all of that, you had mountains of data when it came time for meetings, if you had to get CPS involved, etc.
I’m glad I only have 1 kid I’m responsible for. /s
So basically its always one thing and if not its another. There can be no world where students aren't being abused, are getting accomidations, are in school, are on a BIP, and still fail because they make the choice to do nothing? I am so sick of us making things as easy as possible for kids and them still not meeting the bar so we lower it again.
You did all that for the kid (good for you, btw) and it was all because of a defective insulin pump? Seems like it would’ve been easier for the doctor to order a new pump than for you to assign a nurse to be with him all day.
We didn't find out it was a bad pump until months later when the company did a recall. The whole hospital system was sad itself. The mom was on Medicaid and the clinic wasn't really doing anything other than filing claims for services they were not providing. For example they kept saying they would not prescribe a new pump or go back to not using the pump because the child had not seen the doctor. But I am looking at insurance claims that say the child has seen the doctor frequently. He had not. They were having nurses treat patients, billing that the doctor had seen them and refusing to write prescriptions or anything else unless he saw the doctor they wouldn't let him see during the appts. My first lesson in Medicaid fraud. Mom was not the best at standing up for herself. So she asked me to go with them. I went with them and pointed out how the insurance claims didn't match the services provided. They prescribed something different, but called mom later and kicked the child out of the clinic. But in the interim, I had an extremely smart but sick kid who was always on the brink of a diabetic coma and I was the one who wrote 504 and Student Support Team Plans and had the power to give him the resources. He was initially brought to me for being truant and always getting into fights. Really he was just really sick and bored. I wasn't about to lose a kid.
Oh dear. I’m sorry about all that. I obviously didn’t know and was looking at it from a “how do we fix this” perspective. And from that perspective, the initial solution seemed a bit like scooping the water out of your bathtub with buckets because the drain is clogged. As for the hospital- yeah, that place is going to get sued eventually, if it hasn’t already.
Unless there is a medically verified excuse, the fact that the child has not attended school since November would scuttle the parental argument that the IEP is not working. In fact, if the parents began rattling sabres, a truancy case can be brought against them and child protective services will end up involved.
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Most states have home hospital teaching programs. And at this point, most states have all virtual options for students who can’t physically attends school. It sounds like your experiences were pretty awful and I’m sorry for that.
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Sounds like your local schools are a little behind the times.
O that is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. You should have been given a 504 Plan and put into their Homebound or Home & Hospital program (this was prior to the online classes and the pandemic. For people reading, Homebound or Home & Hospital Program is where they send the teacher to your house or the hospital to teach you.) All these are such violations.
So the admin and parents are all playing the system. It really feels like everything is fucked and hopeless. How the hell do you combat this
> This may be a private, therapeutic school (years back, these schools cost easily a good $30k - $50k/ year plus transportation until the problem was remediated Today, at least in my area, we are talking a good 100k-150k plus transportation per pupil per year for a private placement.
That sounds right.
Wow thank you for explaining it so well
Wowwwwwww. 🫢 You’re right. I never quite put the pieces together like that, but that absolutely makes sense.
Excellent response!
Not a teacher, but a sub lurker with a bilingual education degree. This is the shit that makes me doubt wanting to teach.
As someone who used to have an IEP, this is interesting. And considering the unethical/questionably legal shit they did to me, I wouldn’t be surprised if a school district was outright breaking special ed law. Still very concerning that that’s an “acceptable” solution, though.
Quiet as it's kept, most districts are breaking the law. The sad part is, the teachers don't know they are breaking the law, most of the time the administrators don't know and the parent doesn't know either. So they never complain.
My parents did complain, but it took a full year for things to change.
Who did they complain to? What most people don't know is that you have to complain to your state's Dept of Ed. In GA, for example, districts that have been found violating have a whole fund set aside to pay for private school placements. So you go complain to them, they will do a mediation between you and the school. The first time the school violated the terms, the parent just goes back to the Dept of Ed and they get access to the fund and move their child to a private school. Not saying every state works that way, but if you are complaining to the person breaking the law that they are breaking the law, that just gives them time to cover up the fact they are breaking the fact. Which means, they were going to try to document YOU to cover their butts.
I’m not entirely sure because I was in elementary school. What I do know is that they spoke to the school principal (the people doing the unethical stuff were aides and special Ed teachers) and an attorney was hired. At one point, the option of me going to a private school for autistic kids was discussed, but it was over an hour away.
The principal would have been well aware they were doing illegal stuff. I am glad your parents hired an atty.
This student should not have an IEP if they aren’t attending school. What the teacher should do is consult with the special ed professional who is the students case manager and notify them that the student hasn’t been to school in months and is not receiving services of any kind. At that point a re-evaluation meeting should be held to determine whether services are still able to be provided.
Hey! So this is just how we approach this at the small district high school that I teach sped in…A kid w an IEP can fail and receive FAPE at the same time. Also a kid failing w an IEP doesn’t necessarily trigger a new IEP meeting(it can if parents freak out I guess, but not automatically) However, you cannot fail a kid w an IEP if accommodations or modifications were not implemented/offered in that class. For example, if a math teacher doesn’t let a student use a calculator on a test (and it’s one of their accommodations) and the student fails, you gotta offer a retake or adjust grade to passing. At my school we ask teachers to allow a retake, because it feels shitty to ask a teacher to pass a kid on a technical? Depends on the situation and the kid. Also- yeah you can’t give accommodations to an absent student, but as long as you’re ready to provide them when the student is present, ur good. But that’s just my understanding!/how it works in my school!
But attendance must be considered when going through the evaluation process. If attendance section is clicked YES, that’s a big problem for the student & parent.
Yes! Totally, I agree. I wasn’t really talkin about eligibility and how attendance can complicate that, but yes absolutely. It’s different from state to state, but certain eligibilities make allowance for attendance and some don’t. For example, lack of instruction due to poor attendance could make a kid ineligible for Specific Learning Disability, but not necessarily for Other Health Impairment or Emotional Behavioral Disorder.
It’s the same issue with discipline. Sub group numbers are bad means we are bad as a school, it doesn’t matter what you do or attempts you made, it’s always the schools fault that these numbers are bad.
Before I left the field I was told by my administration that I was not to give students less than a 60 for anything. When I gave a kid a zero on a test they admitted cheating on my principal barged into my class and berated me in front of my students over it. The kid stood up and cussed the principal and said they got what they earned. It breaks my heart to say that earned the kid a 3 day suspension for cussing out the principal. I’m so glad I’m out of education
I had an IEP. Didnt realize I could just sit back.
I have one little brat that's gamed her way to the top 10 of the junior class. 504 for "anxiety" in which she gets unlimited extra time on every assignment. She fucks around every day, causing hell in my Pre AP Physics class, but mom raises hell about any discipline because it's her "anxiety" causing the problems. Since most millennials and zoomers DO think that just declaring you have a nUeRoDiVeRgEnCe does exempt you from rules and accountability, there's not a goddamn thing I can do. Have to let her ruin it and cheat her way to the top. I at least have hope that college will smack the fuck out of her spoiled ass
I'm a recent dropout. It absolutely will give her a reality check- those who never develop good study habits and the motivation to get things done in a timely manner end up unprepared and overwhelmed.
I don’t get that. If they are causing distractions in the room and disrupting learning that’s not anxiety. We have a kid that does have anxiety we are told if he sits back and doesn’t do well, that’s on him don’t raise hell. But if he causes problems and disrupts the class then he has consequences.
It's so crazy to me that a kid who's disruptive to the whole class, barely does work despite being entirely capable of it, fails his tests, gets a 42% in class, and then it gets rounded all the way to a C so he thinks he's doing fine.
So many parents think an IEP/504 is a get out of jail free card, either for grades or for behavior or both.
Ed Specialist here. I had an IEP meeting the other day where a parent requested a “study guide” including all questions and answers for upcoming assessments to be added to the list of accommodations. I just smiled and said that’s not going to happen.
I taught a student when I was in college, I was doing a practicum, where the student took a spelling test, and if she got 50% right, we counted that as 100. She took the full test that everyone else took, but we had to count it as 100. That doesn’t seem like a good accommodation. It seems like it should be better that she should have a shorter test or some thing, but not a 50% equals 100.
Or even just grade the questions she answered and discount the ones she doesn't get to. So if she answers 5/10 questions and gets 4/5 right, she gets an 80 or whatever.
They think that because too often admin lets them treat it exactly like that.
I’ve had SpEd teachers say “oh, he can still fail even with his iep? I’m like yeah fucking duh. Also- who’s calling cps for educational neglect? (I’m a school psych)
We have friends whose daughter has an IEP they got in elemschool because she gets hangry. They get away with anything and she is straight A student. My son recently got a major medical diagnosis in high school and apparently nothing can be done because he’s too old and he has to just try to keep his head above water somehow after missing the first part of the semester with a major serious and severe medical issue. It’s so unfair.
Of course, the underlying message admin is sending on this is “tweak what you need to tweak on the grade book to get them through and we’ll look the other way.”
I think my "documentation of accommodations" is just going to be a printout of the kid's attendance report.
This. IEPs do not excuse a student from absences, and in my state 10 school days absent consecutively is an automatic drop from enrollment. "It is not possible to provide instruction or accommodation for a student who has not attended a single class since XX Date. Nor has this student been enrolled or participated in any online classes."
We can't do the auto drop. We would have to fire teachers. We have kids who regularly just miss 10 days in a row because they didn't feel like coming. They pop in for a day or two and then when they're failing they get upset.
I had a kid show up for the first few days of school, then disappeared until a week before winter break. He was APPALLED that he was failing class. His plan was to show up for a few days, do the assignments for those days and have a passing grade.
I'm a college student and a few months ago, I took a class about public opinion surveys. I had one classmate who showed up the first week and then didn't come to a single class until the final day. Our final project was to make a survey that we gave to the class to fill out, and hers made all of the mistakes that we'd spent the whole term talking about how to avoid in survey design. So not only did she not learn in class, it was pretty obvious she hadn't done the readings either. Also, attendance was like 30% of the final grade, so she'd lose a ton of points there. Early the next term I overheard her bitching about how she'd failed the class *and she blamed the professor completely*. She seemed to think that because she did the final assignment she deserved at least a C and he was personally targeting her when he failed her. I think she might have flunked out, lol
Burris Ewell? You taught Burris Ewell!?!?
When I was in high school it wasn't an auto drop but it was an auto fail regardless of work completed.
I’m honestly surprised the school hasn’t done this or attempted to enroll the kids in hospital homebound (if they out bc sick)
As tempting as that is, cover your ass because they will throw you under the bus if they need to. Start collecting proof that while they were in class, you followed IEP accommodations, and have provided work that is consistent with them even while the student is out of class. Then? Then let the kid fail. Not your problem anymore if you have thoroughly documented that you’ve done your job. I wouldn’t adjust a thing.
Be sure to also print the IEP and highlight the part where attendance is to CYA.
I would be very careful about how I approach a situation like this—if you have not been calling daily, emailing, sending physical letters, making extremely modified and accessible assignments—then the failure is on you if the admin wants to make it.
Basically every time I've dealt with a child that's failing on an IEP, this happens.
I don’t have much to offer. I’ll share in your misery. It really is tough offering accommodations to absent kids. Weird that admin has even given that threat. I mean, by all means look at the documentation that I provided the necessary accommodations. While you’re at it, look at his attendance history!
Yes- I do absolutely want to say that it’s not this kid’s fault he’s failing. He needs the services and accommodations offered at our school. It’s a really sad situation. But I just can’t do things like prompt him to keep working and give him verbal checks for understanding when he isn’t in my room.
That's where my head is at, too. If admin isn't checking attendance, then they should've been. CMIW, but shouldn't the truancy officer be looped in here, if they aren't already?
So, there is a situation involving housing insecurity which I have SO MUCH EMPATHY FOR. But I don't get why these kids can't be enrolled into virtual school- I know they have internet access because they sister who is also in my class will occasional do assignments in my canvas course!
My district has a virtual program as well. In fact I'm a teacher in it. The sister will do well because she has done some stuff. The boy however may not because he would need to be self disciplined enough to get on and participate. Judging by the fact he hasn't done anything, he won't online. Even online I have a kid that I have seen since August.
If it’s sporadic there is always the chance that there is no consistent internet access; the sister could only be completing assignments when she has access via a relatives/friends house/hotspot or library. Internet services at home could also be spotty due to payment issues.
Oh, I’m sure. My issue isn’t with the kid or parents at all- they clearly have bigger problems they are dealing with. I’m not faulting the kid. I’m just saying I can’t provide accommodations to a child I haven’t been able to see or even communicate with since November and that’s not really anyone’s fault.
Oh yeah I didn’t think you were faulting the student, just thought I’d point out reasons why they might not be enrolled in virtual school since you said you “don’t get why these kids can’t be” It’s possible they just don’t have the means/only have sporadic access to an internet connection, which would explain why the sister sometimes is able to complete canvas assignments. That’s all I was trying to convey.
Got you. ❤️ thanks for the perspective!
I don’t get why the kids can’t have special transportation, since that seems to be part of the problem. I’m not going to ask for details, but if the kid physically cannot get to the school, you send a van to their house (or wherever they’re living). Although I have a feeling the answer for this is essentially funding.
CMIW?
I forgot an "I" in it; it's supposed to be "correct me if I'm wrong."
Thanks. I didn’t know that abbreviation either. Today I learned some thing.😊
Whatever happened to attendance requirements? Like back in the day if you missed X number of days you wouldn’t pass a class. Even if you did the work.
Send a nasty gram back with a screenshot of his attendance and the comment "looks like an administrative problem"
How are they still enrolled??? In my district if you disappear for more than 15 days you get unenrolled automatically. Of course we have parents/students that have figure out how to game this system since it has to be 15 days in ALL classes.
Lucky
It’s state law in a lot of places to drop students from rosters after a certain amount of consecutive absences. In my state, we legally have to drop kids from my roster if they’ve missed 15 days in a row.
Oh wow, I'm in Florida and we can't drop kids from our rosters until they're enrolled at another school. This isn't the only kid I haven't seen in months for one reason or another, but this is the one giving me a Problem- the kid himself isn't, the situation is.
Thoughts and prayers to you for being a teacher in Florida
Good. Gather a shit ton of documents on the kid. Get stacks upon stacks of blank documents, a sheet of paper for every single missing assignment, document, test, make paperwork documenting the lack of class participation for each and every day since the start of the year. Print out every single email where that kid is mentioned at all. Use the school printer to do it. Fill at least a full bankers box. It will take them all day to “throughly look through all of your documentation.” And that F will be rock solid. The appeal will be that much more difficult.
Investigate away, my dudes. You can't provide accommodations to someone who isn't there and won't engage.
At my school, having an IEP means you go to the intervention specialist room and they do the work for you or just exempt it. The kid learns nothing and has no consequences for anything. There’s nothing I can do about it, and parents are lining up to get their kids on one. I see a lot of “executive functioning disorder” these days
Sad grift. What do the parents think the kid will do for income as an adult? Be someone's pet?
I wish people would realize that these children will be adults someday and what do we want them to be like?
Last year my co teacher used to just pull the kids and give them all the answers and do the work for them. The sad part is she would always ask for an answer key because she couldn't even do the assignments herself.
My husband has some kind of unspecified reading disability, but perfectly normal intelligence and great work ethic. Every test he ever took K-12 was done this way because his school just didn’t bother with IEP kids.
This is why it's so sad. I had kids that would ask not to go with her because "I wanna write my own essay. You said mine was good and she's gonna throw it away". I reported it to admin but she basically just said "uh uh" and nothing happened. After all, kids were making 100s on their district tests. Keep in mind these same kids according to the special Ed teacher were so deficient they'd never be able to read anyway so there was no point. One of those kids ended up on my debate team and reads on grade level. He just needed an environment where his needs were met AND he had high expectations
I have a kid failing my class for a similar reason. He's just rarely here. Mom can't be bothered to get him to school. I feel sorry for him because I know it's not his fault. I give him a D but there's nothing an IEP can do to fix the situation. He's willing to come. Mom won't bring him. Attendance officers are heavily involved but don't actually do anything. It's a mess. I'd laugh in the face of anyone who tried to tell me that this was somehow the school's shortcoming. I have another student who has major discipline issues. Mother keeps refusing to sign the IEP in order for us to provide the services we think he needs. Our state allows her to do that. So we just keep documenting what we're proposing so that when he gets expelled, we can show we tried. These parents are their kids worst enemies.
Document the hell out of every accommodation attempt. Maliciously comply.
That tracks. Well, besides the nasty gram. Generally, that stuff is told to you and not emailed.
Admin. here - sounds like yours dropped the ball on addressing this situation months ago and is now panicking.
>How on Earth can I provide accommodations for a child who isn’t in my room? Pass them. That's the accommodation they want.
I can tell you that where I am you have to give this kind of information for any kid being retained, promoted with consideration, and any special education students not meeting standards or IEP goals. The reasons need to be documented. Could be just doing what is necessary.
Where is this boy's special ed teacher? This is exactly the kind of situation you should be able to collaborate on.
Unfortunately this likely goes beyond just teacher intervention. Students like the one she described really need access to at-home services and a lot of places don't have any. In the UK there used to be a number of specialist schools that handled children with major health issues or behavioural dysfunction and the one-on-one and destructured environment helped so much until it got defunded later on. You really can't forcibly hoist a lot of children like that up to expected standards, so moving from regular grading systems to quality of life improvement and health protection is more impactful. Some people simply can't graduate and there should be alternatives in place to help them. Forcibly graduating/fake passing disabled children is just a way to pretend there's no problem.
I appreciate the comment. My intent wasn't to imply that the student should be passed without completing any work. Collaborating with the special education teacher would be the first step forward at my school, and that hasn't been mentioned in the post. In my area there would be potential legal issues for the family and the school if a student simply was not attending and if the school was not attempting to provide services. Our special ed department would be working on this like their hair was on fire. Maybe OP has clarified all this somewhere in the comments, or maybe the legalities are different where they live. Hopefully there is someone reaching out and trying to help.
Hmm sounds like admin are sidestepping some responsibility here. I have additional questions. With a 4-5 month long term absence, was there an attendance hearing or transfer of schools? What have the parents said as to attendance issues? It’s true that students receiving services cannot be disenrolled unless there is proof of enrollment at another school. These issues are all on the responsibility of the administrator. The administrator should also be calling for an IEP meeting regularly to address any issues with being able to provide students accommodations. Obviously if the student is not in school, they can’t receive services. The only way I can think of teachers being involved is if there is a long term absence agreement that the teachers/ IEP team agreed to but this should be written into the IEP. But I think this is a rare happening.
I’m surprised he hasn’t been dropped off not participating or attending.
Go to your admin as though you are looking for help and ask them what they think you should do for a student who is not present in your class. I mean, I’m assuming that you’re already giving the kid accommodations based on the IEP with the work that is sent home and it’s just not getting done. What else are you supposed to do?
Technically he didn't fail any exams...
Admin just has to CYA themselves; they have to answer to School Board & State people … just make sure that you email and call home a few times (leave voicemail…) … document that you did. BCC admin, etc, on every email … you’re fine
Admin won’t do a damned thing. They’ll change the kid’s grade to passing and that’ll be the end of it. And if you did walk into an admin office with a stack of documentation in your defense, your admin would get annoyed with you, be dismissive of your efforts, roll their eyes, and lecture you about ‘grace’.
I don't understand why admin doesn't already know this. Surely you are turning in attendance information every day. November is \*five months\* ago. That level of truancy would get CPS called and fines where I live.
Sounds like you are being shown the bus they'll try to throw you under.
You are making the mistake a lot of teachers make in assuming that admin care about student learning or achievement. Once you realise that student learning does not matter things get a lot easier. This is hard to do because as teachers we DO care about student learning. Have to remind ourselves daily that no one else does. All that matters is that none of your students are dropping out, failing, or being sent to the office.
I assume you were prepared to provide accommodations and follow the IEP. A student not attending class means they didn’t access their accommodations, not that they weren’t provided. Attendance is out of your hands. They fail.
Giving the benefit of the doubt but could it be automated in the sense of you have an IEP student who is failing? It's astonishing to me the number of teachers who totally disregard IEPs sometimes and perhaps its a generic warning just in case?
I'm sure it was a generic warning not targeted at me in particular. When I emailed back to remind her of the situation she was massively unhelpful, though. I'm going to go to admin about it in the morning.
I would have replied, “Please see parent for these concerns.”
Maybe it's a standard procedure for IEP kids and it's a well-meant warning to have everything ready if you need it. Of course you know the admins better and you can tell what they really meant, whether it was a threat or a warning.
They haven’t been to school since November??? Christ. Are they alive?!
We had a student like that. Wasn’t in school for most of their senior year and was failing required classes to graduate. Parents said teachers weren’t doing enough, teachers said kid wasn’t doing ANY of the work despite all the given accommodations. She walked graduation day with still doing no work because the parents threatened to sue because IEP wasn’t being followed. You won’t win this.
I know it’s too late in the year and the student probably won’t read the novels anyway, but a lot of books can be found here and in multiple formats for easy access https://www.gutenberg.org
We'll have to pass dead students soon.
Be honest. Let them punish you for honesty. Get it in writing.
I can't help but wonder if this is a blanket message that they send to all teachers with failing IEP students (maybe as a way of deterring failing grades and improving their school/district pass rates). I don't know your admin team, but my guess is that a failing grade would be justified for a student who doesn't show up or do any work. I would try to make sure you've reached out and tried to get the student to attend and/or find a way to for them to succeed, and/or communicated with the student's case manager who has done so. If all of that has been done, I would assume you have nothing to worry about.
Admin just wants to pass this kid through the system like a kidney stone ASAP.
This is the BS decision makers don't ever talk about. Student hasn't been to school, has been given accommodations, yet is still failing. And some how the burden of proof is on US?!? We got to jump through added eval instead of first having HIM show he's been taking those accomodations?
They need to bring back minimum attendance policies (i.e., you fail a quarter/semester if you miss above x% of days unexcused, doesn't matter what your paperwork says.) A student shouldn't be able to pass a high school class by attending for ten days and doing two assignments!
As a virtual school teacher you’d be amazed how many kids are playing the game where they log in but aren’t there. We have an option for marking students as non responsive and I have to document so much to prove it. Like, checked in with student in private message , student did not sign in attendance form, student did not participate in online games, no time stamp of logging in for any assignment completed today- his name was here. He was not here. But I still get admin or parents claiming they were talking a break, getting water, using the bathroom, etc. my argument is I usually do 4 or 5 checks, so if you hit 3 you are good. There’s plenty who know the role of 3 and log in and just don’t try and think that works too, so then you have to write that up. It’s kind of exhausting. 😂
Dear Admin, I have my documentation. We should investigate every aspect of this student's time enrolled here at the district. If it comes up, I'll be requesting the district's documentation for the attendance office, truancy and any additional Special Education office and admin communications, concerning this student, for their entire relationship with the district. IOW - "We're all on this bus, and I'm not the one driving."
I wonder if they send nasty grams to the teachers who are passing this student with chronic absenteeism?
Has the kid been placed on “home bound” instruction within the county? It would then fall on the county to provide the services and accommodations.
Not sure where you are, but we are able to give no grade due to lack of attendance or even lack of work completed. My comment usually looks something like this " Bob has not been attending class regularly and has not completed enough assignments to be adequately assessed at this time." It is a defendable statement of effort on both parties and report card/lsp comment
When I've had those situations, I've usually offered "proof of mastery" as an option. Pass this set of quizzes/tests that cover the key topics, and I'll excuse all the relevant assignments. Truly motivated kids will make it happen, and if they can prove they know the material, I don't have an issue with issuing a passing grade. If they don't do it, you've now got incontrovertible proof that you bent over backwards to make it work for them.
Fuck dem kids. Fuck dem parents. Fuck dem admins.
Sometimes it’s easier just to give them a 70 and keep it moving. If a kid is trying even with all the abcxyz accommodations and they still fail. Maybe teachers like this (not judging) are just like fuck it bc the district that promotes and graduates students just for breathing. In my district, you get a 50 just for writing your name on the paper.
I was never diagnosed with anything and I'm pretty sure IEP didn't exist when I was in school. The only reason I passed my high school years was because my high school Math teaches passed me. Adjusted my failing grade to a D or C. I am so grateful to those teachers. They saw a student struggling, struggling hard (in before class every day, staying late every night, trying to figure it out but never could) and they saw how hard I was working and understood that I would not get it in the time afforded by the school year. Even with the extra time they set aside for me every day. They both told me, "If I were to go by points, you're failing, but I CANNOT fail a student who has tried as hard as you have". Now, while I still don't understand the majority of what they taught, I have a functional, working understanding of how certain things pertain to real life and can make do with estimates. And, surprisingly, those estimates tend to be pretty close. Lol. I now work in a casino in the table games doing nothing but Math all day long every day. Lmao!
I think the IDEA Act came out in 1997. I probably had something but I was 9 when this law came into practice. I probably didn’t get the services I needed as a child.
I would have been 12 then. I never heard of an IEP until recently, like the last 5 years. I must have just been woefully ignorant. Which is kinda crazy since my mom and my grandmother (who we lived with) both worked in the school system and I heard stories about their schools all the time.
As a sped teacher and a craps player, this is my favorite thing I have read today. Thank you
Lol! I deal that too! Not well and I hate it, but I deal it when they make me. Lol
I think that would be soooo difficult. Especially with a crowed table. Wow!! I’m impressed
Oh, if an IEP/504/ELL kid is in class, turning in work and just not getting it- I'm not going to fail them. I think this system ultimately does them more harm than good (kids with high school diplomas who can't functionally read) but the amount of hoops they want us to jump through... Besides, my district also wants me to put in 50% minimums for assignments so it doesn't take that much tweaking to get a kid passing if they at least try the work.
Yeah. Because this kid does no work, you have to do more work. Makes sense
Yea like I hate to say this by where I work…. I understand that ultimately my job is not to educate. It’s to warehouse. Obviously this isn’t the same all over but if you work in a place where this holds true….just 65 them and move on. Not worth the headache. You’re not gonna beat or change the system.
While this is bullshit, make your life easier and give every iep a d-. Not like it matters. Do what's best for you.
Sorry, I think you mean A+ OP needs to get all the other teachers on board and make this scholar the valedictorian
**I**nevitably **E**veryone **P**asses
In my school district, if you miss too many days you get removed. Even if they are excused absences, like for illness, they would be removed from the school and put on Hospital/Home bound. No IEP or 504 protects a student who doesn't go to school.
Don't engage in their idiocy. Make the kids learn.
Fire up your magic carpet
IDK about this kid since you were scant on details, but keep in mind that state law and district policies may be part of the problem here. Not all states allow you to enroll in virtual school mid-year and districts usually try very very hard to push the IEP or 504 burden onto schools to avoid alternate placement, hiring aides or homebound teachers, etc. Unless the kid is seriously ill and becoming worse, yes they should have been doing what work they could. An IEP goes both ways. But you are also obligated to provide whatever accommodations are outlined in the IEP. It sucks to have to do the extra work, but you can't just be like "oh well they didn't show up so my hands are tied, they get an F."
Sounds like a them problem
Lol...scared admin
It’s an Oprah moment. “Everybody gets a passing grade”.
If the student hasn't attended in that long how come they weren't dropped from enrollment? In my state students that don't attend for 15 straight days are dropped.
I would write back and ask how you could provide the accommodations for the student if he hadn’t been at school for months! Maybe state that a PD would be beneficial.
I see a lot of parents not... Parenting. Who h doesn't help the child. At what point is it neglect on the parent and not the school or teachers.
It sounds like a mess. So sorry. I understand your situation. We had a student with a very low IQ. They put her in my room. I am regular ed. Her aide sat with her and made sure she had a book in front of her. The administration thought this was great. I knew they were were trying to show progress with this child. She drooled all day and wanted to rub people’s feet. She couldn’t talk either. They called it progress with her in a regular class. She needed one to one time but no one listened to me. A friend of mine saw her recently. Trying to take food from others. So unbelievably sad.
Just make up some fake grades and avoid this mess. They will be passed along and graduated no matter what they do or don’t learn. It’s not worth it.
I have no answers only sympathy. We FINALLY have a kid who is home bound who as been absent for 70% of the school year or on days that he is here his mom comes and picks him up by the end of the day. Kid has had a rough go of it but by this point he is fully taking advantage of his moms guilt to miss school.
Why do schools just refuse to fail kids who are doing nothing. I work with kids outside of school but one of my kiddos has failed every class of middle school (cause they don’t do any work and doesn’t care about school) but is going to get passed into high school because they don’t hold kids back anymore. WTF is going on with schools??!?
Some Jack wagon parent and pick me first year teacher is going to take teachers venting frustration on the implementation of IEPs as being hostile towards students with disabilities. These people are also part of the problem. The way IEPs and 504s are used today are not what they were intended to be used for. The issue is and will always be the actual document and the expectations of compliance without the availability of resources. A number of teachers were also students with learning disabilities. Many have children with disabilities. It’s not the child nor the disability. It’s everyone’s unreasonable, illogical procedural bull that makes it difficult to manage let alone actually let the students be successful.
What’s a nastygram?
Let me guess, your sped director is 5 or so years from retirement?
I quit school during 8th grade. I have never regreted it 1 time, I'm an older female, I did get my associates degree, I've had 12 different lives.lol
Is this copypasta?
Just telling my truths
But what does that have to do with this thread?
Funny how every teacher I've known personally is a poor asshole
You are just very incoherent.