Your IEP May Be Shorter Than It Used To Be
This year, I've seen a number of IEPs issued without evaluation results sections.
As our readers may know, the purpose of an IEP is to provide a description of the student's functional and academic profile, recommend a program, set goals for their achievement in that program, and recommend other modifications, accommodations, and supports necessary to support that progress.
The description of a student's needs and levels is to include objective empirical evaluative data regarding the student's performance. That's why the school districts are required to fully reevaluate a student in all areas of suspected need every three years, at minimum. Due in large part to the COVID pandemic, a lot of kids went without triennial evaluations. Presently, many of them have evaluations that are three or more years old, making them outdated for inclusion in an IEP.
Rather than doing new triennials and updating the IEPs, some CSEs are coming into the annual IEP review meetings without new testing data — and simply deleting the evaluation results section. Not only is this in violation of settled law, it also violates the DOE's own standard operating procedures.
While the DOE takes advantage of every opportunity to avoid work — or expense — parents’ attorneys are taking note. Our office has become adept at handling DOE inaction, and this new shameful omission is something that we are prepared to fight.
For more information, contact us.
Marc Gottlieb
Partner
195 Montague Street
14th Floor
Brooklyn Heights, NY, 11201
Marc@GottliebFirm.com
(646) 820-8506