This is going to sound like a stupid question

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And I really feel like I should know the answer and I don't.

Can a kid who gets B's without an IEP get an IEP?

I had a meeting with my son's team today. He is really having a hard time in school. He is somehow managing to still get B's for the most part. The psychologist said next year is going to get a lot harder in 7th grade, but then the guidance counselor said that while they can get him on a 504, he would not qualify for an IEP "because he can access the curriculum the way it is."

He has severe executive functioning issues. Severe. Disorganization, initiation issues, short term memory problems, planning problems...you name it...he's got it.

I said to his teachers, if he is getting these grades when he is all over the place, imagine how he'd be doing if he wasn't.

Their answer? "He'd blow everything out of the water."

I don't know why I find this so confusing. I know that generally, IEPs include changes to the curriculum or the way the curriculum is presented to support learning, so I can see why a kid who is at grade level wouldn't qualify for one. One the other hand, however, he is not working up to his potential.

I don't understand if a 504 will get him in a co-taught model? Can anyone help? Geesh, you'd think I had never heard of this stuff before.

This year, by chance, he was put into a co-taught group (meaning there is an extra teacher who follows his group around to each of their classes. The school is structured such that he is in a "core group" that has all of the core classes together but then they split up for things like gym, health, music, art, study hall, etc). He has been getting a lot of extra support, and now it sounds like this might end up hurting him because on paper he looks successful. I wish I would have known this. I would have told them not to help him at all so he could flat out fail so that he could get classified for 7th grade, which seems so much more important than 6th. Isn't it terrible for me to say that? That I wish they would have just let him fail?

This post is all over the place. Sorry.

I didn't really realize that I didn't understand what they told me until after I left. Grrr.

I'm in the UK. Funnily enough my daughter's proposed statement of SENs came in the post today. They have said she will get an IEP and she is academically very able (she's recently turned 8 for instance and has a reading age of almost 10).

I think an IEP applies to the whole educational experience not only the academic side. I don't know a great deal about this though so you might get more/better input from other members.

My son is the same way. He is on target academically, so they won't give him an IEP. Technically that is a misreading of the law, because he is unable to fully access the curriculum based on his ability level. Good luck convincing the school of that. I'd take the 504...my school won't even do that, they just have him "on intervention" indefinitely.

It's irritating, isn't it? But I don't think that they can deny your son's 504..."The ED Section 504 regulation defines a person with a disability as “any person who: (i) has a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities, (ii) has a record of such an impairment, or (iii) is regarded as having such an impairment.”

If your son is "on intervention" then they definitely regard him as having an impairment that substantially limits at least one major life activity.

I have always said if I ever win the lottery I am going to start a legal firm that specializes in bringing schools to their knees when they intentionally deny kids their rights to FAPE. I think many districts bank on the fact that parents can't afford the legal process.

His teacher is giving him all the same accommodations in the classroom he would have if he had an IEP, as part of his intervention. They are just trying to avoid having anything legally binding, out of pure laziness, I think. They share an autism coordinator with two other districts, so she has 150 other kids to observe. She has seen my son twice for about 15 minutes each observation. I let it slide this year because I am happy with the level of accommodation, but I will insist on a 504 next year to make sure his teacher then keeps the same accommodations. The school psych is very apathetic about actually writing one up, again, because he doesn't want to do the work when nothing is really the matter.

The only time it kind of freaks me out is when someone who is not his regular classroom teacher (she is very good with autism) fails to take his autism into account when a situation occurs and makes it worse than it has to be. Example: He was playing outside during Boys and Girls Club that was not at his school because school was out that day. He was caught outside the perimeter of the playground, and his step sister told them he was trying to run away. They, of course, automatically believed the neurotypical child, because, why should the autistic kid know whether he was running away or not? Little sisters NEVER lie to get their brother in trouble, right? Turns out, he just crossed some imaginary line...he didn't jump a fence or anything. Instead of showing him where he was not allowed to go, they punished him and threatened to write him up. I hate getting reports from supposed professionals that sound like tattling, over behaviors they could have easily just handled in the moment. I'm a teacher myself, so I don't understand why they can't just fix it and move on. I feel like if I don't have the legal document, I may be setting him up for really getting in trouble some day over a behavior that some teacher misunderstands.

Search for "functional skills" and "executive function" on wrightslaw.com for some tips. My understanding is that if there is a disability, they can't deny having an IEP based on getting good grades. However they can stick a kid in just about any program as long as they can show he or she is getting "some academic benefit".

I fail to understand why I qualified for an IEP and other kids out there don't and they seem to have worse problems than me than I did as a kid.

Check out this blog post from wrightslaw: http://www.wrightslaw.com/blog/?p=3625

Here's another one:
Should Poor Organizational Skills be Accommodated in an IEP?

Thank you, ladies! I will look at the wrigths law website and the other links you gave, Zette.

So far I have been so happy with this school district. They have always just done the right thing, or at least I thought so. I always thought that my son was purposely put in the co-taught group even though he was not classified, but yesterday I learned he wasn't. It was just luck-of-the draw. He will fail miserably without the support and I don't think that they should wait for him to fail to help.

At any rate, the psychologist agreed to give me a list of neurologists that they regularly work with. They don't know the one I usually use, who also does not take insurance so I can no longer afford him. I have no doubt that anyone sitting with my son in a room for a few minutes will see his issues. In fact, I know he will revert to absolutely no eye contact and minimal responses if someone new is assessing him. (Unlike my daughter who usually appears higher functioning than she is when being assessed, my son appears worse.) She did say that "they" (I assume "they" are the spec ed people) will be more readily willing to help with the right paperwork from a doctor.

This is the part I hate: not the difficulties or challenges associated with raising kids with special needs...what I hate is the hoops. I hate the hoops that I have to jump through. I hate that I have to jump through them, and I hate that I feel like I am at a disadvantage compared to NT parents because of my own issues. I hate that I feel like maybe my kids aren't getting everything they should because of how my own executive function issues limit me.

AREGHAHREGNBVEREGRRRRR!

IEPS CAN BE AWARDED EXCLUSIVELY FOR FUNCTIONAL SKILLS. YOUR SCHOOL IS LYING TO YOU.

We got this crap, too - until DS was suicidal from lack of support for pragmatic speech skills and executive function failures. Then we went and had a separate, private assessment and they told us what to ask for. "Functional Skills" and FAPE (Free and Appropriate Education) are some magic words to use. If your child can't get an appropriate education from the school as it is - and the school is responsible for functional skills like speech, socialization and executive functioning, they can have an IEP. Period.

Schools may say they will administer this under accommodations like a 504. If that works, that's fine - but a 504 doesn't have goals or oversight, so it can be pretty hit or miss. Your child's performance is assessed in every other learning activity - if he needs to learn something (like social skills) how will you know if it is happening if there aren't goals or oversight?

In Illinois, the legislature went so far as to write a separate law just to cover high-achieving students on the spectrum who had needs. http://www.isbe.state.il.us/spec-ed/pdf ... e_08-1.pdf Here's a list of other states that also did so: http://www.asha.org/Advocacy/state/Stat ... -Mandates/

Wrightslaw has a page on Twice Exceptional children (gifted and disabled in some way) that may offer you some resources even if your child is not gifted. http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/2e.index.htm

At the bottom of this page, there are outlines of several examples where a child with a learning disability was given an IEP even though they were performing above grade level. One of the points made was that parents were essentially offering the support needed to maintain the child's grade, acting as tutors on behalf of the school http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/elig.sld.osep.felton.htm

My son has had an IEP since he has been in school. It is what made him eligible for school early, in the first place. He gets As and is considered gifted. I did not have to fight for the IEP due to behavioral issues relating to his autism. I am sure that if he did not have those issues that they would have fought it, too.

If you have a child who gets good grades and does not get into trouble then the school districts tend to think that everything is OK. They really do not want to help with functional skills if they can avoid it. I have to fight for anything that is not behavior related including things that do have to do with behavior but they just do not understand how. I agree with Momsparky that using the appropriate legal language is very helpful. It shows you can't be snowed so easily and it puts a little fear into them.

This is also a situation where having an advocate (start with a non-lawyer one, a lawyer is the nuclear option) is helpful. An advocate who understands AS is not going to push you to ask for services you don't need, but they will know the right words to hold the school accountable. If you're seeing anyone on your own outside of school for services, ask if they offer advocacy or know anyone who does.

The line you got is the one it seems schools always start with it, and I get it, they have limited resources for reaching a lot of kids, many of whom who have much more trouble "accessing the curriculum" as schools love to say.

But.

I didn't stop there, and obviously you aren't going to, either.

There are ways to get an IEP that do not consider current academic success, and that is what we ended up using. I never did more than keep asking questions, and eventually the school told me of things "on the list" we could use to qualify my son. In my state, having any ASD is an automatic qualifier, as would be a significant gap between IQ and performance (they have some formal way of measuring that; don't recall exactly how it works). I am sure there are others, but since we got to use the ASD, we didn't have to keep looking.

Keep looking.

Good luck!

Are grades 6 and 7 in the same school, or does middle school start in grade 7? Getting everything in the IEP is critical if he's graduating into a different school.

You have to highlight how much support he is getting from the current setting, and make a case that he needs that support to continue.

How did he do in grades 4 and 5? if poorly, then you'll have good data to make the case that the new supports in grade 6 made the difference.

BTW, schools do have the right to ask for a special tax assessment if they cannot deliver services to special needs children under their current tax levy. They won't be popular if they do this, but it is an approach that is available to them in the US.