High School IEP and appropriate accomodations

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We have our 14 year old's IEP meeting next week. I was just curious what you all have in your IEP's as far as accomodations. We are asking for the following (not sure if we will get ALL of it):

1. extended time on tests (he's been receiving this for years)
2. preferential seating
3. advance notice of tests and assignments (if teacher doesn't have an up-to-date website)
4. ability to review tests after taking them, to see what he's not getting right
{this has been denied in the past -- teachers maintain that they don't want the tests out where OTHER students can gain access to them and learn the answers.]

#4 above really bugs me -- teachers don't want to return tests because they are afraid that other students may get a hold of them and get the answers. In past years, teachers ALWAYS used to hand tests back for review. This newer attitude drives me crazy. A teacher could scan the test results and email them as an attachment directly to the parent. Is it a pain? Yes. I'm sorry. But that's just part of addressing the needs of these particular students..

So what do you have as accomodations on your IEP?

OK, lets see if I can answer this. I am assuming your son will eventually be going to college:

1) Should be OK either in a resource room setting as long as the teacher is only the proctor and does not give reminder hints.

2) Should be done if the teacher assigns seats for all students. Otherwise, you and the teachers should encourage your son to know where to sit to learn best and to get to class early enough to get that seat. In college, there is no assigned seating.

3) I would suggest a combination of advance notice but working with your son to fill out a day or student planner with that information. A good IEP goal here would be that student fills out day planner 1/4 of the time without extra notice/prodding by the teacher. Increase that so that by senior year of HS, there is no advance notice other than the regular notice students get. Once your son gets to college, there will not be any advance notice available.

4) Here, I suggest a compromise. If the teacher is not willing to hand back the test, then the teacher must either spend time with the student to go over the test OR the teacher must hand the test to a resource room teacher to go over. It sounds like this teacher reuses tests so that they do not have to do much work but that does not really help anyone because the test is suppose to determine what skills have been mastered and what skills need work. Even in college, a student can make an appointment with the professor to go over a test so it would not be unreasonable to ask the teacher to do the same thing.

Many organizations are finding what when AS students who have received services under IDEA hit college, there is a service gap between what the student got in HS and what they will get in college. The goal would be to slowly scale back services in High School so that by senior year, the services resemble those that the student would get in college. I know this sounds cruel but it is better than having the gap hit at once.

demeus, thanks so much for your comments.

I agree totally that accomodations should be scaled back by the time he hits his senior year. It's the same concept as phasing out an aide in the early elementary years.

Really good advice about how to handle review of tests. I appreciate that very much.

I do think, however, that in at least some college classes give advance notice about projects, assignments, tests, etc. in that they hand out a class syllabus at the beginning of the semesterd. It is this sort of thing that my daughter received currently at her university, and what I WISH was available for my son in high school. I do realize that not everybody does it this way -- and I don't even want my son to necessarily know about things ahead of time. I would like to have advance notice for us as parents -- so that we can SEE if he's not paying attention to upcoming assignments, and so that we can influence him to prepare ahead of time for projects or tests that may be coming up (and maybe even figure out a way for HIM to be more proactive about writing in an assignment book). I bought an assignment book, but so far he isn't using it. (amazingly enough, he's remembering assignments in his head SO FAR.) Right now he's inputting assignments and projects into his iTouch. If he could keep that up, that would be great.

It the iTouch thing is working, then go with it.

As for advanced assignments, you could always ask the teacher to email you the list of assignments and tests that are coming up, this way you can get involved if you see trouble coming up. The problem is that some college professors do that and some don't and unlike High School, the professors have more leeway.