#48 - What IEP Paperwork Should You Keep, And What Should You Toss?

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E48: What IEP Paperwork Should You Keep, And What Should You Toss?

Unsure of what paperwork from your child's IEP to keep and what you can toss? Today we are diving into what paperwork you should keep, why it is so important to keep some of the previous IEPs, what to do if you are missing some old IEPs, and how to organize all your paperwork to make it more easily accessible to reference.

Have you ever looked at your IEP papers and wondered what you should do with them? Do you really need to keep them? Can you toss them out? Today, we are taking a look at IEP paperwork to clear up any confusion you may have!

In this episode, I’m sharing a deeper look at what you really should be keeping, why you should hold on to some of those old IEPs, and different ways to organize your IEP paperwork. Keeping things organized can really help when it comes to advocating for your child and I am giving you some tips on how to easily search all your IEP paperwork!

If you aren’t completely confident in reading all the data and numbers on your child’s IEP, I have just the thing you need! The Decoding IEP Workshop will help you learn the different types of data and where to find it in the IEP. Plus, we are going to look at how schools use this data to create goals, accommodations, and services.

Be sure to join my Facebook group, The Parent IEP Lab Insiders, to ask any questions you have and see what others are doing to organize their IEP paperwork. We are an amazing community that is here to support you and answer any questions you may have!

In this episode, we cover:

  • What IEP paperwork you should keep
  • Why it is so important to hold on to some of your child’s IEP paperwork
  • Real life example of the importance of being able to reference old IEPs in order to be a better advocate for your child
  • What to do if you are missing some of your child’s previous IEPs
  • Different ways you can organize IEP paperwork to make it easier to reference
  • Information on the Decoding IEP Workshop

Connect with Beth:

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Beth 0:02
You are listening to the Parent IEP Lab, the podcast that helps you get an effective Individualized Education Program or IEP for your child without having to constantly fight with the school.

I’m Beth Liesenfeld, occupational therapist who has participated in over 400 IEP meetings. My mission is to help you turn insider knowledge of the schools process and culture into effective parent advocacy for your child.

Today, we are asking the question, what IEP paperwork should you keep? And what should you toss? So if you’ve been wondering, do I need this? Or why would I ever need this again, then stick with me because we’re going to talk about it.

Have you ever looked at an evaluation report or IEP and seen all of those numbers and information and thought, what does it all mean? Don’t worry, I’ve got a great solution for you. The decoding IEP data workshop is designed to help you learn the different types of data, and where it should be found in the IEP, how schools use data to build out goals, accommodations and services, and what to do, if you aren’t seeing the right data in your child’s IEP. It’s a one hour workshop, one hour of live q&a And a Facebook group to get all of your follow up questions answered. And did I mention it’s only $27, go to theIEPlab.com/data and sign up for the next workshop. It’s done live. But the recording is available for life. Again, go to theIEPlab.com/data to sign up, and I’ll see you in there. Now let’s get to the episode.

Let’s dive into everything paperwork, we’ve got several questions to answer here. So I’ll start with talking about what you should keep and what you should toss like the essentials.

And then I’m going to tell you a story about a parent who really needed all of that paperwork. And then we’ll talk a little bit about how you might want to organize paperwork, so you can make the best decisions for yourself and how to access it if you actually do come to a time where you need it.

So my recommendation on what to keep is the last evaluation report, and the last three of your child’s IEP s. And this is why it’s really nice when you get a new evaluation report to compare it to the last one, at least on the data of your biggest concerns. So say that your biggest concern is reading level, you can look back at that evaluation from the last three years. And you can compare those scores because they typically use the same tests when they’re focusing on the same skills. So it’s nice to have that out and available. So you can pull it out if you want to and just see if they’re making progress or not.

The other thing about the last three IEPs is that sometimes goals get dropped. And you don’t remember why they got dropped in this will be illustrated in the story in a second, where sometimes goals are changed or altered, they’re dropped, you don’t really know if they met those goals or not. So it’s really nice to have the last three IEPs, or at least the IEP since that last evaluation report, so that you can look at continuity, you can say, Okay, this is from three years ago, they met that goal. This was the next goal. This was the next goal. This is the path that we’re going right and you can see a clear path of progress or not progress. And that’s where you need to focus your parent advocacy on.

So it’s really helpful to have both from last evaluation report and the last three IEPs that your child has had. Now I know some of you are coming from the early intervention system. So you have IFSP and if you are somebody who has an IFSP, you might want to keep it same rule, the last three IFSP or IEP s and the last evaluation. So your last evaluation might be the evaluation that they had when they first came into services. And I would just keep that and have it around.

See also  #22 - Parents Set the Tone for the IEP-No, Really!!

We’re not really going to talk about outside or medical reports. But we will talk about that a little bit at the end as far as how to organize things. Because especially some of you who have outside reports like some of them are electronic, some of them are paper. Some of them you can’t get in the other mode. So we’ll talk about that in a little bit when we talk about organization.

So here’s the story just to illustrate why you might need more paperwork than what I’m recommending here. And this will just allow you to make your own decision. And you say I’m a person who really wants it. Or I’m really a person who doesn’t want it or I want it in this way.

There was a middle school parent, and she was transitioning her child from fifth grade to sixth grade. And this is a really big transition. You’re going from one classroom teacher to multiple classroom teachers. they’re also having a big maturity, jump from fifth grade to sixth grade, there’s still a lot more expectations with maybe having a locker and being able to participate in sports and extracurricular activities and clubs. It’s a big jump. So this parent had had her transition meeting from fifth grade to sixth grade. And in that transition meeting, they started going over goals, and they started going over progress a little bit, too.

And the parent inside of that meeting, started to think about the last couple of years. And when they were highlighting the biggest strengths of her child, and when they were talking about her biggest struggles and challenges, something came up over reading. Now this parent had a really clear vision statement. And it’s really incredible to watch when a parent has an amazing vision statement. And if you don’t have one, go back. And I have an episode on how to write one.

But she knew that reading was a core part of her vision statement for her child. And so she knew that was important to her. Now, in this team switch, when she had the elementary school team and the middle school team there together, she started to realize that she might be missing some information. And so over that summer, the summer between Fifth and Sixth grade for her child, she started to really dig into that paperwork. And she not only went back three years, she went back all five or six years of IEPs, and all of the evaluation reports, because she was looking for specific progress in reading. And it was really helpful that she had all of that paperwork at her fingertips.

What she found when she was going through that paperwork is that sometimes those goals were just dropped, or sometimes that present levels wasn’t really carried over and wasn’t specific enough. And she kind of lost track of why certain goals were dropped, why these goals were changed what happened to this skill that was mastered or not mastered in the continuation of the IEPs.

And it’s true that a lot of people start with a draft of the old IEP when they’re making the new IEP. So there had to be kind of a decision that was made when this was decided to be changed or moved in the reading goals. And so this parent was able to really look at it and piece it together. And when she came into the sixth grade year, she called an IEP meeting earlier than then was due for the year deadline. And she was able to come into that meeting, not angry, she wasn’t upset, she didn’t have to be pushy. She just told the story of what she intended over the summer. And she dug into the paperwork and she dug into the emails.

Well, if you think about it, if you are the most prepared person at your child’s IEP meeting, like you have studied all of this stuff, you have been there at every single meeting, and you just spent a heck of a lot of time studying past IEPs and evaluation reports. She knew exactly what to advocate for. Because the reading goals themselves weren’t actually what the skill deficit was the skill deficit, it was in a specific part of the reading skills.

So when you break down reading, of course, there’s like comprehension, there’s decoding, there’s, you know, understanding everything. So she knew that one particular area was really the challenge. And the other areas of reading were a strength for her. So when she came in to advocate at that meeting, she said, Look, I’ve looked at all the paperwork, I took a deep dive into the last evaluations, and the IEPs from six years ago now. And this isn’t really her issue. And this is what the goals had been written to, we need to shift those goals to work on this specific skill, and how can we address that in a different way so that she can meet the vision that we set out for her?

And can you see how her building her case of coming from the paperwork and the data really helped her structure and advocacy plan that made a huge difference for her daughter. Now her daughter got that goal. They actually, and I’m not going to guarantee this but the particular district actually ordered a new reading program, because they realized they didn’t have a specific program to meet that goal need. And they realized that probably other people in the district were having this need that wasn’t getting met. So this parent, it was just a beautiful job of structuring this argument. And it wasn’t even an argument to come at it with the evidence in the data and say, Hey, we got a skill gap here. How can we as a team address this?

This is what we need to get her to the vision. What can we do about it and the district actually stepped up and I can tell you that meeting was not contentious at all, it was actually really cool. Everybody was like, oh, yeah, you’re right. Oh, well, you know the paperwork better than me do. So let’s look back at it, but we believe you, you spent all that time looking at the paperwork. And it was just an amazing experience in seeing somebody do and structure that advocacy in a way that really made it effective. And really keep the child at the center and present a problem to the IEP team that then the team could address and fix.

See also  #11 - What Do I Ask For at the IEP

From that. You might say, Oh, my gosh, what if that happens to me, I need to keep all my paperwork, and that’s okay. And maybe you’re a person that’s still like, oh, my gosh, no, I can’t handle paperwork, I’m not going to keep it. And that’s okay, too.

If you are missing some paperwork, I’ve heard a lot of parents say this, if you are missing some paperwork, then you can request it through your district. And I would recommend calling the district secretary and saying, Hey, if I wanted to get a hold of all of the past IEPs, all of the past evaluation reports, even if you’ve moved districts, they should still have that as part of your child’s file, then just call the Secretary and ask them if you need to put in a formal request or if they’ll just send things to you.

And then ever since COVID, and I personally think this is a great thing. Ever since COVID, schools have been able to deliver paperwork in electronic format. And here’s the reason why I like that. Because a I hate paperwork, I don’t know about you, I don’t know if you hate paperwork or not. But I’m an electronic person, only because I love using the command F keys to find a key word within documents.

So let’s say I’m going into and I do this, when I review IEPs as well, I go in there. And if the parent concern is OT, then I hit Ctrl, or Shift F depending on if you’re in a Mac or a PC, and you hit Command F and then you pop in OT and you see where it is in that document so you can easily scan for it.

And this just makes it easier if you know that reading or if you know if math or social skills, or whatever you’re advocating for what’s most important to you, is the area that you want to look back on. It’s so nice to have electronic records, because you can control F and find everywhere where that topic is, is mentioned in that IEP. Now, I’m gonna get off topic for a second here.

And I’m gonna say you should see that topic in several different places in the IEP. And if you’re like, Beth, what sections am I supposed to see it in, then you need to register for the Next decoding IEP data workshop, because that’s exactly what we’re talking about. We’re talking about data, we talked about where to find it in the IEP what to do, if it’s missing, what it’s supposed to look like, what the numbers should look like what the qualitative or story data should look like in that IEP.

So just want to say, if you need help in looking at that IEP, or if you’re really overwhelmed with looking at the evaluation report or the IEP, I want to encourage you to jump into the next decoding IEP workshop, because it’s just so incredible, it’s $27, it’s really accessible. And you will see and be able to find information in that IEP so much better and structure your advocacy in a way that makes sense to the schools, which just makes your advocacy so much more effective and easier on you and easier on the school to you.

So I got off track a little bit. But here’s the moral of the story, I wouldn’t actually toss everything out, or I would have a way to keep things many, many parents have a binder where they have everything in paper form. And this helps when you’re talking about medical paperwork, like from a psychological evaluation or a neuro psych evaluation. Or if you have medical paperwork like you’re a medical mom, and you have a kid with medical complications, then you can keep everything in the same place.

But if you are an electronic person like me, I love having a template or a Google Drive or something in Dropbox, where it’s organized by files. So if you want to look back at the last IEP, then you can ask for that. And you can search for it within your Google Drive or your Dropbox and you can easily find it.

Now the same thing is true for binder, if you put it in a binder, have tabs have things for evaluations or IEPs and have them marked with the year so that you can easily find the information if you want to look back at it.

So the moral of the story is it least keep the last evaluation report and the last three IEPs. If you have IFSP is like you’re just coming from early intervention, I would keep those around as well. And I would keep the original evaluation so that you can compare some data and see if they’re making progress or not.

But there are reasons just like the story we talked about, where you might want to have everything available. If you’re missing things go ahead and call your or secretary at the district and see if you need to fill out a form to formally request those records and have them sent to you.

Or in smaller districts, they’ll just send them to you. And there’s no formal process, they just get your name and verify that you are a parent or guardian, and then get it sent to you. So it can be an easy process, it can take a little bit, so don’t expect it to come overnight unless they’re there. And it’s nota busy IEP season as well.

If you want to see what organizational system is working for other parents, or what records they specifically find helpful to keep and that they’re referencing all the time. Why don’t you join us in the Facebook group, that link to the Facebook group is waiting for you on the show notes for this episode at www.theieplab/episode48. That’s theIEPlab.com/episode 48. Inside of that group, you will find other parents just like you trying to become the best advocate and get an effective learning plan for their child without the fight with the school. And we’ll all talk about what paperwork you should keep and what you should toss. As always, thank you for listening today. And I’ll see you at same time, same place next week. Thanks so much.

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