About Your Child’s Education
What's On This Page
Client & Family Services Quick Links
- The Lanterman Act
- Working Together in Partnership
- Person Centered Planning
- Resolving Disagreements
- Your Legal Rights
- Receiving Quality and Effective Services and Supports
- Early Start – Birth to 3 Years
- Provisional Eligibility – Birth to 5 Years
- Transitioning from Early Childhood Services
Introduction
The major change that occurs with your child’s transition from early intervention into school age is that the primary responsibility for many of the services your child receives shifts from the Regional Center to the local public school. During transition, the Individualized Education Program process is initiated to determine what services and supports the school will assume responsibility for providing to your child. Typically, by age 3, transition has completed and services are primarily provided through the schools as the generic resource rather than through the Regional Center.
The Regional Center continues to provide service coordination, although the plan guiding services is called the Individual Program Plan (IPP) rather than the Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP) that guides services from birth to 3. In addition to service coordination, the Regional Center may provide a child and his or her family with information, and additional services and supports that are needed.
This section will provide you with the resources to help you make the most of your child’s school years, including:
- A discussion of special education and how your child and family can make the most of the school years
- An overview of the educational program that guides your child’s education, including how it is developed, implemented and modified
- The rights and responsibilities that you as parents have with regard to your child’s education
- The importance of inclusion at school and in the classroom
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates that the school must provide any service that your child requires in order to benefit from his or her school program. This may include therapies such as occupational, physical and speech; assistive technologies, including communication devices; and other services and supports such as behavioral services, transportation, a one-to-one aide and resource specialist services.
The Individualized Education Program (IEP)
The Individualized Education Program (IEP) is a written plan that describes how a child will be educated and what the goals for the coming school year will be. The IEP is created by a multidisciplinary team that includes parents, and is actually a written guarantee that a child will receive the services determined by the team to be necessary and appropriate for his or her education. The IEP helps ensure that all reasonable efforts are made to help the student reach the goals and objectives set out in the plan, but it does not guarantee that the goals and objectives will be achieved.
Resolving IEP Disagreements, Due Process and Other Educational-Related Complaints
IEP Disagreements
A parent may decide that they do not want to sign the IEP because one or more parts of the plan are not appropriate for their child.
Other Kinds of Educational-Related Complaints
Compliance Complaints, Discrimination/Harassment Complaints …
Inclusion
You child’s school years set the foundation for the rest of his or her life and the decisions that you as a parent make regarding your child’s education will have a lasting impact on your child’s adult life.
While not expressly called inclusion in the IEP, the section of the IEP that focuses on classroom placement is essentially describing whether your child is included, and if so, to what extent he or she is included.
What every parent wants is for their child to be included and accepted by his or her peers, to have friends, and to be part of school and community life. Adults with developmental disabilities also say that what they want most is to be included and accepted by their communities and to be a contributing part of everyday community happenings. Yet inclusion and acceptance are two of the hardest desires to achieve, especially once adulthood is reached.
By focusing on inclusion at a young age, the chances are much greater that as students with developmental disabilities and their classmates age, the positive experiences and benefits of children with and without disabilities being educated together will carry over into adulthood, thereby helping to break down the barriers often faced by adults with disabilities.