Parent Involvement in Special Education

One of the big areas that stands out in the IDEA 2004 law is that it puts more emphasis on parent involvement in the IEP process and requires them to take a bigger role in collaborating with teachers in the development of the educational program for their child. Unfortunately, my experiences in special education over the past twenty years have included very few parents willing to collaborate on the development of their student's IEP. Parents that are involved sometimes are viewed as "problematic parents" because they do have the knowledge about the law and the IEP process. I welcome these active parents because my experieince has been that they truely are wanting what they feel is best for their child even when their views may differ from the views of the team. Most often, the team comes to an agreement on what meets the needs of the students. On the other hand, at times it has proven difficult to get some parents to even show up for an IEP meeting one time a year.  In an ideal situation, collaboration on an IEP would have all of those involved (including the parent/s ) in the IEP  coming together to gather information, determine goals and when appropriate, plan for the future by developing a transition plan. This should take place prior to the actual annual IEP meeting in order for the team to assess the students needs and to align the students needs with appropriate curriculum standards. Some parents have limited understanding of their child's disability and may be unfamiliar with many of the terms and the lingo involved in special education. These constraints can lead to added stress and intemidation for the parents leaving some to just agree and sign anything on the IEP document without really understanding what they are signing. I feel that we in the field of education need to figure out ways to provide better information to parents and to create a collaborative situation that encourages the parents to become more interested and involved in the process for their child. I found an interesting website that talks about collaboration between parents and education personel. The website is called On The Same Team Building collaborative special education relationships between home and school. This site can be found at http://www.specialedmoms.com/IDEA.html   Check it out and see what you think.