Student Led IEP and 504 Plan Meetings

An article by Christine Mason, Marcy McGahee-Kovac, and Lora Johnson outlines the need and the benefits for student lead IEP meetings. "Student led IEPs teachers students to take ownership for their own education and to demonstrate that ownership at an annual IEP meeting," (Mason, 2004). While a student lead IEP meeting is incredibly beneficial to the students they can not be expected to be put in that position of power all of a sudden. Students require scaffolding to get them to the point where they can be a self-advocate in a room full of adults.
Mason,  McGahee-Kovac, and Johnson outline an excellent way to prepare students for an IEP or 504 plan meeting. They suggest a number of preparation sessions either individually or in small groups to identity what needs to happen in an IEP meeting. They go through about six sessions of preparation.

  1. The session will outline IDEA (1997) and the students rights in the school environment. Students will get copies of these laws.

  2. This session can happen one of two ways. If the student has a previous IEP students should go through it and highlight stuff they don't agree with or want changed. They look at goals they feel they have met and not met. They also can write questions they have on the IEP. If the student has not had an IEP before, they will talk about the assessment information. This can include anything from career paths to hobbies and interests. 

  3. This session is focused on students current goals while also developing new goals. Students can also discuss accommodation that will help them meet their goals.

  4. This session and the 5th session will be practicing the students presentation for the IEP meeting. They will get teacher feedback and will be able to make modifications. The 6th session is optional but would also include presentation of IEP and feedback for the student. 

The result of the preparation session were incredibly positive. Students were involved in the meeting and knew what they needed. The students knew the laws that applied to them and they became a self-advocate. The researchers also saw an increase in parent involvement in the IEP process (Mason, 2004). The result of this was beneficial to the student. The student was able to identify their needs and the benefits did not stay only in the meeting but they spanned into the general education classes. Students were able to positively interact with adults and were more aware of their responsibility, legal rights, and their limitations. Students as young as 6 years old have been able to run their own IEP meetings and they had the same results (Mason, 2004).
Becky Wilson Hawbaker in her article " Student-Led IEP Meetings: Planning and Implementation Strategies", outlined some potential drawbacks to student led IEP meetings. The ones that stood out to me were:
  1. The lack of people wanting to make the change to student led IEPs. The author pushes that just because the majority don't want the change does not mean it is the wrong thing to do so " don't use it as an excuse to avoid change."
  2. There may not be available resources. The preparation sessions would require a lot of time both for the student and the teacher. the school district may not have the budget to hire someone for this position. To counter the lack of resources Hawbaker suggests starting on the small scale for this process. 
  3. The student may have a disability that hinders him or her from participating but Hawbaker  mentions that adaptations may be needed within the IEP process because of the abilities of the student. Assistive technology may be used or other communication tools (Hawbaker, 2007). 
While there are some drawbacks and arguments against student led IEP meetings the student led IEP meetings are incredibly beneficial to the student and their learning. Some school districts have switched to the new system there needs to more of a push to gets students involved in their IEP and 504 meetings. 






References: 


Mason, C. Y., McGahee-Kovac, M., & Johnson, L. (2004). How to Help Students Lead Their IEP Meetings. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 36(3), 18–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/004005990403600302
Hawbaker, B.W. (2007). Student-led IEP meetings: Planning and implementation strategies. TEACHING Exceptional Children Plus, 3(5) Article 4. Retrieved [date] from http://escholarship.bc.edu/education/tecplus/vol3/iss5/art4

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