Plain-English explanations of the school plans parents hear about but are rarely taught to understand.
A 504 plan can be exactly the right fit for one child and completely insufficient for another, and understanding why starts with understanding what it actually is. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was the first civil rights law in the United States to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities in any program…
Finding the right school for a child with unique needs is its own particular kind of hell, and I say that with full love for whatever school eventually gets it right. It’s a spreadsheet with more tabs than you meant to create. It’s a hundred phone calls where you answer the exact same questions about…
Perhaps you noticed your child’s IEP progress report came back showing their goals are not being met. Maybe your child said they haven’t met with the guidance counselor for social skills in a long time. What if the long-term substitute in an ICT class isn’t a special-education teacher? The short answer: If you think your…
There’s a word that quietly decides almost every special education disagreement, and most parents never get it explained to them. FAPE. It stands for Free Appropriate Public Education, and it’s the promise underneath the whole special education system. Once you understand this one word, you understand what your child is actually owed, and you start…
The first number anyone handed me about my son was the 99th percentile. He’d taken the New York City gifted and talented test while he was in Pre-K, the one that’s supposed to find the kids who are ahead, and he scored in the top one percent. We got him a seat in a gifted…
IEPs and 504 plans get talked about as if they are the same thing with different names. They are not. They come from different federal laws, use different eligibility rules, and offer different kinds of support. The shortest useful answer is this: an IEP is generally for a student who, because of a qualifying disability,…
