Early in your child's special education experience, IEP meetings will focus on arranging for testing, giving a classification, and assessing needs. These are hard mostly because you will hear how very far your child is from the "norm," and begin to realize how his or her educational experience will differ from the one you had or your other children had. You may feel that the professionals at the table are only looking at your child as a disability -- or, equally difficult, you may feel that they are not giving enough attention to the depth of your child's problem and the intensity of his or her needs.
As your child moves through the special education system, annual IEP meetings will involve assessments of progress and the planning of the following year's program. Your child's teacher and therapists will read their reports, and the case manager will propose changes to the program or keeping things as is. There may be discussion of changing classifications, adding or subtracting services, moving the child into a different type of classroom, behavior plans and academic goals. If your child is doing well and you feel everything appropriate is being done, these meetings can actually be a pleasant opportunity to interact with school staff. But if there are issues -- if you feel your child needs something different than the team is offering, if you are surprised by reports of problems you have not been previously notified of, if you want more services or fewer services, if you want a different classroom or a different school, if you feel goals are not being met and are not being written appropriately -- meetings can get very ugly very quickly.
Your child is entitled to a reevaluation every three years, and you will be invited to a meeting whose purpose is mostly to decide whether or not to do that reevaluation. If the school feels all is going well, they may suggest that you skip the evaluation. There may be reasons to go along with that -- but they should be your reasons, not the school's. Generally, it is a good idea to have the evaluation take place, to have some statistical evidence of your child's progress or lack thereof and to hold the school accountable for that. You will especially want to have the reevaluation at times when a change of placement will definitely occur -- such as moving from special-ed pre-K to an elementary special-ed track, going from elementary to middle school or middle to high school.
Next question: Where do IEP meetings take place?
