MsSarah

I'm a first year teacher, and at my district, after the meeting is done and I've checked that all the boxes are filled in, I send the IEP to the district special education office, and someone there reviews it and lets me know if any other edits need to be made (like forgetting to add a date, or I changed the time on one part of the form but not the second part). After those are all completed, then it is finalized and the IEP is officially done. I don't know if it's the norm, but I will often send the parents the draft at the same time I send it to the special education office, with a note that the finalized version will be mailed to them. Sometimes I'll even print out a draft for them to look at during the meeting that they can then take home with them, if I don't anticipate many changes because I already got input from all the team members prior to the meeting.

I'm a new special education teacher this year. When writing IEPs and editing during the meeting, I've always included parent input of a child's strengths in the IEP section for reading, writing, math, etc. The form my school uses does have a section for overall strengths/interests/preferences as well, where I put parent input. I also get teacher input for each section - I figure that as a team, what everyone say's is helpful to put in the IEP. For example, if when discussing reading, the parent says that at home they've noticed the students comprehension improve because of a love of a specific genre of text, I feel that belongs in the section for reading strengths, in addition to what the teacher says. However, I was getting help from someone else this last week and she said that any input the parent gives can only be written in the Parent Concerns box. Other than the fact that parent and teacher input are both required, I don't know the finer details - are parent comments only allowed in one section? Or is it a state/teacher preference? I know I could ask someone else in my district, but this site has helped me clarify so many things, and sometimes it's hard to separate tradition from what is actually written.