Audit-Ready & Student-Centered: IEP Goals, Progress Monitoring & What Illinois Is Watching
In this recorded webinar, Dr. David Bateman, joined by Jenny Edelstein and Ellie Ambuehl, walks Illinois special‑education leaders through the creation of audit‑ready, student‑centered IEPs. He begins by clarifying the difference between specially designed instruction (SDI) and accommodations, emphasizing that SDI must be explicit, instructional, and delivered by qualified staff—not merely a location or minutes. He introduces four “vital questions” that administrators should ask during classroom walkthroughs to verify that the IEP’s SDI is being implemented, that paraprofessionals are supporting rather than substituting for instruction, and that progress data are linked to the instruction. Bateman then pivots to progress monitoring, insisting that data are only valuable when they change adult practice. He outlines the components of a robust monitoring system—target skill, measurement tool, data‑collection schedule, and a decision rule that triggers instructional adjustments. He presents the KOSHK acronym (K‑N‑E‑W) to illustrate the legal risk when districts know a student is not progressing but fail to act, and shares real‑world case anecdotes. The presenter critiques common data pitfalls (relying on grades, anecdotal notes, changing tools, and collecting data that is never reviewed) and offers concrete decision‑rule examples (e.g., four consecutive points below the aim line). He stresses that parent progress reports must answer the questions families care about and translate raw data into plain‑language narratives. Moving to system‑level recommendations, Bateman advises districts to (1) standardize baseline and goal writing, (2) create a district‑wide progress‑monitoring calendar, (3) establish clear decision rules for high‑priority goals, (4) provide ongoing training on SDI vs. accommodations using real IEP examples, and (5) audit implementation rather than paperwork. He suggests a manageable audit starter: review ten representative IEPs across schools, look for patterns (missing baselines, vague SDI, mismatched minutes), and use findings to target systemic improvements. The session concludes with resources: free toolkits, printable templates, compliance checklists, and upcoming free workshops. Attendees are encouraged to contact the presenters for follow‑up questions, especially given the recent surge in state complaints. The overall message is that clear, measurable, data‑driven IEPs that are faithfully implemented protect students, families, and districts alike.
Chapters
Welcome everyone. We are letting everyone in now. We'll get started in just a few minutes. Happy Friday. Thanks for joining us today. It has been really great working with the LAADCE and Region 7 team to make this event happen, and we're so excited that you're here with us today with Dr. David Bateman as well. So I want to go ahead and have Ellie Ambuehl, please. Join us.
Oh, she's on mute. I'm good now. I'm good. No, I'm not. Yeah, everybody, as you're all hopping on, thank you so much. This started with me participating in a Region 1 event last spring called Learn a Latte, which seemed like a really fun title for some good learning. That Dr. Bateman presented. I thought it was so great that I wanted to bring it to LADSE, and it became really timely because 2 of my districts got moved up in the cyclical monitoring process to this fall, and a few others got shifted around as the state was shifting things around. I think a lot of you know that. So I started having the conversation with Parallel and then looped in Region 7, Anne and Tricia, who can't be on the call today, but did a great job of Partnering and reaching out to DuPage and West Cook. And then we, you know, at the suggestion of Parallel, and I think it was great, extended it out to, to IWASE. And so, no matter where you're at, this should be really great information. And whether you're going through cyclical monitoring or not, this is really good information. It's just good practice, but particularly timely if we're going to be scrutinized by the state coming up anytime soon. So thank you. And then, yeah, I just did a shout out on IAASC Community, and Jenny saw that and said, hey, do you want to say something tonight since I've got everybody on? Hey, if you are interested in being a part of a new great committee that won't be a ton of time, join our brand new IAASC Foundation. This is an educational foundation. And we are going to be raising money for scholarships and just good causes, and we're just getting underway this fall. We need great ideas and we need a team approach, so email me if you have any interest, and we'll be meeting sometime in the month of September because we're hoping to roll out something simple but in the world of fundraising for the fall conference in October. So thanks so much. Thanks, Parallel and Dr. Bateman, and I'll Let you guys have it.
Thank you, Ellie. Okay, so for those of you who don't know me or those of you who are new to seeing me on a screen or seeing me at all, my name is Jenny Edelstein. I'm the Director of District Partnerships in Illinois at Parallel, and I will be your host today. I'm going to share a brief overview of Parallel in a moment and talk through a few things, but let's be honest, I know who you're all here to see. Dr. David Bateman. We are so happy to have him here with us. And so many of you know David or have had the opportunity to meet him at a conference, hopefully. David is a national leader within the field of special education. He has spent 35 years working in special ed as a due process hearing officer, professor, and co-author of dozens of books. David is an expert particularly on measurable student outcomes, which is likely top of mind for everybody on the call. David is here to bring his expertise and guidance to all of us in Illinois at this very pivotal time, especially this time of year. I'm going to start with a bit of an icebreaker. So I know that everybody is so crazy busy with back to school, but hopefully each and every one of you is having a little bit of fun on the side. I want to share a personal story of my own, actually from earlier this week. With this slide, I just want to point out we are also Cardinals fans, but I'm not sure I can put it on this slide because I live right down the street from Wrigley Park— Wrigley Field. But, you know, this week on Tuesday, I was at Wrigley Field having my fun outside of work, and I happened to be at the Cubs versus White Sox game. How many of you had had the chance to, at some point in your life, attend a game at Wrigley Field? Or maybe Cubs-White Sox. Okay, I would love to hear your stories. Pretty much for me, it was very exciting. Top of the 8th, and guess what? Score is tied, and now we have a rain delay because that never happens. We never get, you know, lately it's literally a rain delay the one game of the year I'm going to. So hour and 10 minutes later, but it doesn't matter who your team is. Every team Looks slightly different, right? So for us all here today, every district team looks somewhat different, but all with similar end goals in mind. So ultimately, within your district, you really have to have the right players. And at Parallel, we want to help you be at the top of your game. How does your lineup look, look like for back to school? How does it look? What does it look like? Next slide, please. Thank you. Okay, slide— this slide is like a quick check-in. Sound familiar? Right now in your district, it really is top of mind. A lot of you have the first week of school or second week for some of you, or maybe you didn't quite start yet, but in reality, you're juggling all sorts of things. You have balls being thrown at you left and right, and there you have so many things coming your way at the same time. You are trying to keep everything running smoothly simultaneously. How many of you are struggling with a team that's already feeling burned out by day 1? Are you already feeling like you have a lot of gaps at the very beginning of back to school? Do you have positions that you thought were filled but that changed at the last minute, or maybe even today? Hopefully not, but what is the timeline possibly to cover those gaps? How do you ensure support is consistent across all your buildings? How are your teams tracking on what a student needs in the IEP, what they're actually receiving, and the evidence that shows whether it's working? So the goal isn't a perfect lineup. It's knowing your gaps before they turn into service gaps. Do you feel like maybe you're one step away or one position away? from being out of compliance. What is your game plan? So with everything getting tighter with timelines and everyone starting the year off, we're already playing defense. That said— next slide, please. This is where Parallel comes into play. At Parallel, these are the service lines that we focus on. Speech services, school psychology services, social work services, and specially designed instruction support. Powered behind our provider network is our clinical support model. So our clinical managers oversee our providers. We have a strong ratio so that they can give the support that's really needed for our Illinois school district partners. And in regards to SDI, we are doing this in a really unique way. Especially for Illinois districts. So Parallel can bring in high-quality, fully certified providers to help your team and back your team up, but also expand the capacity for your current team. Earlier this week, I met with a director who has 2 new special education buildings— or excuse me, 2 new special education teachers in one of her buildings and may end up having to cover an additional caseload at another building with a long-term sub. Can anybody relate to that or any part of that? The early career teachers are wonderful, but the challenge she is facing is not can they provide the services, it's whether they have enough support to connect the students' needs, this SDI they're delivering, the IEP goals, and the actual evidence that the student is making progress. Cyclical monitoring now is making districts in Illinois look at Are we adjusting instruction based on what the data tells us? Do we have the data? So that's where Parallel can really help take work off the district's plate. We aren't just helping staff providers, but we're helping with documentation, data cleanup, progress monitoring, case management, and really giving time back to teachers to work with kids in the classroom. We are 100% virtual, and that is 100% on purpose. At this point, many of you have utilized some kind of virtual supports, but rest assured, I can read your minds right now when I said that. We're here today to tell you that at Parallel, we do things differently. We intend to build up— we're all— we're really intentionally building our practice around the research done by experts in the field and in the effectiveness of teletherapy. And our platform and service model were designed with best practices in mind. So With that being said, we're looking at Parallel Pathway, but everything was designed with evidence from Dr. Jordan Wright. He is our Chief Clinical Officer, is also an expert on teletherapy and best practices. Everything we do is research-based and legally defensible. So in Pathway, our providers use this proprietary platform for teletherapy and assessments, and we built it on the research that we mentioned. It is FERPA compliant. It allows us to continuously track progress and maintain visibility on outcomes throughout the year, and not only collecting data and tracking, tracking consistency, but looking at how are you doing that now, and so what could we help with that. And so just think to yourself, how am I really doing that now across all of my staff and all of my district? And as David might agree, we will discuss it today, of course, but good data is key in supporting day-to-day decisions that improve your outcomes. So going back to Dr. Jordan Wright and outcomes, Dr. Jordan, as I mentioned, is a chief— our chief clinical officer, but he is a leading researcher in K-12 for this area of service and assessment delivery. One thing we're really proud of is having all the data to back up what we say. So we looked at the fact that David— we have— David has looked at these things and has a ton of great things to share with us, but we also have experts like Dr. Jordan. He wrote a white paper and looked at student outcomes that from '24 to '25 have really encouraged us. We're looking at all service lines, and around 98% of our students met or exceeded their IEP goals, which I think is amazing. So drop me a line in the chat or sign up for a consultation at the end, or email me, and I will send you the outcomes white paper and some of this research and share with you, and also share one that has to do with our hardest-to-reach students. And a white paper. Okay, so last but not least, we are your Illinois team. You may be familiar with Laura Tremble. She is my excellent outreach partner in Illinois, friendly face, a lot of experience. I have Sarah Grove. She's my dedicated district support partner in Illinois. So as you can see, we take that team approach and collaboration very seriously, and we work very actively alongside you. So next slide, please. Last slide, I promise, before I turn it over to David. I already told you a little bit about me, but just one little thing I want to add. A former teacher, I've been working with school districts in Illinois since 2012 to support teams, and I've seen the evolution of technology in classrooms and in districts, and I know what works. I've seen what works and what doesn't work and would love to help you. And I'm here to be a resource and sounding board. Everyone who knows me knows I'm very passionate about the work I do, and And I really am interested in hearing your stories, even if it's just about a baseball game or your free time. So scan the code, please pick a time. Let's chat and solidify your backup plan for this school year. Let's talk game plan. And thank you guys for everything you do day in and day out. I really love my Illinois folks. And with that being said, let's give it over to David.
Thank you very much. I appreciate all of you willing to take time from your Friday afternoon. We're going to do what we can to make this semi-exciting. I'm not sure. We'll try. We'll do what we can. Okay, but just the obligatory disclaimer to start out here. What I'm talking about today is intended to help you think about good special education practice, good documentation, and how to make your system stronger. I'm not giving legal advice about any individual child or district situation. Yeah, I got this disclaimer here. All right, hold on. I got this right here. All right, when you have a specific legal problem, obviously work with your own counsel. What I do want to do today, though, is look at this from the perspective of someone who spent a lot of time reading IEPs after something has gone wrong. In fact, no one ever calls me when things are going really well. They don't say, hey, things are going great, let's call Bateman. All I get is when things have really gone poorly, and I'm going to give you multiple examples on that one. So what I want to talk about here is what makes an IEP easy to understand, what makes it difficult to defend, and more importantly, what makes it useful to the people actually teaching the child. Because ideally, the things that make an IEP defensible are exactly the same things that make it educationally useful. So keep this as we go through this one. All right, so let's just talk about this. All right. This is really the whole— well, I don't want to say the whole presentation, but a variety of a lot of the presentation on one slide. And so whatever it says, we're going to be starting by talking about the IEP itself. And the question is, and I mean this very sincerely, can someone who is not in the meeting pick up the document and understand the child? Then we're going to spend considerable time talking about distinctions I think schools continue to struggle with: accommodations versus specially designed instruction. Those are not synonyms, and we need to make sure that they're addressed separately. They perform very different jobs. Finally, we're going to be talking about progress monitoring, and I'm going to push on the word monitoring. Collecting data is not progress monitoring. Putting numbers into a computer is not progress monitoring. Progress monitoring occurs when the data actually affects what adults do next. So throughout today, I want you to think about one basic question: does the IEP tell a coherent story about this child? So I want you to think about this one. I think, think of your own district. Of those 3— IEP design, SDI, or progress monitoring— which one creates the most difficulty for you? And so keep that in mind as we address this one.
All right.
All right. So let's talk about this one.
All right.
Change. All right. So when somebody reviews an IEP, they should not have to solve a mystery. A neutral reader should be able to identify 4 things. First, what are the child's disability-related needs? Not merely the disability category. Labeling a child as SLD doesn't tell me what the child needs instructionally. Second, I'm president-elect of the Division for Learning Disabilities for the Council for Exceptional Children. I know a little bit about LD. By the way, we're changing the name of DLD to the Division for Learning and Attention Disabilities because kids with attention disorders are rising up. And if you missed what I said, we're also going to be including attention disorders. Second, where is the student starting? If I don't know where the student starts, I can't determine whether the goal was meaningful. Third, what are we actually going to teach differently? That is where the specially designed instruction becomes important. And fourth, how will we know where it worked? Notice those aren't compliance questions. They're instructional questions. One thing I tell teams is this. Imagine, imagine I remove the student's name from the IEP and give it to someone who's never met the child. Could the person describe the child's primary needs? What we intended to do about those needs and how we'll know whether it worked? If not, the file probably isn't telling the story clearly enough, so we need to address that and move forward. Okay, so I want to raise the bar, and I truly want to raise the bar. Okay, did we— I want to raise it beyond did we fill in all the boxes. Okay, a good IEP has 4 characteristics. Obviously, it has to be legally compliant. and the required components matter, but it also has to be understandable. Parents should understand it. General education teachers should understand it. And we make sure that we, that we are paying attention to what's going on about this one. Okay, so keep that in mind where we address that as we're going. Okay, parents should understand it. General education teachers should understand it. And next, the special education teacher should understand it. A state reviewer could also understand it. As I work as a state reviewer in multiple states, there are some things that I'm seeing that I'm not sure what they intend. Third, it has to be linked. Needs need to connect to baselines. Baselines connect to goals. Goals connect to SDI. SDI connects to services. And progress monitoring tells us whether the whole thing is working. And finally, it has to be usable. This may be my— this is actually my favorite test.
Okay.
Could a teacher— and I want you to think about— we think about IEPs as compliance documents, but you also need to think about them as communication documents. Because many of these kids that you're working with are highly transient, and some of these IEPs that you're getting from other districts, you can't tell yes or no whether— what, first, what the child is to receive, and second, what are we measuring here? And so keep this in mind, especially those IEPs from Texas. Don't know what's going on there. But think about this one. This may be my favorite test. Could a teacher implement the IEP Monday morning without guessing? If the IEP says provide support as needed, we're making the teacher guess. If it, if it says use appropriate strategies, we're making the teacher guess. If it says small group instruction without describing what happens in the small group, we're making the teacher guess. An IEP should reduce guesswork, and that's what we're striving for about this one. Okay, keep that in mind as we pay attention to this one.
All right.
So the sequence is worth remembering because every problem Okay. So every problem we're going to talk about today can be traced to a broken link somewhere in their tray. The present level, which is my favorite part of the IEP. By the way, if you want a favorite part, you have to take a different part because I've already taken present levels. But present levels identify the need. Then I need a baseline that quantifies the starting point and where we're going to change. The goal says where we expect the student to go. And the specially designed instruction explains what we're going to do differently to help the student go through. So that's what we need to pay attention to as a part of this one. All right, and address this. All right, so, and because sometimes, sometimes we describe this as because, therefore, test. Because the student currently performs here, therefore we have a goal. Because the student has this disability-related instructional need, therefore we're providing the SDI. Because we've chosen this goal, therefore we're collecting these data, and because the data shows this result, therefore we're continuing or changing the instruction. The IEP shouldn't be 5 independent sections that happen to live in the same document. It should be one very connected instructional plan. And this is what I— that's what I want to emphasize. All right, so it's not changing, right? So what So let's talk about what breaks IEP compliance. These are the breaks I see repeatedly, and this is what we need to strive as a part of this one. Below grade level is not a baseline. Feel free to write that down. It may be an accurate description, but it isn't sufficient to monitor anything. A second problem, a second problem is when the baseline and goal don't measure the same thing. Maybe, and these— play this out one. Maybe the baseline is an overall standardized reading score and the goal is oral reading fluency. Those numbers don't create a usable growth trajectory. Keep that in mind. Third, here's another one, fun one I see. We see service minutes with no description of instruction. 30 minutes, 5 times a week tells me when and how long. It does not tell me what is happening. And I mean this, the world I live in, I'm involved in due process hearings left and right. I have not testified in a due process hearing since Monday of this week, and I don't have to do until Wednesday next week. So I'm on break right now. That's my calendar behind me. You can't see it. But what's interesting about this is a standard question that we're seeing. Is district personnel being asked, so you provided 30 minutes, tell me what you actually did during those 30 minutes. The standard answer is we gave the kid 30 minutes. That doesn't tell us at all the instruction that the child is receiving or what we're doing to work on this one.
Okay.
All right. So keep that in mind. Fourth, I've seen progress reports that say such things as making good progress. I saw one At the end of this, at the end of this year, kid went from 29% on task to 30% on task. And the district wrote, he's making progress. Technically, they're right, but I don't think that's much progress. Okay, I also see, I see progress reports where they said the kid is working hard or continues to improve. Those may be useful information or observations. But where are the data? And finally, accommodations sometimes become a substitute for teaching the missing skill. Okay, so what I want you to think about, and I truly want you to think about this one as we're going through this, which one of these things do you think you would find most frequently if you randomly opened up 10 IEPs in your district? And I just want you to think about this one, and as you're thinking about this one, I'm going to go on, but I want you to consciously think about this one. Because if you're seeing any of these, then we're going to have some severe problems and we're not going to be able to use the IEP as a communication document with others. And we're going to have to think about what we can do to make sure we're changing that. And we'll come up with some suggestions for that in a few minutes. Okay, but this, this— so keep this in mind. Keep all of these in mind as we go through this, because these are the things we need to pay attention to and we need to address as a part of this one. So next, ready? Baselines. Hey, I am increasingly convinced that weak goals are often baseline problems. People sometimes— people, a lot of people increasingly begin by asking, and they ask me, what goal should I write? That's backwards. Truly, that's backwards. The first question should be, what can the student currently do on the exact skill we're concerned about? I'll phrase that again. All right, I'll phrase that again. I'll phrase that as, what can the student currently do on the exact skill we're concerned about? That's what we have to start focusing on. Okay? A useful baseline is not only observable, it's measurable. And replicable, and I can't emphasize this one. And if I were to give the base, okay, if I were to give another qualified person the same tool under similar conditions, we would get reasonably comparable information. Okay, so I want to know the skill. I want to know the tool. I want to know the condition, the amount of support, and the data that was observed. One important, very practical point on this one. You don't necessarily need a section of the IEP labeled, literally labeled baseline. What matters is that the current level of performance is documented clearly enough that the goal has a meaningful starting point. Without that, you can't write a goal that sounds beautifully measurable but still doesn't— say that again. You can write a goal that is beautifully measurable but still doesn't tell us whether the expected growth was reasonable. And this is something that's been— since many of you just started school or about to, or fixing to get ready to start school. I grew up in the South, I can say that. But you just started school. What you have to think about is make sure that when you get to the end of the marking period, you're going to compare where that child is at the end of the marking period with where they are starting that school year. And you can't do that without a baseline. And that's what poses the problem, is we don't have a really good understanding of what we're doing with this kid. So therefore, you can't say yes or no about what's going on. Problem I'm seeing is I'm seeing we have great written IEPs, really good written IEPs, and then we're implementing them often with fidelity. But if we don't have a baseline, we can't tell yes or no whether the child has made progress, and that poses a significant problem for us. So keep this in mind with what we just said. Okay, so let's, let's move on. Okay, so let me give you some baseline non-examples. And let's diagnose them. Let's diagnose them instead of simply just calling them bad. Because sometimes we call kids bad, but we have to think about not doing that as well. Let's diagnose them. Reading below grade level. What's missing? Actually, almost everything. What part of reading? How far below? What measures? This actually is one of the most common things I see as a baseline for kids. They're reading below grade level. Technically it's right, but I don't know on what and how far. All of you know that reading is a combination of a variety of skills, and tell me that the kid is reading below grade level does not give me any indication, yes or no, about what we need to work on with that kid tomorrow. Keep that one. Let's go to another one. Struggles with comprehension. I believe you. I often struggle with comprehension, especially late at night. So keep this in mind as we address this. Right, but how would 2 students, 2 teachers, if 2 teachers independently determine how much that student struggles to find this and what we have to think about this one. So it's not, it's not measurable. I mean, I struggle with comprehension a lot, so keep that in mind. Okay. Here's a, here's another one, needs adult support. That describes what the adult is doing, not what the student can do, and keep that as we address this one. And here, I like this. This is one I've seen relate a lot. And can complete work when motivated. Okay? That introduces a subjective judgment about motivation instead of measuring performance. Okay? So let's just talk about this one. With each one of this, and this is the term, this is the information you need to take back to your team. If you see, whenever you encounter language like this, Okay? Your question, not that you're going to be writing these, but for leading your team, is, could I graph it? Could I replicate it? Could I measure it again in the next month? If the answer is no, you probably don't have a baseline. Okay? Because think about this. Some people, I mean, think about this, go just through struggles with comprehension. We people would measure that very differently. So keep that in mind as we address this one. All right, so I want you to pick one of these in your head and add the missing information. What would you need to do to turn this into an actual baseline? Keep that in mind because it's going to take some expansion, it's going to take some information, and it's going to take some precision. When I was a special education teacher, I wrote things for my grandmother. My grandmother, who recently passed away. But it's interesting, when I would write these things, she was not an educator, but I wanted to make sure that she could understand what I was doing. And I would share things sometimes with her, but I kept her in mind. You need to keep someone else in mind as a part of this one that gets to the spirit of the IEP as a communication document. And keep on this one. Okay, so watch how this changes. Reading fluency. Watch, just notice this change. Subtle changes here. Okay, note 42 correct words per minute on 4th grade passage across 3 probes.
Right?
Look at that. I know the skill, I know the unit, I know the difficulty level. I know it isn't based on a single potentially odd data point. But look at that. That's much more understandable. Wait, I've got a better one. 18 out of 14— 18 out of 40 multiplication facts correct in 2 minutes. Again, extremely clear. For writing, we have an independent condition, a time period, and observable features. Okay, and the behavior example, and this is what trips up a lot of districts because we don't— we often have trouble writing good behavior goals. But the behavior example is especially important. Rather than saying doesn't initiate tasks, we're counting opportunities. The student begins within 2 minutes and 3 out of 10 opportunities. That is much more useful because it allows us to ask whether the instruction is improving the behavior, because that's what we're striving for as a part of the SOAR. Right? Look at this. Look at these 4. None of these baselines is fancy. You don't need a $50,000 data system to write a meaningful baseline. You don't. You need a clearly defined behavior or skill and a consistent way of measuring it. And that's what you need to strive for. Okay, keep that in mind as we address this one. Okay, so wait, there's more. Okay, the measurable goal formula. This is what I— this is the formula I want teams to internalize. Okay, given, given what, under what condition, and with what support, the student will do what? Give me an observable action. To what level? What is the criterion? Measured by what? That is the portion people often omit. How are you actually going to determine whether the student met the goal and by when? And I would put additional emphasis on the relationship between the baseline and the criterion. If the student is currently at 42 correct words per minute and the goal says 85, I can have a discussion about whether the amount of growth is appropriate. Yeah, think about this one. If the present level merely says below grade level, And the goal says 80%, we can't have a discussion because the 2 pieces of information don't talk to each other. And be suspicious of the magical number 80%. 80% is not inherently meaningful. Sometimes 80% is appropriate, sometimes it isn't. My favorite goal, and I see it at least once a year, is student will cross the street correctly 80% of the time. That means 2 out of 10 times they can be hit by a car and still meet their goal. Okay, so we have to think about this one. 80% is not magical. Okay, the criterion should come from the skill, it should come from the baseline and from meaningful expectations, not because that's the number your IEP software defaults to. So we have to think about what we can do as a part of this to make sure what we're providing is something that's appropriate. Okay, so keep that in mind as we address this and pay attention to this as we move forward. Wait, there's more. Okay, so this day, look how cleanly this one connects. Okay, baseline: 42 correct words per minute. Goal: 85 correct words per minute with 95% accuracy. Measurement: weekly curriculum-based probes. And the team isn't merely just collecting them. They're reviewing the trend every 4 weeks. I've been, I've been spending the last few minutes talking about how important it is to write good goals and have good baselines, but we need to pay attention to that last part, because that's the last part that a lot of teams forget. And that's the last part we pay attention to. Imagine we collected weekly goal probes for 4 months and every number is below the aim line. If nobody reviews them until the actual annual IEP meeting, we haven't really done used progress monitoring. Good progress monitoring builds in a point at which adults have to look at the information and answer: Is the student responding to the instruction? That's what I want to emphasize. Okay. There was a nationwide training of hearing officers about three months ago, and the overall mission. The overall message that was provided to the hearing officers was we want to pay attention to responsiveness. We're not looking for perfection. What we're looking for is responsiveness. And this is an indication that we will then take some responsiveness as a part of this one. How I know it is I was the person who gave that message to the hearing officers and talked to them about this one. So we need to emphasize responsiveness is something we need to pay attention to and address.
Thank you.
And so keep this in mind.
All right.
All right.
So wait, there's more. Let me give you another one. Stay seated. Okay. Reading goals that don't hold up. Okay. They sound familiar because they're common. And these are common ones. These are things that I've seen just in the past month. These are all hypercurrent.
Okay.
We'll improve reading fluency. Almost certainly true as an aspiration. Okay. But not measurable as written. We'll read at grade level. Which measure? What does grade level mean on that measure? Under what conditions? Keep that in mind. Or we'll use reading strategies. I like that. That's wonderful. I want kids to use reading strategies. That's particularly interesting. Teaching a strategy may be part of the SDI, but strategy use isn't necessarily the actual outcome we care about. We generally care about the strategy improves the underlying reading performance. So we have to address this. And this is again my favorite, 80% accuracy. 80% of what? 80% of what? If I have to ask 5 follow-up questions before I know the success means, that goal isn't finished. So which, which of these 4 do you see most frequently? And I'm, I'm, I'm lobbing these because I want you to think about this one. And I want you to think about and pay attention to these and pay attention to the, with your teams, how you're interacting with them as a part of this one. Okay, well, this switch to a math goal, you could count on me that I was going to do a math goal. All right, again, the simplicity is the strength here. 18 of 40 is the baseline. Okay, 18 of 40 is the baseline, so keep that in mind. All right, 34 of 40 is the expected outcome, so they're going to go from basically, um, from one level to another pretty dramatically. Same kind of task, same kind of period, equivalent probes. But look at the measurement statement. Instructional response reviewed after 4 data points below the aim line. Okay? This warms my heart. And I mean this. I mean this as I do trainings for hearing officers and I do witness preparation and due process hearings, and I have a book— that wasn't supposed to happen. I have a book coming out in January on progress monitoring from a hearing officer's perspective. But look at this. But look at the measurement statement: instructional response reviewed after 4 data points below the aim line. Now we've moved beyond data, beyond measurement, into decision rule. We have told the team in advance, if this happens in the data, adults are going to do something. That this actually protects us from one of the most common progress monitoring failures: collecting disappointing data for months While continuing exactly the same intervention. My first year of teaching, my very first year of teaching, it was back in the '80s. Some of you don't remember the '80s. Do not raise your hands. That just pisses me off. So what I want to share is what I have here is my first year of teaching. I taught and I taught and I taught. Then I taught and I taught and I taught. I was a special ed teacher, and I taught and I taught and I taught some more. At no point was I assessing whether the kids were actually learning or making progress or things like this. I had some students— finally, one student finally came. He said, I learned this a long time ago. Why do you keep teaching this? And what that did is that student was very prescient about this one, as they said, basically, stop teaching it, move on, because we've learned this. So I started assessing more and realized that— get this— I had wasted some of those kids' time. I was a first-year teacher. I'm not using that as an excuse. I was fully certified. But, and then, then moved very shortly, moved back, moved up to Illinois after that. And so what's interesting about this is we have to think about what we have to do to provide instruction and not waste the kids' times. Keep that in mind as we address this one. Okay, a functional goal, well-written. Functional goals need the same precision. And I absolutely promise, I absolutely promise that you're going to have many more demands relating to functional goals. I spend a lot of time on parent Facebook pages, parent groups who have parents who have kids with disabilities. I'm a parent of 2 children, one who had a 504, one who had an IEP when they were at school age. And as a part of this, I troll these. I don't contribute. But one of the common things that we're seeing is encouraging parents to reach out for functional goals and improve this and executive functioning training. So I guarantee you're going to hear a lot more on this one.
If you—
For instance, if by the end of this year you don't get this, we'll give you the money back for this webinar. So what's interesting about this is what we have to think about this one. Functional goals need the same precision. The student will prove executive functioning isn't a goal. Here we're targeting initiation. The student currently starts within 2 minutes in 3 of 10 opportunities. The target is 8 out of 10. We've defined the supports, a visual checklist and a teacher prompt, and we defined what we're observing, when we're observing it. This also helps distinguish between supporting a student and teaching a student. If we're ever prompting the child to start, that's support. If we're systematically teaching initiation so that prompts can eventually be faded out, now we're talking about instruction and skill development. So keep this in mind as we address this and keep this in mind as we pay attention to this. So keep this in mind as we think. All right, so next one, another one. You thought, you thought, you thought I was done? No, there's more. Okay, a transition goal. And I'm, I'm gonna start doing some more work with the Division for Career Development and Transition about some things. So you'll, you'll, you'll hear my name there. Okay. And I, I worked as a transition teacher for a year. It was my favorite job because we were out in the community 90% of the time and the school district had no idea where I was. It was wonderful. Okay, so, but transition is another place where vague goals appear. Goals such as, we'll explore career options, or we'll learn about college. I'm not sure what we teach about college. I live in a college town, and I'm pissed that they've all— all the students moved back this weekend. But that sounds positive, but they're hard to evaluate. Here, the skill is concrete. Identifying the required steps and the deadline for enrolling in a training program, and/or critically, the measurement aligns with the transition assessment and the postsecondary goal. We shouldn't have transition assessments saying one thing, postsecondary goals saying another thing, and annual goals seem unrelated to each other. The same alignment principles we're discussing applies to transition, and that's what we need to focus on as a part of this one. Okay, and more. Wait, there's more. Okay, goal red flags. These are the red, and I'm going to come up with more, but these are the ones I came up with when I was writing this. But these are some red flags that we absolutely need to pay attention to as a part of this, and these are red flags we need to address. These are quick red flags administrators and IEP reviewers can learn to spot. Number 1, the mastery criterion appears from nowhere. If Every goal in a district ends at 80%. I would want to know why. I would want to know why, because there's some goals such as the one example I used a few minutes ago about crossing the street. There's others relating to toileting. I want to get to 100%. I want to get to 100%. My checking account that I have with my local bank, would they accept that I mastered my goal if I'm at 80%? I should get to 100%. Okay, I mean, I go to them periodically. If I have checks, I must still have money. That is not the appropriate response. Okay, number 2, then the second one. The goal names a program. A commercial program can be part of an instructional program, but completing Unit 7 of a program isn't necessarily the student skill we're trying to improve. Stay away from programs, or what I— I just saw this the other day. I just saw this the other day where they actually named the paraprofessional, the actual paraprofessional's name in the goal as a part of what the student was receiving. And my thought on this when I saw this, suppose that the paraprofessional is sick. Do we actually take the kid to the paraprofessional at the paraprofessional's home and have the kid receive services there? That becomes a transportation issue. So keep that in mind. So don't do that.
Okay.
So next one, nobody outside the classroom can independently verify the criterion. I again write it for someone who's not in the room. Number 4, the goal measures adult behavior rather than student behavior. What we're measuring, whether we're measuring adult behavior instead of what the student performs, we are measuring the wrong thing. I'm not going to deny that some of the adults with whom you work with may not need goals themselves, but that's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about the student goals. And number 5, maybe the most practical test of all, ask the teacher what data will be collected next week. Ask the teacher. If nobody can answer that question, the goal may appear measurable on paper but probably isn't operationally measurable. So keep that in mind as we address this and keep that in mind as we pay attention to— okay. I'm going to switch gears, switch gears subtly. And that had you see the blue. All right, but we're switching gears. Yeah. And what I want to emphasize is a part of this one. Accommodations provide access. SDI provides instruction. I want you to put that sentence in the back of your mind because we're going to test it repeatedly. Because one of the things we're looking at is, are we actually providing specially designed instruction? This has risen dramatically. And all the lawsuits that I've been involved in this past year, and I was involved in 94 lawsuits this past year. All right, it was, it was not a record year. I've had more. And so, but it's been 94 of these, and the vast majority of them, the teachers could not clearly articulate what the specially designed instruction— I've been a complaint reviewer, as I said, in several states, and the district cannot clearly articulate what they, what they respond to the complaint that the child did not receive instruction. And when we do monitoring, when we ask for determining of whether the child is actually receiving instruction, what we say is that the kid gets accommodations. So I'm going to spend time talking about this one. This is the central distinction, though, is what we're talking about is it's very explicit. Accommodations provide access while SDI changes the content, changes the methodology or the delivery of instruction to address disability-related needs. So keep this in mind.
Thank you.
So look at this one. And we'll make sure you guys get a copy of this as well if you want. Accommodations and SDI solve different problems. And they're not— and it's interesting. This is the crux of this one. Before I go any further, I want to highlight this one. There are some students who need accommodations and SDI. It's not one versus the other. It's not one versus the other. So keep this, but keep these separate purposes in mind. Or per pie in mind about this one. Accommodations and SDIs solve different problems. An accommodation asks— this is very specifically— what barrier is preventing the student from accessing the instruction or demonstrating what they know? What is the barrier? That's what the accommodation is seeking to identify.
All right.
The SDI asks, what does the student need to be explicitly taught differently because of the disability? Understand the big difference between the two, and I and I mean this because we're seeing a lot of emergency certified teachers who can't articulate what they're providing for the kids. And I I want I'm going to get to this in a few minutes, but I want to make sure we understand the difference. I'll go back to this: the accommodation is what barrier is preventing the student from accessing the instruction or demonstrating what they know. What is the barrier? Then the SDI asks. What does this— what does the student need to be explicitly taught differently because of this disability? Some of you are saying that there's been an increased discussion relating to SDI. Well, SDI is relatively new to special ed. It's only been in part of the special ed process since 1977. So that's why it's still relatively new. Okay. And this is where it gets tricky. The same thing can look sometimes look very different and similar on paper. A graphic organizer might simply provide access to an assignment, or I may explicitly teach the student how to use a graphic organizer as a writing strategy through modeling, through guided practice, through feedback and fading. Same object, different instructional purposes. So don't classify something based entirely on the noun. Ask, what is the adult doing with it and why? And that's what we have to think about as a part of this one. So keep this in mind as we pay attention to this. Keep these 2 in mind as we move forward. So what do accommodations do? I'm going to dive deep into this for a few minutes. The hallmark of an accommodation is that the learning target remains intact. What we're doing is we're reducing a disability-related barrier. If a student knows the science content, but decoding prevents access to the textbook, text-to-speech may remove that barrier. Keep that in mind. If attention is significantly affected by competing stimuli, okay, if you missed what I said, if attention is significantly affected by competing stimuli, a reduced distraction environment may provide access. So we have to think about that as well. The student is still expected to learn the same essential content. Accommodations need to be implementable. As needed frequently sounds flexible but may be so vague that nobody knows when the student actually receives the support. Pause before we get into more. Now I'm going to give you some examples, then I'm going to get, I'm going to get something to this one. I've got, I've got I've got a lot to say. All right, we'll go through some. What I'll do is I'll give you some examples and then some non-examples, and then I'll give you some tips on this one that is tripping up districts left and right. Okay, let's talk about accommodation examples. Each of these changes access rather than teaching the underlying deficient skill. Extended time doesn't teach processing speed. No, there's no teaching on that one. Just gives the kid extended time. Pause. One of the most common accommodations I see for kids with ADHD is, in fact, on every single 504 that I've seen for kids with ADHD this past year, is the kid will get extended time on tests. My question for you is, who are the kids who are finishing these tests first? Just ponder that one. Okay?
Okay.
But extended time does not teach processing speed. Preferential seating doesn't teach attention. Okay, so keep that in mind. Okay, so the other thing about this one, and I see 504s where I see accommodation as preferential seating. I don't know what that means. Is it preferential seating close to the teacher? Preferential seating close to their friends? Preferential seating close to the bathroom? Preferential seating close to the lockers? Preferential seating close to the class gerbil? Preferential seating close to their girlfriend or boyfriend? I don't know what it means. So a little bit more description has got to be a part of the process of understanding where we are with this one. A calculator doesn't teach calculation. Keep that in mind. Ponder that one. A copy of notes doesn't teach note-taking. These supports, all of them with descriptions so we understand what they mean, may be entirely appropriate. The point isn't that accommodations are less important. The point is they are not substitutes for instruction when instruction is required. That's the point. They're not a substitute for instruction. And pay attention to the text-to-speech example. It makes sense when decoding is not the construct we're trying to measure. If we're assessing the student's decoding skill, reading the passage aloud fundamentally changes what we're measuring, right? So let's give you some accommodation non-examples. Ready, set, stay where you are. Okay. This slide exposes several common documentation problems.
Okay.
Small group instruction isn't automatically an accommodation or SDI. Small group instruction is a grouping arrangement. I still need to know what happens instructionally in that group.
Okay.
Paraprofessional support as needed. I'm aware that most of your districts have a Plethora, extra supply of paraprofessionals because we pay them so well. But paraprofessional support as needed is extraordinarily vague. What barrier? What task? What does support mean? I mean, one of the common things you're going to see from parents and from doctors is the kid will need a one-on-one para for this for the remainder of the school year. But they don't define— they don't define what barrier, what task, and what does support mean for these kids. But they need to give this kid. So that's a— it's a fair question. If anyone says that the kid needs a one-on-one aide, ask for what? What times? What specifics about this one? Instead of just generically about this one.
Wait, more.
Let's go to modified curriculum. It's not an accommodation if we're changing the learning expectations itself. Keep that in mind. Keep that in mind. So we're changing the learning expectations. We're causing some problems. We're causing some problems, and we're not actually addressing what we're doing about this one. And check for understanding. I hope everyone checks for understanding. Do you guys understand what I'm talking about? Okay, but how often? In what setting? What happens when the student doesn't understand? Why am I saying this? Specificity matters because consistency matters. Okay, I want you, I want you to think about all of each one of these. But I want to go back, go back one slide just for a second. Accommodations examples. What I'm seeing is we're giving these kids these accommodations. We're giving these kids accommodations and then we're not doing anything to assess whether these accommodations solve or mitigate the child's problem. What do I mean by this one? Give the kid extended time on tests. That's fine. That's a common one that we give. Did it solve or mitigate the problem that the child is having? Okay, because— or we give the kid seating up close to the teacher, the preferential seating one, a little more specific on that one. We give the kids some preferential seating, but we don't then evaluate whether it solved or mitigated the problem. That's what's a problem. So what— for every time— this is my—
this is—
this is a lot of what I'm gonna sound like I'm saying right here. It sounds like CYA, which is A special ed acronym, which I don't remember what it stands for. But what— for each one of these examples, whenever we give kids accommodations, what we have to highlight for them is we have to do an evaluation. Did this accommodation solve or mitigate the problem? Why do I say this? Because we give these kids these accommodations, but then we don't address what's going on. The same thing, we give kids one-on-one aides. Does the one-on-one aide solve or mitigate the problem? What I'm recommending is clearly define the problem that these accommodations are going to be expected to provide to solve, and then take data on it. Then implement this one, and 3, 6, 9 weeks after that, take some quick, quick data points to say, did it solve or mitigate the problem? I'm recommending that you do this now because I guarantee parent council is going to ask you these things. I absolutely guarantee they're going to ask you these things and they're going to ask you, does it solve or mitigate? Did it— when you provided this kid freaking breaks, did that solve the problem? I guarantee they're going to ask you these things. So keep that in mind as we address this one. But too often what we do is what I refer to as the P&P approach to accommodations. We just place and pray that it works. We don't take data. You need to do a better job on this one and pay attention to this one. Okay.
Speak again.
So I'm switching back to— I'm switching past accommodations. So I've talked about accommodations, the pluses, the minuses, the good, the bad, things like this. Let's talk about SDI, what SDI does. This is where I want to separate SDI from all the things we sometimes use as shorthand. SDI is not a room. SDI is not a person. SDI is not 30 minutes. SDI is not a commercial program. Specially Designed Instruction, describes how instruction is being adapted to address the child's unique disability-related needs. We may change content, we may change methodology, we may change delivery, we change intensity, we may change grouping, we may change scaffolding, we change opportunities to respond, may change feedback, may change repetition or practice, and it should be linked directly back to what we identified in the present level and goals. Here's another quick test. Could another qualified teacher read the IEP and reasonably produce the instructional approach? If not, we probably haven't described the STI appropriately. So keep this in mind as we address this one. Okay, so this is the slide I would give every building principal, and we have some handouts that we're going to give to you at the end. Only if you stay to the end. If you don't stay to the end, well, we'll figure something out. But there's, there's some handouts that we have for you that are really good, and truly we field tested with multiple, with multiple districts, and they've been parallels, made them to look really good. I don't do really pretty, but they've made them look really good, and I applaud their work on this one because we're trying to help building-level administrators as a part of this one. But I would give— this is a slide I would give every building principal and special education teacher. When someone tells you something is SDI, I want you to ask these 4 questions. These 4 questions. Question 1, what exact skill are we teaching? Not reading. What part of reading? Number 2, how is this instruction different from what peers ordinarily receive? That's the specially designed instruction. 3, we've got 3. Who is delivering it? How often? And in what instructional structure? That's the question. And 4, how do we know whether it's working? I see 1, 2, and 3 all the time. I don't see people asking 4. I don't see people asking 4. We do a lot of these things, but then we don't evaluate whether it actually works. So, so this, this, try this phrase, small group reading instruction for 30 minutes daily. I see that all the time, and I bet you do too. Question 1, what skill? We don't know. Question 2: What difference? We don't know. Question 3: We know frequency and perhaps grouping. Question 4: How do we know whether it worked? We don't know. So merely putting a student into smaller groups doesn't magically convert general instruction into SDI. Okay, so I want you to think about one SDI statement that you've seen from IEPs in your district. Run it mentally through these 4 questions. Where does it break down? And I'm pretty much guaranteed that it will break down in one of these parts. So I'll go back, I'll go back, I'll go through, I'll go through small group reading instruction. Look at small group. We don't know, again, we don't know the skill, we don't know what's being different, we don't know the frequency, and we don't know how it's going to work. Okay, so keep that in mind as you address this. Okay, so pay attention to this one. Notice the verbs and instructional components here. I'm going to use fancy phrases: explicit, systematic modeling, error correction, feedback, cumulative review, guided practice, fading prompts. Keep those in mind. These statements describe what instruction looks like. Compare student receives reading support— compare that phrase, student received reading support, with explicit systematic instruction. In phoneme-graphic correspondence using a structured sequence. One tells me where the child might be or who might help. The other begins to tell me what the teacher actually does. This is especially important in reading because saying structured literacy or Orton-Gillingham or the name of a commercial program does not by itself describe the student's instructional needs. And I guarantee 2 things. 2 things is I guarantee that you're going to get requests from parents to describe this and what they're specifically doing. But by paying attention to this, we're talking about— that's right.
Okay.
Okay. So keep that in mind as we're addressing this. I'll get to a math one in a second. But what I want to emphasize is we're seeing a dramatic rise in parent requests for explicits on this one. Okay. So wait, there's more. Okay, reading non-examples. These are excellent examples of things that sound like services but don't tell us the instruction. Let's look at that first one. Student will receive help with reading. What help? Read aloud accommodations. That's access. Use an online reading program. Programs do not write or implement IEPs. We need to describe what instructional methodology the student requires. Work with paraprofessional. Again, what that tells me, an adult assignment, not an instructional design. Every time you see a person's title, a location, a number of minutes, or commercial products standing alone, ask, where is the instruction? Just clearly ask where the instruction is. Okay, keep that in mind. Also, this is something— too often we spend too much, a lot of time on reading. We don't spend a lot of time talking about math, but we've seen a dramatic rise in parent requests relating to math in litigation and in complaints. I track these things and I'm in Facebook groups across the nation about this one. Facebook groups don't often stay nicely in one state versus another, and so we have to think about this one. Is many districts are going to be caught flat-footed with these questions, and I mean this literally, is that parents are pushing on, on math SDI asking for these things. All right, so the same principle applies in math. Concrete, representational, abstract is an instructional sequence. Explicit vocabulary instruction changes how we teach mathematical language. Cumulative practice with immediate corrective feedback changes intensity and feedback. And worked examples followed by guided practice and independent application describes a deliberate teaching sequence. Again, I can picture what the teacher is doing. I can absolutely picture what the teacher is doing. So keep that in mind as we address this one and keep that in mind. Let's move on to a little more one that's a little more harder to define. Okay, don't worry, we'll get to behaviors. Writing is particularly vulnerable to vague statements such as graphic organizer or writing support. These examples move beyond that. We are directly teaching sentence construction. We are teaching a self-regulated planning and revision strategy. We use exemplars and non-exemplars, non-examples. We collect brief writing samples and target feedback to specific skills. The distinguishing feature here is that we're teaching the student how to perform the skill more independently. Not merely helping the student complete today's assignment. We're trying to give them some independent skills as a part of this one, and we're trying to move forward as a part of this one. Okay, so let's move on to the area which is probably the most difficult one, and this is something that I want to emphasize as we're addressing this one is, okay, this matters because schools sometimes assume SDI is only academic. It's not. If task initiation is a disability-related need, we can explicitly teach task initiation. If self-monitoring is a need, we can teach and rehearse a self-monitoring routine and gradually fade support. I was part of some of the original self-monitoring trials back in the 1980s. It was great fun. If social problem solving is a need. We can teach a script, role-play it, practice across settings, and provide feedback. Now, I tried that. It's hard. It's hard to teach kids one skill in one setting and then teach it in another. Okay? But to remind Johnny to be organized is not instruction in organization. That's not instruction. Instruction means we're deliberately building a skill that eventually becomes more independent. That's what we have to focus on as a part of this one, is actually teaching the kids something that moves them forward as a part of this one. Okay, more here. STI can incur in general education. You guys are in the great state of Illinois. I lived there for a while. It's a great state. I enjoyed the heck out of it. Okay, yes, I've been to Wrigley Field multiple times, by the way. You don't have to go just once, as Jenny said. What's interesting about this is I Yeah, yeah. But I had great fun there, enjoyed it. Live just north of there and take the L down. But it's interesting about this one is there are some states where SDI can only be implemented by special education teachers. This is not the case in Illinois. So what we're talking about this one, this is a general misconception. The location does not determine whether something is SDI. A student does not have to leave general education for special— specially designed instruction to occur. I want to— I'll say that again. A student does not have to leave general education for specially designed instruction to occur. Why I'm saying that is that in some states you have to get it only in the special education classroom. So if a student has executive functioning skills and they're sitting in a general education classroom and task initiation is a problem for them and they're not initiating what they need to be doing in the general education Classroom, teacher's classroom, the general education teacher class— a general education teacher can say, you need to go down to the special education classroom to have someone work with you on this one. We don't teach that here. That doesn't make any sense. Okay. Okay. So now the other thing about this one, so it can occur not just in the general education classroom, but conversely, building on this one, simply entering a resource classroom does not guarantee that SDI is occurring. Push-in can deliver very strong SDI, and when someone has identified that target skill, plan the instructional adaptation and assign responsibility. So I want you to feel free to write this one down, is that co-teaching can absolutely deliver SDI. Okay, but there are 2 adults in the room is not an instructional methodology. Make sure you understand the difference. Co-teaching, as long as the kid is getting the actual instruction, they can deliver the SDI. But co-teaching in and of itself, just putting 2 adults in the room, is not SDI. I was a co-teacher for half of a year. It's where I learned, as I was a special ed person, it's where I learned to play Sudoku because I was set in the back and told, I will hand her things. If there's a problem, just do something. But that was it. There was no planning. There was no appropriate time for instruction. There was no things like this. I was bored. Sudoku had just come out in the United States and I became a fan. Okay, still play it, by the way. Okay. Okay, so this is what— back to this. This is why I would separate the placement discussion from the instructional discussion. First, determine what the student needs to be taught and how. Then determine how and where the team can provide that appropriately. That's the question. All right. So instead of saying this, and this is— I did a piece, I think we can get this to you, for the National Association of Elementary School Principals on how to make placement decisions. We need to think about this one, that the process that I came up with as a part of this is think about the needs first. And can those be— where then we're to provide those instead of just saying the kid has LD, send them to the LD classroom. So we have to think about this one, but determine the student's needs, how to be taught, and where the student can provide them. Okay, so keep this one. All right, so this gets really practical. The special education teacher walking around during general instruction and helping students who raise their hands may be valuable. Okay, but we shouldn't automatically call that SDI, and that's what I'm finding a lot of co-teachers are doing. They just walk around and they just kind of see what there's— if there's a problem and they need to prompt something. Okay, compare that with a special educator who comes into the room knowing that 4 students need a planned 12-minute decoding routine and deliver that routine with modeling, practice, feedback, and data collection. That's very different. Now I can see the instructional adaptation. Or the co-teacher who pre-teaches critical vocabulary using a structured method before students encounter the grade-level text. Again, the central question is not, was the special education teacher practically present or physically present? It is what specially designed instruction occurred. So I want you to think about, and I want you to think about this very literally. If I walked into your co-taught classrooms tomorrow, which I'm not going to do because it's Saturday and I'm going to spend the day walking my puppy, okay, how would I know what portion of the lesson was SDI? I want you to just pause and think about that for a second. But if I walked into your co-taught classrooms, maybe Monday, right? No, I can't do it. I'm doing witness preparation. But if— but just imagine I was. How would I know what portion of the lesson was STI? Okay, I want you to let that— I want you to sit on that for a second because the vast majority of the time you can't tell. You can't tell. So keep that in mind as we address this one. Okay, so, all right. So this is why categorizing supports solely by their names doesn't work. A graphic organizer can absolutely, can simply help a student access a grade-level assignment. Or as I provided an example for you about 10 minutes ago, or a teacher can explicitly teach the student a strategy for generating and organizing ideas using the organizer, how to model it, how to produce it with correct feedback and fade assistance on this. One is access, one is instruction. The read aloud example makes the distinction equally clear. If I'm reading science content aloud because decoding would otherwise prevent the student from learning science, that's an accommodation. That's an accommodation. And many of you who've worked in special education know that some of these science books are often written way above some of the students' grade level functioning levels. But if the student need is decoding, reading everything to the student doesn't teach decoding. This is where teams sometimes unintentionally provide excellent access while failing to remediate the disability-related instructional needs. So keep that in mind. Okay, so these common mislabels, these aren't just merely terminology problems. They can reveal programming problems. If extended time is listed as SDI, I start wondering whether the team has actually identified the specialized instruction. Saw an IEP last week. Student is going to get extended time on the IEP. How much? As unlimited, unlimited extended time. I want you to play that out to its logical consequence. Student is 35 and still working on a math assignment. So keep that in mind as we address this one. Okay, but if systematic phonics is sitting under accommodations, perhaps the team is treating instruction as optional support. If we're lowering the learning expectations and calling it accommodation, we may be obscuring a modification. And service minutes are not instruction. 5 times 30 minutes tells me quantity. It doesn't tell me quality. It doesn't tell me content. It doesn't tell me methodology. It doesn't tell me delivery, or it doesn't tell me intensity. But I'm betting you get IEPs from other districts, not yours, but from other districts that say those very same things. Okay, so keep that in mind as we pay attention to this and address this one. Okay, so once we've defined SDI, the service delivery grid has to make sense. If the student's needs require intensive explicit instruction, do the minutes plausibly provide enough instructional opportunity? Does the provider have the training necessary to deliver that instruction? Does the setting support the instructional purpose? And if fidelity matters, and it usually does, having attended a lot of manifestation determination reviews lately, Could not this past summer, but last spring it was a banner year. Could someone observe whether the planned instruction actually occurred? This becomes especially important when paraprofessionals are involved. Again, I'm aware that most of your districts have too many paraprofessionals. So I'm working on a case, and one of my cases, what would solve the matter? What will settle the matter? And it's a case I have in about 2 weeks. What would settle the matter is a paraprofessional with 5 years of extensive behavior management training who is also Orton-Gillingham certified. That would settle. That would settle. If you have anybody like that who's willing to move to an ugly part of the country, let me know. So I— that would settle my case. Most of the districts that I'm working with in some of these states, they're just looking for teachers who don't have 2— I'm sorry, paraprofessionals who don't have 2 felonies. That's where we're striving. Okay, but paraprofessionals— back to what I was saying, I didn't mean to divert us— but paraprofessionals can provide extraordinarily valuable access and reinforcement. Many of your programs would wither without the paraprofessional support, but administrators need to know whether that paraprofessional has gradually become the primary person delivering specialized instruction that the IEP contemplated would be provided by appropriately qualified staff. I guarantee you that's a question that is asked by parent counsel in due process hearings. I absolutely guarantee you that is. So keep that in mind as you adjust this one. All right, so this is the switch. The switch. Okay, these 4 questions are vital questions, and vital questions, they become administrative walkthrough protocol. What I want you to ask is, I want you to ask very specifically. Ask the staff members, what is the student's SDI and how is it different from the student's accommodations? You're not testing the teacher. You're testing whether the system has communicated the IEP clearly enough. Second, does what I'm seeing when I walk into the classroom match what the IEP says? Third, what is the role of the paraprofessional? Are they facilitating access? Are they reinforcing instruction? Are they collecting data, or have they become the de facto instructor? Keep that in mind as you address this. And 4th, show me the progress data connected to this instruction. Okay, that last question, that last question closes the loop. If teachers can tell you the need, they can describe the instruction. And show you data demonstrating the student's response, you're probably looking at a functional instructional system rather than a paperwork system. So keep that in mind as we address this one. But too often, too often, no one's asking for quite that 4th part. No one's asking for that 4th part that basically ties the progress data connected to the instruction. So If I were to come do a walkthrough with you next week, which of these 4 questions would tell you the most if you started asking it during your walkthroughs next week? Can the staff understand this? Can they explain what's going on? Or is the paraprofessionals providing these things? So that's what we have to think about as we address this one. Okay? Switching gears. Ready for a switch topic? I'm ready. Good. Okay. Progress monitoring portion of this emphasizes using data to judge whether instruction is sufficient, establishes tools and decision rules before collection, and then changing data, changing instruction based on those. This is one sentence that I want you to take back to your teams and say over and over again. And I mean this with all intent on this one. If you, in fact, if you remember only one thing about progress monitoring, remember this one thing: data is only valuable when it changes what adults do next. Too often we think about it as a student measurement, but we have to think about it as way more than that. And so data is only valuable when it changes what adults do next, and that's what I want to focus on this, and that's what I emphasize about this one. Okay, so we have turned progress monitoring into a collection exercise in too many places. The IEP says collect weekly data, so I collect weekly data. That is not enough. The purpose is to determine whether the instruction we're providing is sufficient to produce the growth we expect. Okay. And from a risk standpoint, There is enormous difference between these 2 files. File 1 shows that a child isn't making progress and the school repeatedly changed instruction in response. File 2 shows that the child isn't making progress for 6 months and the school continues doing exactly the same thing. The second file raises the obvious question: at what point did you know the intervention wasn't working? And what did— and what did you do when you knew it? Okay, progress monitoring connects goals, SDI, and instructional responses. I don't have a slide for this. I don't have this on a slide, but I want to emphasize there's an acronym that we have in special education, and it's a very real acronym. It's not one of my made-up ones. It's a very real acronym, and I want you to— I want you to write this acronym down. The acronym is KOSHK. K-O-S-H-K. It'll make sense the moment I explain it to you. And it stands for when a district knew, as in K-N-E-W, knew or should have known. Makes sense now, doesn't it? Okay, but that's what we have to think about. The vast majority of litigation I'm involved in are KUSH lawsuits where the district knew for multiple marking periods the kid was not doing well. Okay, or parents sent in a note saying, my child is suffering, or the kid is a frequent flyer to the principal's office, or the, or the kid is just failing exam after exam after exam after exam. Or the teacher keeps, keeps coming to the principal and saying, this kid just doesn't pay attention no matter what I do. We need to do something. The teacher goes back and forth to the principal and talks about this one, and nothing changes. Right? Best example I can give to you is I was involved in a case a few years ago where we knew it was a 6th grade boy. We knew at the end of the first marking period that the child was not making progress. Right? He was failing 4 out of 6 classes and just doing poorly in reading. No changes were made. We knew at the end of the second marking period he was failing multiple classes and not doing well in his reading. We knew at the end of the 3rd marking period he was not doing well, and the district said it's, it's too late in the school year to make changes. We'll make changes next year. We knew at the end of the 1st marking period that child was not making progress. My question for you is, who's the slow learner here? And I want— I emphasize this one. I want to emphasize this one. Okay, so keep that in mind as we address this one. We had a kid who we knew at the end of the 1st marking period was not doing well, and we made no changes. That kid suffered. That kid suffered. This kid has a disability at no fault of their own. It's not like they're going to wake up and say, you know, I think I'm going to have LD this week because it's easy to spell, but I'll have autism next week because they have better bumper stickers. And week 3, I'll have— I'll be labeled as intellectually disabled because I want to go to the Special Olympics. No, they have a disability at no fault of their own. And we have to do what we can as professionals to alter the trajectory for them as a part of this one. So keep that in mind. So good, so good, good progress monitoring starts before the first data point. What it does is it defines 4 things. Defines very specifically a target skill. What exactly are we measuring? It tells very specifically the tool. How will we measure it? We have a schedule on this one. How often do we need data to make meaningful decisions and decision rules? So I'm, I'm working with the district right now that takes one progress data point per marking period. So I actually asked them to graph it. They dutifully drew an XY axis and said, it's here. I don't know what's going up or down, but it's here. So keep that in mind. And decision rule. What result causes us to reconsider instruction? Many districts have the first 3. They have a target skill, a tool, and a schedule. Most districts do not have a decision rule. I mean this, and I'm not poking names or identities about this one, but what I'm seeing is they don't have a decision rule. This is the one that I think everyone is missing. We tell staff to collect data, but we don't tell them when the data should result in action. Also, frequency should make sense for the skill. A reading fluency goal can support weekly curriculum-based measurement probes. A transition skill may take more sense through like a monthly portfolio review. A behavior occurring many times per day may permit data by opportunity on a variety of things. The answer isn't every goal should be measured weekly. The answer is collect data enough and consistently enough to make valid instructional decisions. Make sure you understand this one. I'm a huge fan of SLPs. I like SLPs because they take data every single time. I work with Parallel. I'm a proud advisor of Parallel, and I know that they take data every single time they work with kids, and I think that's wonderful. And what that does is that helps us articulate very clearly, yes or no, whether the kid is making progress. So the lines— it's not just on the SLP goals. So keep that in mind. Okay, so what the goal should be: collect data enough, often enough, and consistently enough to make valid instructional decisions. That's what we're striving for, and that's what we need to pay attention to. Okay, so look about this. So strong progress monitoring. These examples demonstrate consistency. Weekly reading probes are graphed against an aim line. Task initiation is measured by using both percentage and number of opportunities. Writing samples use the same rubric and anchor examples. That is important because if the scoring system changes every time, the trend becomes meaningless. And transition program is measured against explicit completion criteria. The common feature is comparability over time. We need to know whether a change in the number reflects a change in student performance, not a change in the tool. So my advice— think about this one, I'll probably get to this in a few minutes— but my advice is I'm set with all the districts that I'm working with. Is we're taking regular progress monitoring data on a designated day. Now, parallel does great every time they work with a kid, but for the kids who are not involved in progress in parallel, we're taking data typically on Wednesday afternoons, because one of the joys about being an educator is we miss a lot of Mondays. It is good. A lot of kids miss a lot of Fridays. I want that schedule— Friday, Monday not being there. But we have a lot of kids who miss Fridays, but a lot of kids are there on Wednesday afternoons. So a lot of the districts with whom I'm working with, we're taking data pretty much every Wednesday afternoon, and it sounds like a lot of testing. It's not. You can get a lot from a 5-minute math probe. You can get a lot from a 5-minute reading assignment. You can get a lot from observing a child on a playground about the number of interactions they engage with kids in 20 minutes. Get consistent things about this one, but pay attention. All right. So what I'm seeing, though, I'm seeing some bad examples. Bad examples, and I, and I don't use the word bad lightly because I want to emphasize that we have, we have bad examples. All right, so what happened? Okay, grades only. Grades are useful. Kids like grades. Kids like grades. Parents like grades. Things like this one. But grades are terrible substitutes for many IEP progress measures because they contain too many variables. If we were to lock ourselves in a room, and we're not going to do that, by the way, but if we were to lock ourselves in a room. We could probably within 1 minute come up with a whole bunch of reasons why grades, how grades can be easily manipulated. Keep that in mind as it kind of comes up. Okay? A grade may reflect homework completion. It may reflect attendance. It may reflect participation. It may reflect some accommodations, test performance, extra credit, and curricular difficulty. Okay? Another one, anecdotal. I like anecdotal. I'm a huge fan of anecdotal. Giving you some anecdotes here at the Myself just just this afternoon. Okay, anecdotal notes add context, but by themselves they don't establish a trend. So keep that in mind as you address this one. Or changing tools every month is a major problem. If September's score came from one task and October's came from a completely different task, what exactly does the difference mean? And making progress is a conclusion. Show me evidence that supports that conclusion. The last one may be the most serious: data collected but never reviewed. My sister— my sister— my daughter, for a number of years, was a special education teacher in a school for kids labeled as having severe needs relating to autism. They had a kid who they had taken on-task behavior data from 9:00 to 9:30 Every single day for 2 and a half years, from 9 to 9:30, they had data on this child. At no point did anyone look or analyze the data, but there was a paraprofessional who was taking on-task data from 9 to 9:30 every single day for 2 and a half years. And it was a year-round school because these kids regress so much in the summers. And so they had a lot of data. So, but we have these things, things about this one. So if we have data that's collected but never reviewed, At that point, we're documenting rather than monitoring, and that's the problem. And that's what we have to think about this one. So learn this. This is the one thing I want you to learn, okay? And this is going to help with all compliance things and complaints, anything, okay? Okay, sample decision rules should be made, such as reviewing instruction after 4 consecutive data points below the aim line, or changing the intensity or method when the trend stays flat. This is where progress monitoring becomes operational. The specific decision rule may vary according to the measure and intervention. The important point is the team has a rule. For example, 4 consecutive points below the aim line triggers an instructional review. Doesn't necessarily mean a full shebang of an IEP meeting, and that's— shebang is the legal term, by the way— but it doesn't necessarily mean that, but at least we're going to meet and try to make some determinations. A flat trend over 6 weeks might trigger a change in intensity, might change methodology, grouping, or practice. If the data jump all over the place, don't immediately conclude that the student is wildly inconsistent. First, ask whether the intervention and measurement were implemented consistently, and then document the decision, not merely score equals 37. I don't know what that means. Is that a good score or a bad score? But 4 points fell below the aim line. Team reviewed implementation. Fidelity was adequate. Beginning Monday, intervention frequency increased from 3 to 5 sessions weekly. Now the record tells an instructional story, and that's what we have to think about this one. Okay, so here, write this down. When progress stalls, the first rule is make sure you don't wait till the annual review. If the data tell you in October that the student is responding, waiting until April doesn't improve the quality of the decision. First, verify implementation. Do we actually provide the SDI we wrote? Second, verify measurement alignment. Is the goal asking about the one skill while our probe measures something else? Then look at instruction. Should we increase intensity? Should we, should we change methodology? Should we change the grouping? Should we increase opportunities to respond, provide more explicit corrective feedback? And notice the order on the slide: change instruction before automatically changing expectations downward. Failure to make progress shouldn't immediately result in lowering the bar. It should first cause us to examine whether our instructional response is adequate. That's what we need to think about as producers. And here, this is something that is vital. The next slide. And I'm vital, and I mean this with all sincerity. Parent progress reports for parents should answer questions parents actually care about. Where did my child start? Where is my child now? Where are they expected to be? Are they on track? And if they aren't on track, okay, if they aren't on track, what are you doing differently? Compare that with receiving reports 4 times a year that simply says progressing. Parents don't need raw spreadsheets with no explanation. Give them the actual data and interpret it in plain language. Something like, at the beginning of the year, Maria read 42 correct words per minute. She currently reads 57. The expected growth rate point was 63, so she remains below the expected trajectory. We have therefore increased— that is much more meaningful. That is much more meaningful. Okay, we cannot— we can do a much better job of working to support parents as a part of this one, and that's what we need to think about this one. Okay, okay, so we're back, we're back to the chain. We're back to the same chain we started with. Present levels. What does the child need? Where is the child now? Okay. Baseline goal. Where are we going? SDI. What are we doing to get there? Progress monitoring. Did it work? When I'm reviewing an IEP, I often literally trace one need all the way through. Pick one major reading need and follow it from the present level through progress reports. If the thread disappears somewhere, you have found a system problem. And that's what we're striving for. And that's what we're talking about today is helping what we can do to emphasize system problems and emphasize system needs, because that's what we need to strive for as a part of this, is making sure what we're doing is correcting and addressing system needs.
Okay?
So keep that in mind as we address this. So, okay. So what I wanna think about is What administrators can put in place. You have some heroic individuals. You truly do. But we this this this whole system cannot intend depend entirely on having heroic individuals, special education teachers. Administrators need systems. I've done the data. I wrote the book for principals on special education. We know the status on this. One in four principals nationwide change on an annual basis. And teachers follow the systems that they're established. We need systems that are independent of one person. So you need to make sure that you're building systems as part of this one. So create— first, create common expectations for baseline and goal writing. Don't let every building invent its own definition of a measurable goal. Make sure there's consistency as a part of this one. Second, create a progress monitoring calendar. When are data collected? When are they reviewed? Who participates in review? Third, establish decision rules, particularly for your highest priority academic and behavioral goals. Fourth, train people on accommodations, train people on modifications and SDI, not once. Revisit with actual IEP examples. And fifth, Audit implementation, not just paperwork. A beautiful IEP that isn't implemented isn't a successful system. Ask what students are actually receiving as a part of this one. Okay, so keep that in mind as we address this. All right, more. Do this next pre-audit. So I recommend variety of things about this one. If I were a special education director leaving this session and wanted one manageable action, I would do this. Don't begin with 700 IEPs unless you're an overachiever, okay? But don't begin with 700 IEPs. Choose 10. Make them representative— different buildings, different ages, different disability categories, different case managers— and review each one vertically. Can you identify the need? Is there a baseline? Does the goal measure the skill? Does the SDI describe how instruction is adapted? Does this— do the service minutes make sense? Can I determine from the progress report whether the student is responding? Then don't focus primarily on what— on individual teacher errors. Look for patterns. If 8 out of 10 goals lack usable baselines, that's probably not 8 careless teachers. That's district training or system problems. If 7 of 10 SDI statements consist only of locations and minutes, that's a system problem. Your goal isn't to catch people. That's not your goal. Your goal is to identify what the organization needs to improve. So what I want to think about this from What I want you to write down, who in your district could sit around the table for a 10 IEP review, and what would you— and when would you do this first one? And think about this one and address this and pay attention. This one is something that you can do when you get back to your district. Some of you are already in your district thinking about this one. Don't do this before you go home. Have a Friday, but think about this one. All right. So we're gonna— and we're gonna have at least some time for questions, but I wait there. I've got more. Don't worry, don't worry. And then we got some handouts. Okay. All right. I want to make sure, right, 5 messages that I want to make sure that you're clear about, about this one.
Okay.
And if you, if you take nothing else, I want you to remember these 5. First, a defensible IEP is not the longest IEP. It is the clearest IEP. I just reviewed a 105-page IEP. IEPs are not lesson plans. They're— what we're doing is for the kids is we're writing the goals that they're going to be covering over the next year. It's basically view this as a roadmap. We're going to get the kid from one place to the other as a part of this one. It took me many hours to review that IEP. The good thing was I was being paid by the hour, so I had that. So that's a good thing. But otherwise it was not a good IEP. 2, measurable baselines make goals meaningful. If you don't have a baseline, you're shooting in the dark. Truly. Okay, not an advocate of shooting or the dark, but just think about this one is you have to think about what we can do to address this one. 3, accommodations provide access. SDI provides instruction. That distinction needs to be understood by every person implementing IEPs. 4, progress monitoring matters only When it changes adult behavior. The student shouldn't be the only person expected to change in response to the data. We need to have teachers change what they're doing, articulate what they're going to be doing differently based on the data that we're seeing on how the child's performing. And finally, audit-ready and student-centered goals should be the same thing. The goal is not to create a beautiful file for ISBE. The goal is to create an IEP. That accurately describes the student, produces better instruction, allows staff to make good decisions, gives families meaningful information. And because it does all these things, it's also easier to defend. Okay, so keep this in mind as we address this one. Okay, and keep this in mind as we're paying attention. All right, so I've got, I've got some things I want to share with you. All right, and so let's get to this. All right, we're going to come back to questions, but before we get to the questions, I want to get several things I want to share. Okay. Is we've got we've got some tips for you. Okay. The resources here are intended to make this practical. If you want something that you can take back to your team rather than simply take today's slides, use the QR code and grab the toolkit. What this what the okay? We have printable templates, compliance checklists, and team ready guides. We've, as I alluded to before, is we field tested these with multiple districts in several states. And what I did is I sent black and white stuff, Parallel made them pretty. And I applaud them for this, and I appreciate their support in trying to solve and prevent long-term problems. What we have is team-ready guides that are defensible practices that can benefit what's going on as a part of what you're doing. These are all, and they're free. Free, free. We can't do much better than this one. So we've got guides for you and tips that we want to get to you and services that we want to provide for you that'll be beneficial to you. So please log in, download this thing. So if you don't, if you— but we'll give this opportunity for you later. Wait, there's another QR code. Stay where you are. Keep your phones out ready for another QR code. Here we go. All right. Okay. We've got another series that we're going to pay attention to. And this is presented by Julie Weatherly. If you've seen Julie present, she And I've presented multiple times together. She's got Detective Rod. I've got a smarter dog. I've got a Border Collie. But she's got Detective Rod on this, going to provide assistance for you. But these are free workshops for you, 3-part workshops, okay, that focus on protective— on proactive compliance. What's going on about this one? You can sign up for these as we speak, and they're great. They're truly going to be good. You've seen Julie before. You know that she charges a lot for presentations. She's very organized. She's hypercurrent. So myself, we both— she and I both stay up to date on things, constantly having to participate in things, what's going on. But it's a free service for you. But you need to make sure that you reserve your spot for this because it's coming on September 17th, October 19th, and November 19th about this one. So keep that in mind as we address this one. And the last thing before we get to the questions— and my AirPods are about to die, so I may have to take them out. Last thing is about this one. Hold on. Is that it? So you need to make sure that you pay attention that in Illinois you have the IEP-Q process, okay? And you have IEP Quality is about this one. And I can't emphasize how wonderful that process is. If you're not a participant and understand what IEP-Q is, we can get you information on this one. But the IEP Quality Project is a wonderful asset. Jim Schreiner has been wonderful as a part of this one. He's in Champaign-Urbana working on this, and it's truly an asset. Other states do not have this. And so what we have to think about is providing opportunities for you to participate, opportunities for you to be a part of this process. So I'm going to go back to the questions, and when you enter these in the chat, I'm going to stop sharing my— stop sharing if I can get my mouse to work. About this one, and I'm gonna have to take my headphones out because they're dying. So questions now?
We can't hear you, David. Just a few seconds while we.
Do a quick—
Can you hear me now? Yay! Perfect. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Okay, I apologize.
More time for them to scan, for everyone to scan the links.
Yes. Okay. And we're having— again, we're happy to take questions and, and address what's going on. We also, we also— and I want to make sure that we address this, and I, and I was telling people about who are on this beforehand— is I know that the nature of adult learning is that you will think of your best questions a week from now. 2 weeks from now, 3 weeks from now. If there's a question that you think you need an answer to that we can address, do not hesitate to reach out to you and we will do everything we can to get you a timely answer. I don't know the answer to everything. I had 2 teenagers for years who told me that in my house. They're now both in like 30s and they ask for advice all the damn time. It's amazing. But I want to make sure that you understand is we will do everything we can get you a timely answer. So your relationship and your interactions with us does not have to end today. And in fact, I don't want it to end today. In fact, I want you to participate with and set up a time to address interactions with Jenny and address more about what we can do to help provide services, because one of the big things we're seeing nationwide, very specifically, is a dramatic rise in state complaints. There's been a 45% rise in state complaints one year versus the other, and many of those complaints are rising because school districts do not have qualified personnel in order to provide services. And so if there's a way that we can help provide and address those needs, we want to make sure that you're there because parents are filing state complaints. It's a free process. I don't blame them for this. It preserves all of their due process rights down the line, and it gets them a settlement or at least an answer within 60 days. A lot of our lives, we don't get 60-day answers. I'm waiting on hip surgery, and I've been waiting now 90 weeks on this one, 90 days on this one. So I want to make sure that you can address this. And helpful we can do about this one. But now we just want to see if there's any questions that we can do to address what's going on, and we want to make sure that we're giving you answers. Again, we don't have all the answers, but we'll do everything we can to get you answers.
So I have 2 really good questions so far. One of them came in a little earlier. Do you have examples for functional skills? Also, how to ensure students know the diff— or excuse me, teachers know the difference between functional Okay.
Examples of functional skills. Let's just start talking about that. Functional skills can take a variety of tasks, and it's basically if they want specific skills, we could probably go into a very specific area. But the way we have to think about this one is addressing this and making sure that we have answers for that person. But now I don't have exactly specific examples I want to give, but what I can think about is addressing what we think about this. When we think about this one is making sure what we're doing is addressing what we can do to think. So I'm fumbling on this one, but why I'm saying this is what is the functional skill? Depends on what we think about for that kid.
Okay.
And think about what we can do to address that kid's needs. It depends on what the student's specific needs are and how we're addressing that instead of work.
It's not—
I'm not answering the question because functional skills depends on what the specific needs are that that kid has, and that's what we have to think about for that. Okay.
Okay, I have another good one here. Um, if SDI is provided in the general education setting and delivered by a gen ed teacher, how is that indicated on the educational services and placement page?
Um, what we have to think about is making sure—
is—
hold on, my, my headphones just quit.
Okay, so unless— we'll wait a couple seconds here, but we can go ahead and kind of close out if— unless David comes back on in the next couple minutes here. So at this point, we have a couple really good questions. Go ahead. Oh, I thought maybe David came back on.
I'm trying, I'm trying. Can you hear me? Yeah. So, so if STI is provided in the general education classroom, the district should just document it just as deliberately as STI delivered in the special education setting. The location doesn't make it less special education. The key to document is what was specially designed, who provided or supported it. The practical approach is in the IEP, clearly identify the SDI, not merely support in general education. For example, explicit systematic instruction in identifying main idea using teacher modeling. That's a good example. The IEP can indicate the SDI occurred in the general education classroom. Do not imply that SDI must occur in the resource room. So just, just use a simple service or implementation log. It doesn't have to be by narrative. For example, on September 8th in ELA, the gen ed classroom gave explicit modeling and guided practice, those kinds of things. I would think about, think about it as 3 separate questions. What did the IEP require? Can we show what happened? And can we show whether it worked? I'm not answering the question specifically about word adapted in the IEP. I don't have guidance on that one. But you have to answer those 3 questions. Document the instruction, not the adult. If the record lets someone determine what the specially designed instruction was later, then we've got a problem. And so we have to be real specific about this one. But saying support provided is not the answer. Keep that in mind.
Great. Okay. Any, any other closing questions? Because it looks like we have most of our questions have been addressed. And definitely, you know, Dr. Bateman mentioned where if you have additional questions or you have follow-up conversation you'd like to have, definitely I'd love to meet with you. Do you mind, David, pulling up that last slide so I can close it out?
Okay.
I'd love to get thoughts and feedback on everything that people heard today. That was great information. I'm really excited for the book to come out. Your next book on progress monitoring. I couldn't take enough notes, but we will be sending out slides and we will be also sending out a recording of this for those who are interested. You will have that. Also, you can feel free to share it with those who could not attend. But let's see if you're able to share that slide deck. If not, just that last slide. I wanted to show that QR code one more time. Instead of kind of going into September with these fire alarms, I would love to help anybody who has any needs or wants to chat about their favorite baseball team, but actually really has some concerns or things that came up as we were speaking with Dr. Bateman. I love speaking with all of you and being able to work with everybody here in Illinois. So I'm here, I come out to districts all the time, and definitely happy to help. Any additional questions here? I believe that we have— Blakely's answering a lot in the chat, but we may actually have— maybe I can reshare. My link as well for anybody, just because might be easiest to do. I see that Blakely has posted that link.
Is it?
Do you not see the slides?
I don't think we're seeing the slides, but if you look in the chat, you will see the last message that I sent some personal messages if you had mentioned that you were interested on the form, and then I sent everyone. everyone a message. If you want to talk about baseball or building your team, you can connect with Ginny via that link. She would love to meet you.
I apologize.
There we go.
I was seeing the slides. They were beautiful on my screen. So, okay. Yeah.
My favorite thing to do is meet with districts all day in person and also over the phone or via Zoom. But yeah, let me know. And I would love to meet you, chat with you, help you. So I know it's crazy busy time, but let me help a little bit. And even if you just want to vent about anything, but I wish you all a wonderful weekend. We are just headed right into the happiest hour of the day, the end of the day on a Friday. Hopefully you guys have a lovely weekend and feel free to reach out. And there's the link. We're going to leave it up for a little while longer, the little QR code, but we will be sending this out. Thank you all so much. Thank you, everyone. Have a great weekend.
Sorry for the tech problems. My, my earbuds are just going crazy on me.
Everyone did amazing. Great job. Thank you guys for coming.
Bye.
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