4 Questions to Ask Before Your Child’s IEP Annual Review Meeting

Written by: Dr. Liz Matheis and Featured by: Shield HealthCare

Annual review season is here, and your child’s meeting is probably already on your schedule. As a former School Psychologist on the Child Study Team (CST), I know that annual review meetings are coming, which means you need to get ready to make the most of this important Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meeting.

For some, this provokes a great deal of anxiety. The worry of:

• “Will they change my child’s program?”
• “Will they take away services?”
• “Is my child making any gains?”
• “Does my child have the best program?”
• “Does my child need more or different related services?”

Before I dive in to the topic, let me review the different types of IEP meetings that you can have:

An IEP annual review is your yearly meeting when you sit down with your case manager, general education teacher, special education teacher, and related service providers in an effort to review your child’s program as it has been set for the last year, and to decide what your child’s program will look like for the upcoming year.

A re-evaluation eligibility meeting is one you will with your Case Manager, general education teacher, special education teacher and related service providers every 3 years in order for your child’s continued eligibility for special education and related services to be reviewed. That is, your child will be re-evaluated (psychological, educational assessments, as well as necessary related service therapies) so that you may review your child’s progress. During this time, you can bring forth any diagnoses that your child has that were made by private professionals (e.g., ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Dyspraxia, Central Auditory Processing Evaluation, etc).

Sometimes, your case manager may decide that there is enough data from your child’s teachers that shows that your child continues to be eligible and requires the program that has been established. As a result, your case manager may ask you to waive testing and re-convene in 3 years.

An initial eligibility meeting takes place after you or your child has requested a CST meeting in order to review your child’s learning needs in an effort to gain testing. The eligibility meeting occurs when all testing has been completed and eligibility is being determined...

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