Hopes and Dreams: An IEP Model for Parents
Kirby Lentz, Ed. D.
Vice President of Operations, Chileda
1825 Victory Street, La Crosse, WI 54601
Phone: 608 782 6480 E-mail: Kirby_L@chileda.org

NOTE: The following material is from "Hopes and Dreams: An IEP Field Guide for Parents and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders." Copies are available for purchase online.

Most parents report the IEP process is frustrating and difficult, especially when their child has an autism spectrum disorder, and many just feel overwhelmed when it comes to the IEP team meeting. The Hopes and Dreams IEP model has helped many parents prepare for the IEP meeting and gain the confidence to present meaningful information to the IEP team.

Actually, the Hopes and Dreams model is the development of a parent's assessment of their child. This system will take the parent through a process of identifying all the important components found in any evaluation presented during an IEP meeting. The only difference is the parent assessment will be evaluating what happens outside of the school day. Important information can be shared by the parents to an IEP team to construct a meaningful IEP. Most importantly the parent’s assessment helps the IEP team to gain an understanding of teaching methodologies and strategies that can be used at home, in school, and across all community environments.

All evaluations consist of four distinct parts: a summary of strengths, a summary of areas that may need improvement, program recommendations, and potential program outcomes. The parent's assessment follows this same protocol, with a critical difference; instead of a summary or description of weaknesses or limitations, the parent will be looking for emerging skills or behaviors.

The type of evaluation the parent will be conducting is called an authentic assessment. The authentic assessment describes the actual performance or use of skills in real and naturally occurring environments. This means the observance of real skills used in real places, the kinds of thing parents see everyday and everywhere children and parents go. Authentic assessments are gaining some degree of popularity in education. Although authentic assessments are difficult to manage and score, the observance of performance is being seen by educators as a valid measure of learning objectives or instructional benchmarks.

The completed parent assessment will be treated as any other evaluation and be shared during the IEP team meeting. The parent assessment is organized in a manner that the parent can summarize each of the four areas (learned skills, emerging skills, interests, and outcomes). This assessment will be an important slice of information for everyone concerned about the education of your child.

Parent Assessment Process

The first step to conduct the authentic parent assessment will be for the parent, parents, or significant others in the child's life to list the child’s strengths. It is easier and more organized to consider strengths in domain areas such as academic skills, work skills, leisure, home or domestic skills. See worksheets following this text. The idea is to gain an understanding of what your child has been able to learn and do in real environments-remember this is an authentic assessment. This area does not need a fancy description or a deep analysis, just list in the most practical terms you know.

The second step requires you and your team (your spouse or significant other in your child's life) to think of the skills that you are starting to see. These are emerging skills and these skills will be ones that you may seriously consider being part of the IEP objectives or educational outcomes. Emerging skills are more difficult to identify, but the worksheets should provide a framework from which to think. Emerging skills may be new interests, new activities your child attempted to do, or continued progress of recently acquired skills. This is the area that will replace the weakness or limitations found in many of the school evaluations. For purposes of the authentic assessment, spending time considering all the things your child may not be able to do is not really necessary and often unproductive for developing program recommendations. The identification of emerging skills will be far more important.

The third step is to identify the interests of your child. At this step, simply list the activities, places, people your child really enjoys. This will help everyone to develop teaching methodology and strategies.

The fourth step asks the parent to think of outcomes that you would like to see. These are realistic goals that are important to you and your family. Often it is helpful to think of outcomes in four areas:

The key at this step is to be realistic, and the more realistic you can be the clearer your outcomes will be to others and yourselves.

The fifth step is thinking of ways your outcomes may be coordinated with the school and infused into the IEP. This can be a difficult task, but it may be helpful to think again about your outcomes and make sure the outcomes are clearly stated. Start this step by using the domain areas identified on the worksheets following this text. Take each domain area, such as communication, are there any aspects of your outcomes that may be related to communication? If so, write what the school can do, and what you can do at home and in the community. Continue through the domain areas. There are probably going to be domain areas you will not use. At this point do not worry whether the school has the resources or has not address aspects of your outcomes, get your ideas written down as a reference to use when you have the IEP team meeting.

The Parent Assessment

By the completion of the five-step process, parents have completed an authentic assessment for their child. This assessment has all the components found by other school evaluations, strengths (Learned Skills), needs (Emerging Skills), prognosis (Outcomes), and recommendations (Coordination with the School).

This assessment should be presented during an IEP team meeting just like any other evaluation is reported. The value that the parent assessment brings to the team is the analysis of authentic performance in real environments, and this is what the school personnel need to know. With this knowledge and supporting evidence from the other school reports, your chances of a meaningful and successful IEP are going to be greatly enhanced; and most probably will make more sense to your child.

When the parent assessment (worksheets) are completed and parents feel comfortable with them, the teacher should be notified that you have important information you wish to share during the IEP team meeting. The parents should provide some background of this information and what parents did. Many teachers are not familiar with this protocol yet and will not be accustomed to having this type of information presented during a team meeting. It is recommended that the assessments and worksheets are sent to the teacher beforehand.

The message the parent will be sending to the school is: my child is important and I (the parent) want to work with you (the teacher[s]). This is an important message. The real concept being communicated is "let’s work together, we need to collaborate." Unfortunately this does not always happen and it is a disservice to our children when parents and schools do not cooperate. The cooperation probably needs to begin with the parents conducting the parent assessments and offering ideas to coordinate between home, school, and community.

Conclusion

Every parent has hopes and dreams for their son or daughter, and parents with a child with a developmental disability or an autism spectrum disorder are no different. At the same time our individual hopes and dreams guide our lives, and this is also no different for our children with an autism spectrum disorder.

Think back how your own hopes and dreams began to form in your minds. For many of us they began because they matured and developed from other hopes and dreams.

This cannot be much different than hopes and dreams are for your child. Their dreams cannot be your dreams and you cannot live in their dreams, but you will have to expose children with and without disabilities to experiences that can potentially build dreams, have them evolve, and develop. Exposure to new things builds dreams through the expression of interests. Watch your child engage in a favorite activity, how is he or she communicating to you that this is a pleasurable thing to do? Encourage the expression and allow the child to create or image anything the child wants to.

The IEP is about the hopes and dreams of your child. Your child's interests and the things he or she has communicated to you should be included in the IEP. As the child becomes a young adult the hopes and dreams should be the backbone of the education your child experiences. That probably is your hope and dream.