Your binder is your buddy: learn to love it 

Shannon Sankstone

Dear Advocate, 

I did what you said. I have a binder filled with all my daughter’s paperwork, sorted by tabs and in chronological order. Older papers are stored in my cloud. It all looks organized and neat, but, well, now what? I don’t know what to do with all this information. The assessments make no sense to me and the goals stay the same every year. What’s the point? 

- Brenda, in a bind 

Hi Brenda, 

I hear your frustration! Individualized educational programs (IEPs) come with a lot of documents that are filled with jargon and don’t always connect with each other. Be proud of yourself: You are on the right track! The first step in advocating is organizing, the second step is looking for patterns, and the third step is using the documents to advocate.  

Patterns + papers = clearer understanding 

You and your binder have already uncovered a pattern: The IEP goals are not changing.  

IEP goals should be tied to grade-level learning standards. Check to make sure. Many times, goals appear nearly identical from year to year, but the measurement is different.

For example, take a look at ELA standards. An IEP goal for 4th, 5th, 6th might be written similarly (but not identically!) for each grade, but the progress and/or objectives (mini-goals that lead to mastery of the annual goal) should be unique. 

Another document that could help you understand your child’s progress is state or district standardized test results. Each should provide a variety of reports. The school counselor can provide these and explain them.

At the state level, Washington uses the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Most school districts use the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) or the i-Ready assessment. 

Advocacy strategy: understanding assessments 

You have collated, organized, and stored all those papers. All of this information should give you a clear picture of your child’s education over time. Does it? It’s challenging to understand when reading through all of that in a linear manner. It’s time to analyze. For me, this is the fun part! 

 Steps: 

1. Look through all of the special education assessments. Common ones include the WISC, WIAT, BASC and BRIEF.
2. Create a spreadsheet and a separate tab for each type of assessment. You will probably have at least four tabs, one for the WISC, one for the WIAT, one for the BASC and one for the BRIEF.
3. Do not enter any personal information about your child, such as name, age, birthdate or school. 
4. Create a chart for each assessment.

iReady and MAP create these graphs for you, and are thus easier to understand from the get-go. However, if you would like artificial intelligence (AI) to help you analyze them, you will need to complete the steps above.  

You might also want to create a tab for progress reports. 

Take it to the team 

Once you have the charts, you are ready to ask, and answer, some questions. 

• The WIAT should show your child growing. Does it? Does it align with the reports from iReady or MAP? 

• The BASC provides information about your child’s emotions and behaviors. Does the data show a positive, neutral or negative trend? Are there areas that were once concerns, but no longer? Are other areas impacting learning? 

• The WISC tells you if your child’s cognitive abilities are below average, average or above average. Have these changed?  

At the next IEP team meeting, ask the school psychologist to explain the graphs. Discuss how to amend the IEP with more appropriate goals. 

The online oracle says ...

There are tons of ways that the digital demigod can assist with analyzing data, but you must follow one rule: Never, ever, ever enter personally identifiable information into the chat. 

 Upload your spreadsheet to your favorite AI platform, and then try this prompt: 

I’ve uploaded a spreadsheet of special education assessment data for the years x, x, x. Your task is to review the data, and then ask me questions. Ask one question, then allow me to respond. After I respond, ask me another question.

Your questions should uncover my confusion about the data, my concerns for my child, my observations of my child’s growth, and my worries about my child’s IEP goals. I believe that the IEP team writes the same IEP goals year after year.

As our conversation progresses, use the assessment data to help me advocate for my child to have goals that are aligned to grade-level standards. 

Next week ...

Frontal lobes are everything.

This column is written by Shannon Sankstone, she is an Olympia-based special education advocate and the owner of Advocacy Unlocked. She may be reached at ShannonSankstone@theJOLTnews.com.