for my own curiosity....trienennials?

[confuzzled]

(i know this should probably be in the spEd forum, but this gets more traffic)

can anyone tell me some reasons why one might opt to forgo a triennal evaluation??

iep meeting today--and that was the "big issue"....and they were h$ll bent on convincing me to waive. but yet, could provide no valid reason why i would want to, except to say that the next after this will likely be the last, so nows the time to waive.

i took it all as a colossal sign of laziness and not wanting to spend the money.....and this was coming from the same people who wanted to make all the accoms in the world for the "state testing"...you know, the one that benefits THEM, not my kid. she even got "picked" yet again for an extra component of the "state testing" so they reallllllly wanted to make sure they had their ducks in a row---their answer to this was that it might "affect placement" so we want to give her the best possible shot (umm, no, it wont, she scores very, very *high* compared to rest of your student body, so unless you want to place her in your gifted program with support, oh, not an option?).

in our particular case, last triennal was during a pretty unstable period--now that we have relative stability, i would think it would BE the time.

i cant think of a single good reason why anyone would waive, unless they had it done privately recently (we didnt).

of course i politely refused

 

[InsaneCdn]

Way To Go, warrior mom.

 

[buddy]

Well, that is unusual, I've never ever been in a situation where anyone would suggest that. Legally I thought we had to do re-evaluations and the only thing I could imagine is if she had met all her IEP goals and they feel she would no longer qualify for an IEP then she could lose services, so would they be trying to protect her placement? But I'd have to do the same research as you to see even how they could waive it.

Maybe someone here has experienced that....It sounds very fishy.

EDIT...so Writeslaw says that the team can decide they dont need it, I have never experienced that in MN we have to do it, but states can always impose stricter guidelines and MN tends to do that. Maybe it is the districts I have worked in but we always did re-evaluations on every student even if they were permanently severely disabled. It gave us a chance to look at progress and current level of performance from another angle. And depending on her age there has to be transitional planning which requires some form of "assessment"....forms, checklists, or similar types of things to make sure that working toward her future goals is covered, any skills she might need to be able to manage a college campus, social issues, etc...that starts at 14 here.

If you want it, then ask for it.

 

[slsh]

I think technically the reason for doing a triennial is to confirm the child still qualifies for sped services. I waived a couple for my oldest because... well, lets face it - he is always going to be quad, nonverbal, and visually impaired. No question he qualified for sped. Lots of other stuff involved in my decision, none of which would apply to your situation.

Buddy is right - the IEP team can waive the triennial. on the other hand, you can always request a redo full evaluation at any time, so if you have any inclination to waive it now, you could request it later. But I think you were right to not waive it. She's in a different place than she was last time, so you want to get a current evaluation.

 

[TheBoyHasArrived]

I've only recommended that a parent waive an evaluation once, because I knew a student wasn't going to qualify when re-evaluated but the parent still felt really strongly about the child receiving services. Some districts will keep kids in a placement based on therapist/teacher recommendations and some rely heavily on formal evaluation scores. This year, I have one student who is profoundly impaired in all areas...the evaluation doesn't really serve a purpose as she won't be able to complete formal testing. I wouldn't recommend a waiver, but it would make sense if the parent didn't feel the need for it.

 

[buddy]

Yeah, for the kids who clearly wont be off an IEP we just did record review, etc. But we still did it unless it came from the parent.
So, that is what hit me too....that maybe they are really trying to protect her and have her not look on paper like she doesn't qualify anymore, but too bad that they didn't explain their reasoning to you better. Can you ask them if that is a concern or what other reason they may have?

 

[confuzzled]

i doubt they had goodness in their hearts trying to protect her.

it certainly felt very unusual to me. i've never once been asked to waive---even with my oldest, who like slsh"s--there will never be a debate over it.

i just cant think of any good reason that someone would...unless, like i said, maybe you just had a full neuropsychologist evaluation.

at least they did "ask" if i was willing rather than "tell" me that it was unnecessary....(i should also say its a new guidance counselor who, umm, doesnt know me...maybe the rest of the staff put her up to it were lol'ing and considered it some kind of initiation process)

but knew i could count on you guys!

 

[slsh]

Thinking back, I don't think anyone ever asked me to waive the 3-year. Back then, I was reading state and fed regs on a regular basis, and I remember finding that tidbit in the last (I think the last) revision of IDEA and thinking - yee-HAW!! So the next domain mtg (where they decide which areas to evaluate for the 3-year), I just sat down with- my latest copy of IDEA and when they pulled out the domain forms, I asked if there was anyone present who thought he might possibly *not* qualify for sped, or if anyone felt there had been a significant change in one of the domains that necessitated a reevaluation. When no one spoke up, I told them that we should just waive the evaluation per chapter/verse of IDEA and continue onward. One of the few times I made the team (all 13 of them) speechless.

 

[confuzzled]

i once convinced an iep team something was in the PRISE handbook....

apparently, i wasnt the only one in the room who hadnt actually read it.

i won that round.

the things we do as parents will never cease to amaze me.

 

[buddy]

Thats really good!

 

[hearts and roses]

We always had the triennial evaluation. Once, a person on the team said something about the triennial evaluation being just as important to the student as to the pocketbook of the district...meaning maybe the student would test out and not require special services, Know what I mean??

 

[susiestar]

We had school begin to refuse to do the evaluation, claiming that Wiz didn't need sped services so he didn't need the evaluation. He still had an IEP, and accommodations for dysgraphia and some other things, but he didn't have any time scheduled in the sped room. They honestly expected to slide that past me and shuffle him out of the chance of any services. Here it is sometimes very very hard to get sped svcs for an older child if they had them and then didn't and then needed them again for any reason.

That was the year they clued in that I read the regs, which they claimed no other parent that they were aware of had ever done. One person tried to tell me it was illegal for me to read the Special Education regs under IDEA because it violated HIPPAA of every sped student if parents knew the regs. They didn't expect me to find that statement hilarious, but I almost couldn't stop laughing because it was so stupid.

I do know that one or two of the sped teachers will try to waive the evaluation if a child will no longer qualify but they feel the child still needs services. Usually those are the cases the district insists on testing. When the district level people here want to waive services it is because they are trying to get the child out of sped services completely. they come to you the next quarter or semester and say that since testing didn't show any problems, they cannot offer services. Of course testing didn't show services, they didn't DO any testing. Then they insist you have to start over at the beginning with a letter requesting complete evaluation, which puts you back at the very beginning of the process of getting sped svcs. in my opinion it is sick and mean and wrong, but what do I know.