Special Education Q & A

For Related Service Providers

Presented by

Emily Winsor, MSEd, BCBA

Managing Director, Tuesday’s Child

5/21/25

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Topics Addressed in this Q & A:

Timelines, Process & Procedure

School Placement

Service Delivery

Clinicians’ Roles

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Special Education Process & Procedure

Question: Why don’t parents get an education or training on IEP services so they know their rights as parents?

Answer: The truth about this is multifactorial, and it truly helps to understand the law.…

• The federal government only has jurisdiction over schools because schools receive federal funding
• The federal government can only enforce what’s written in the United States Code (“USC”, aka the laws of our country) & as it’s written in the USC, IDEA and the ADA do not require schools to provide training to parents
• IDEA does mandate that schools must take steps to support meaningful participation of parents/guardians
• IDEA does require schools to provide parents notice of their Procedural Rights & Safeguards, but not training

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Special Education Process & Procedure

Continued…

• Under USC, state governments create their own procedures for actually carrying out IDEA & the ADA in schools
• In most states (including IL), school districts create their own procedures as long as they follow USC & state laws
• IL does have a lot of requirements, but there’s room for interpretation/ grey areas, too
• Districts set their own priorities & budgets
• Schools do not have the time or resources to provide parent training
• Teacher’s don’t learn this stuff in Special Education Teacher School!

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Special Education Process & Procedure

Question: What is the difference between a 504 and an IEP?

Answer: The difference between an IEP and a 504 plan has to do with the law.

• IEPs: Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
• Specially designed instruction to meet a student’s unique needs & ensure that they make progress toward further education, functional independence, and financial independence
• 504s: Americans with Disabilities Act (the ADA)
• Anti-discrimination
• Provides accommodations to ensure access to school, but does not provide specialized instruction
• No progress monitoring

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• Initial evaluation requiring parental consent
• Accommodations

Special Education Timelines

Question: How long does a parent have to agree to an intake (from the time it is reviewed, is there a timeframe or can parents request more IEP meetings?)

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Answer: There is no official timeline parents’ must abide by in terms of approving the IEP after the IEP meeting. The closest statue to follow is the implementation timeline schools must follow, which is 10 days from when an IEP is signed until it must be implemented.

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Other helpful tidbits:

• Parents can request an IEP meeting at any time
• Schools must give parents 10 days notice of scheduled meeting
• Parents can revoke consent of anything that required their consent

Special Education Process & Procedure

Question: Is it worth having an advocate in IEP meetings or to prepare for IEP meetings?

Answer: In my experience, this depends entirely on what the family actually wants

• Some families assume they have to go in ready for battle based on horror stories they’ve heard
• I advise families to go in open-minded and form their own opinion; each school team is different & each child’s needs are different
• The family may just have a good experience!
• Families should only consider an advocate if there is an actual problem
• The truth is that bringing an advocate sets a confrontational tone- no one likes an outsider telling them how to do their job!
• A good advocate should coach a family to take the reigns
• Advocates aren’t attorneys; they can’t speak on behalf of families

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Special Education Process & Procedure

Question: What happens if a parent disagrees with an IEP?

Answer: There are several options/ steps for conflict resolution

• IEPs:
• State-facilitated IEP
• “Due process”
• Third-party mediation
• 504s:
• 504 hearing
• File a complaint with OCR

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Special Education Process & Procedure

Here are some Special Education resources that may be helpful!

• This is a very helpful pdf “Book” for parents (makes a great reference for professionals, too!). It’s very user-friendly and has some examples & templates parents can copy:
• Educational Rights and Responsibilities: Understanding Special Education in Illinois- "The Parent Guide"
• These two pdfs are a bit more dense. Might be a little overwhelming for parents, but if they have questions beyond what’s covered in “The Parent Guide” these are good places to look (note: new versions will be released for the 2025-2026 SY):
• CPS 504 Procedural Manual, October 2024
• CPS IDEA Procedural Manual, August 2024

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Clinicians’ Roles in Supporting IEPs

Question: How can a clinician promote a productive and beneficial relationship with school staff before and after the IEP?

Answer: Pairing! Take steps to purposefully establish yourself as someone who is aligned with the team & shares the same goals

• Remember- no one likes to be told how to do their job!
• Pair yourself with the school team just as you would pair yourself with a new family
• Listen to understand (vs. listening to respond)
• Provide reinforcement (praise all positive things you can)
• Ask for their advice & input (show that this is a two-way street)
• Be empathetic
• Do not make assumptions about motivation for decisions… other than always assuming the team as the child’s best interest at heart

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Clinicians’ Roles in Supporting IEPs

Question: How can a clinician best support a family who is looking for extra support for their IEP?

Answer: Provide data to support the child’s needs, and encourage parents to do the same

• The most effective way to impact a child’s IEP is through objective data
• Think about separating opinions from facts
• Use your understanding of data and ability to collect it to help parents learn this concept
• Encourage parents to seek education about Special Education for themselves
• Encourage parents to work with the team, not against them
• This means people prepared to compromise

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Clinicians’ Roles in Supporting IEPs

Another great way to support families is by helping them find the resources they need. Here are some trustworthy resources you can share:

• This website, created by Peter Wright, one of the most prominent Sped Attorney in the US. There are links to all of his books on his sight, too. For parents, I recommend “From Emotions to Advocacy” and “All About IEPs”:
• https://www.wrightslaw.com/
• Chicago Public School’s Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD- used to be called “ODLSS”) does offer some resources to support parents, such as “Parent Universities” which are informational meetings and/or webinars for parents to learn about Special Ed- many parents don’t even know about these!
• OSD's Parent Resource Page
• For some reason, CPS has a separate resource page for parents for Special Education, which offers access to Parent Support Specialists, the OSD Family Advisory Board, and STARnet, which offers free training & webinars, too.
• Special Education Parent Resource Page

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Clinicians’ Roles in Supporting IEPs

Another great way to support families is by helping them find the resources they need. Here are some trustworthy resources you can share:

• Tuesday’s Child has a Special Education Resource page which is free for all :) There are recordings of our “Parent Empowerment Series”, free templates for parents to download & use, and quick links to several CPS or Illinois State Board of Education resources that can be tricky to find sometimes!
• Tuesday's Child Resource Page
• If parents are looking for legal support or considering hiring and advocate, Equip for Equality is a great place to start. It’s a non-profit organization that supports the civil rights of individuals with disabilities and their families. Here’s their website:
• Equip for Equality

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School Placement

Question: How do schools assign classroom types (e.g. Blended vs self- contained)?

Answer: Educational evaluation data (including assessment scores, observations, & interviews) are used to determine a student’s needs. This includes the domain areas they are eligible for services in, what their goals for those domains are, and how much time is required to implement the goals, accommodations, and modifications the child needs. Once all that is determined, the team looks at several factors to determine placement:

• Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) means that a student should be included with general education peers & access the general education curriculum to maximum extent possible in order to meet their educational needs
• Educational needs include social and functional needs, not just academics
• Teams must consider the student’s ability to learn in the general education environment, how much special education & related services support they need, and what potential risks could be if they are not fully included

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School Placement

Question: How do schools assign classroom types (e.g. Blended vs self- contained)?

Answer: All of this ends up breaking down into where the student receives special education services & what percentage of time the student spends receiving those services.

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Question: How do you determine if a client needs pull out services vs aide in classroom?

Answer: Whether a child needs a dedicated paraprofessional is meant to be a team decision. It’s most common for districts to agree to this if there are safety concerns. Otherwise, it can be difficult to obtain. Reasons for this include:

• Funding & staffing
• Intrusiveness & stigma
• Danger of fostering dependence

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From CPS’s SY 24-25 IDEA Procedural Manual, pg. 77

From CPS’s SY 24-25 IDEA Procedural Manual, pg. 79

Service Delivery

Question: What are the qualifications needed to receive specific services once the IEP is approved? How are the number of minutes provided determined? How can families advocate for more/less minutes? How can clients qualify for more minutes in a specialty (OT, SLP, etc)?

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Answer: Amount of service delivery is determined based on assessment results, observations, & interviews. There is no set “formula” for this. Parents would need to be able to prove their child is not making progress toward goals to demonstrate that more minutes are needed, but that might not mean more minutes. It could mean changing the teaching strategies, for example. It’s also important to consider the impact adding service minutes could have on the rest of the child’s day. The goal for schools is to keep the student with their general ed peers as much as possible, so they don’t tend to increase minutes unless it’s absolutely necessary.

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Service Delivery

Question: If a parent wants to pull their child from school to receive private therapy, can they request the school to have IEP goals be implemented when the child is there? (I have had parents be told no, they get OT in the afternoon, can this be moved?)

Answer: No. A student’s IEP is a legal document. If the team has determined that the student requires a related service (specially designed instruction), then under IDEA, they must provide those services. As far as moving service delivery time, this may not be idea for many reasons, not just for your client (i.e. maybe group instruction time takes place in the morning, so if your client’s OT session had to be moved to the morning, then they’d miss group instruction), but for other kids, too (specialists have to do their best to accommodate what every kid needs, but there’s only so many hours in a day!).

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Service Delivery

Here are some resources regarding service delivery that may be helpful!

• Illinois State Board of Education Best Practices Guides (they don't’ have one for Speech, not sure why):
• School Social Work Best Practice Guide
• Recommended Practices for OT & PT Services in IL Schools

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