Marla: Is it permissible for staff to take home information needed to write IEP’s or write assessment reports?
Educational Records: STUDENT RECORDS / DATA RELATED IT IEPS AND ASSESSMENTS
Special Education Law and Advocacy
As a special education teacher, I am interested to know why you are asking. I don’t know of anything written against it, but the staff would need to be conscientious of student confidentiality. There is limited time to prep materials/classroom, write IEPs and write lesson when I don’t have students. I would never be able to write quality IEPs if I did not work on them at home.
Sorry to say, as a parents of special education students, it alarms me hear that anyone would remove our students records from school property. If this is happening, we have not been informed. If doing a quality job requires extended time to write team decisions on the IEP. This shouldn’t mean anyone should be removing/accessing protected student files outside the district.
Hopefully someone knowledgeable will answer.
I can tell you from being in Special Education and having an IEP that my caseworker used to take them home to write them. The IEP’s are so long to write that it makes it easier. I never heard of people getting so alarmed. A lot of times there is just not enough time at school to get them done.
I’m sorry this alarms you. I would like to clarify some information that may lessen your concern. I do not take the files home, but I do access IEPs on my school laptop and bring home classroom data.
In order to complete IEPs at school, I would need to take away from valuable instruction time and/or spend less time writing IEPs. I stay at school 2-3 hours extra EVERY day (often until the alarms are set), then work for 2-3 hours at home.
My student’s parents are aware that I work on the IEPs at home and have never expressed concern. I also build rapport with the families and include them in the IEP process well before the actual meeting. After getting parent input, I try to send a draft home before the meeting for them to review. Confidentiality is important, but so is quality.
Tammy, this is great insight and reality “check” for us parents. You all do a lot of work and sometimes we forget that teachers cannot get all this work done on school time. It would be impossible. I am amazed at what you all have to balance out in order to do the job.