Confused on Where to Begin? Let’s Start with Data Sheet Admin 1 of your IEP
The Anatomy of an IEP: A Blog Series
Friends, when someone you love receives an Individualized Education Program, it is important to know it is a live, growing, evolving legal document. It is also important to carefully read and ensure that the IEP is accurate. However, while IEPs may be important, living documents, they are not written for the average person to understand at first glance. They are instead written for special educators, lawmakers, and lawyers to track whether a given student on an IEP is receiving a Free Appropriate Public Education. Because of this, IEPs can become frustratingly jargony, unfriendly to the average person and incomprehensible at times. If nothing else, IEPs can certainly be intimating.
It can be tough to know where to start, so I suggest the beginning.
Let’s go through a Massachusetts IEP page by page so that the average person can understand the purpose of each section. DISCLAIMER: if you are not from Massachusetts, your IEP may look different, but will have a similar structure. This is because IEPs were created from a federal mandate. However, Massachusetts goes further than the federal requirements, so there may be extra sections in the Massachusetts IEP than you will find in your state’s approved version.
The beginning, the administrative data sheet AKA ADMIN 1
While the administrative data sheet may just look like basic facts, it’s critical that it is accurate. The administrative data sheet includes things like student name, birthdate and address. It also includes parent/guardian information such as email, phone number, address, and whether the person on the IEP is making their own decisions related to the IEP. There are frequent errors on this page for a couple of reasons. Usually IEP generating software is not purchased when the school district updates its database system, so they often do not communicate.
If the IEP and the attendance database work together and communicate, they sometimes do not have a change made in the main database populate to the special education database. It’s annoying. The most common places I’ve seen errors on the Administration data sheet, is with parent work emails. If a parent changes jobs, and the email is not updated, meeting invites and notices may not be received in a timely manner. I suggest having a permanent email with google or any other platform for this reason.
The most important part of the ADMIN 1/Administrative Data Sheet is the meeting information section. This is especially important if your child has recently moved districts. IEP creation, assessment and implementation all happen on very specific timelines. Students on IEPS must be re-evaluated every three years, annual meetings must occur every year. This is the section to closely look at to know when the team should be meeting, when your child should be reassessed. Mistakes happen, especially when a child has moved to another district. Pay close attention to these dates, and always make sure you have received the entire completed IEP with all pages. The ADMIN 1 is the first page.
