*Note: Due to the confidential nature of the topics discussed in this post, I have changed and scrambled a lot of details. I have worked at 5 different schools in 2 different states, and the examples provided here are a general amalgamation of my experiences and are not specific to one school.
I occasionally see a teacher comment on Twitter about IEPs and 504s for special needs students that goes something like this: “Teachers should not complain about accommodations / modifications / SDIs for special needs students being ‘extra work’ because these are all things that every good teacher is already doing anyway. IEPs and 504s don’t create any extra work for me!” First, I definitely agree that teachers shouldn’t complain about this, and secondly, I generally agree that most of the accommodations and modifications I see on IEPs and 504s (such as frequent checks for understanding, preferential seating, study guides, chunking of material, etc.) are things that “good teachers” do anyway–in some cases with all students, and in some cases with particular students I can tell would benefit from it (regardless of whether or not they have an IEP or 504). However, I find statements like “IEPs and 504s aren’t any extra work” to be flippantly dismissive of the significant amount of time, effort, and energy that regular-ed teachers devote to ensuring the growth and success of their students with IEPs and 504s.
First of all, teachers need to read the IEPs and 504s. This is really important, useful, and it takes a significant amount of time. Let’s acknowledge that. Maybe schools could even cut their beginning-of-the-year PDs and meetings a bit shorter to give teachers more time to do this. And keep in mind that the more students on a teacher’s roster with IEPs and 504s, the more time they will need. For me, it’s not just reading the documents that takes time; I also need to consolidate the information in these documents into some type of workable reference sheet for myself. I need a quick way of figuring out which students receive the option of test re-takes vs. which students receive the option of test corrections, and which students require preferential seating near the source of instruction vs. which students require preferential seating away from distractions (no they are not the same thing), and which students need a weekly email home with an overview of their progress vs. the students that need an email home if their grade drops below a certain number. Compiling this info into one reference document is really helpful and prevents me from having to repeatedly log on, open their IEP, and scroll through dozens of pages to find their accommodations and modifications. Now, in my 15-year teaching career there were two years when I didn’t really need to make a reference document. Those years I had five or fewer students with IEPs. I find that when the number is that low, I can pretty much memorize the accommodations and modifications for each student who needs them. In an average year, however, I maybe teach 20 or so students with IEPs and 504s. The amount of time I spend each year doing the useful and important work of reading these documents, compiling my reference document, and then referring back to my reference document throughout the year is significant and should be acknowledged, not dismissed.
Secondly, actually carrying out the modifications and accommodations also takes time. Let me start by saying that I do generally agree with the teachers on Twitter who say that accommodations and modifications are things that “every good teacher does anyway.” I find that this is mostly true, and even though most accommodations and modifications require the teacher to put in more time up front, they end up saving time and energy overall, for both the teacher and the student. For example, “preferential seating” is a common accommodation you see on an IEP or 504, but this is something I do for all of my students. At the beginning of the year I have them fill out a seating survey, where they tell me if they need to sit near the front and why (vision, hearing, to pay attention better, etc.) and they tell me if there are students in the class who help them learn, and also if there are any students who might distract them from learning. I then use the results from this survey any time I assign seats or lab groups. Is it a lot of work up front? Yes, but it’s totally worth it. It gives me a good sense of the class’s social dynamics, and it ensures I group kids in a way that works for them. When group work and chemistry lab work run like well-oiled machines, it reduces stress for the students and teacher and helps to minimize lab mishaps, accidents, group conflicts, and emotional shut-downs due to interpersonal dynamics. Everyone wins with “preferential seating!”
Likewise, there are accommodations / modifications that I don’t use for everyone, but still overall don’t add to much to my workload and would definitely fall under the category of “something all good teachers do anyway.” For example, test corrections is a common accommodation. This is something I use for all students who I think need it, not just students who have it in their IEP. While working 1-on-1 with a student after school to go over a test, re-teach material, and give the student a chance to correct it does take a significant amount of time, it ends up saving time overall. Students who need this accommodation might otherwise have significant emotional reactions to tests, or might lash out from frustration due to not understanding the material. We all know that situations like this don’t just take up a lot of time and energy, but can also take a devastating emotional toll on student and teacher alike. I find that accommodations like 1-on-1 test corrections provide a support that these students need, and the initial time spent up front ends up saving just as much time in the end.
There are, however, accommodations and modifications that DO take extra time. For example, one year I had a student whose parent I had to call when their grade dropped below a 75, and I had a student whose parent I had to email when their grade dropped below a 70, and another student whose parent I had to email when their grade dropped below a 65 (I’m changing some of the details here to protect privacy, but you get the gist). Now, of course it is good practice for all teachers to contact home when a student’s grade drops significantly and/or the student might be at risk of failing, and I do that (along with significant amounts of family contact about positive stuff as well). But keeping track of these specific numerical cutoffs, as well as trying to remember which parents required phone calls and which required emails, was very time consuming. On top of that, our online learning management system at the time did not allow for a teacher to set up an automatic notification when a students grade dropped below a certain number. (It did, however, allow for a parent to set up an automatic notification when their child’s grade dropped below a certain number.) So, I basically had to set up a calendar reminder to go off every other day that reminded me to log on to our learning management system, check these 3 students’ grades, and inform parents as necessary. I had to list the student names, grade cutoffs, and email address/phone number in the calendar reminder itself just to keep everything straight. Overall, I only had to do maybe 5 total emails/phone calls for these 3 students all year, because they all for the most part stayed on top of their learning and maintained high grades, but that doesn’t negate the fact that I devoted significant extra time and brain space to being hyper-vigilant about these 3 students in a way that I would not normally do. I was scared that a parent would log on and see their student’s grade was a 72 before I had a chance to contact them; even though I was checking every 2 days there was still a chance that would happen and I would be out of compliance with their IEP. I think something more reasonable for the teacher to do is take a look at all students’ grades once a week, and contact a student’s family if a grade has dropped significantly or if a student is in danger of failing, and be extra-vigilant about the students whose families don’t have the time to check their child’s progress online (I find these students are usually not the ones who have required parent contact in their IEP.)
Overall, I’d say it’s true that the effective, quality accommodations and modifications that I see in IEPs and 504s are just general effective practices that any good teacher would be doing anyway. While all accommodations and modifications do take some time up-front, if the accommodation is effective, it ends up saving the student and the teacher time and energy in the end, which is why all good teachers do them, IEP or no IEP. It’s the less effective accommodations that are the problem because they don’t end up saving anyone time and are just an overall sunk cost. I’m lucky that ineffective accommodations and modifications have been rare in my career, and I have found that with an effective case manager and a good teacher-family relationship, most of the ineffective, time- and energy-draining accommodations can get changed and improved in the next IEP re-write.
So, are IEPs and 504s “extra work?” Well, reading them and processing the information in them is definitely extra work. Carrying out specific accommodations and modifications in them I would say is generally not “extra work” because, as long as the accommodations are effective, they are usually strategies that any good teacher would use anyway for some or all of their students. The major thing, however, that I have not touched on yet that creates significant “extra work” is the paperwork.
PAPERWORK. I don’t know where to start. I have taught at 4 public high schools all in the same state, and the amount of 504 and IEP paperwork I have had to do has fluctuated significantly for reasons I don’t understand. I have always been a regular-ed teacher so I have little knowledge of the laws and rules that determine the volume of paperwork that appears in my mailbox or email inbox, so I can’t offer any insight beyond just that–the volume of paperwork.
To give you an idea, here’s a list of IEP/504-related paperwork I completed in a one-week period:
- one BASC-3 form (165 questions on a rating scale, plus 2 open-ended questions, related to all types of student behaviors, the majority of which seem unrelated to the classroom setting)
- two “teacher observation/evaluation” forms (10 questions on a rating scale to evaluate a student’s workplace-readiness)
- two “teacher input forms” (6 open-ended questions about student progress, strengths, and needs)
- one Vanderbilt assessment (43 questions on a rating scale related to ADHD behaviors observed in the classroom setting)
- two daily behavior trackers (3 yes or no questions every day about a student’s behaviors)
Now, this was a particularly bad week, but I’d say that on average I am answering 50-100 questions per week about my students with 504s and IEPs. There are two problems with this. First, the overall volume is just too large and it eats up a significant portion of my planning period, meaning that I am sometimes not able to plan lessons, grade student work, or set up chemistry labs due to IEP/504 paperwork. Yes, I have had to cancel labs due to paperwork. The second issue is that it’s also too much for the people on the receiving end of this paperwork. There is such a high volume of information coming back to case managers, school psychologists, counselors, and families, that it is difficult to process and act upon. This means that important information can get lost in the fray, and the 1 or 2 things in the paperwork that were significant sometimes end up not being acted upon.
Now, if there was no 504 or IEP paperwork, would I still be making a note of concerning issues and contacting the necessary people (psychologists, counselors, families, etc.)? Yes, of course. But I would not be spending nearly the amount of time I am currently spending on paperwork.
I’d say the only other IEP/504-related item that might be considered “extra work” is meetings. These do take significant time, and often when I attend the meeting I am just saying aloud all of the things I already wrote in the “teacher input form” that are now written in the IEP, which feels a bit redundant. (Maybe there’s a better way?) But overall I’d say meetings are kind of like good accommodations/modifications–the time invested brings a lot of overall benefits. Getting in-person time with a student’s family is so valuable, and these meetings always give me a strong emotional reminder of why I became a teacher in the first place, and the insights I gain make all my future interactions with that student and family more positive and more effective.
So, in summary, I wish that IEPs and 504s only consisted of “things that all good teachers do anyway,” and in an ideal world, that would be true. In reality, they do take extra time and they do create additional work. Now, I am not here to judge whether that fact is good or bad, but I do think it’s important to acknowledge it and not dismiss it, because it has a consequence that is pretty unfair to students with IEPs and 504s: the more students with IEPs and 504s a teacher has, the less time that teacher is spending on lesson preparation, giving feedback, setting up and cleaning up labs and activities, etc. If a teacher has classes with an unusually high number of IEP/504 students, shouldn’t they have MORE time, not less, to prepare lessons that meet the needs of all learners in the room? Don’t we need our teachers of IEP/504 students to be MORE positive and calm and LESS stressed out and anxious? When a teacher spends significant chunks of their planning period filling out paperwork, it does not make them a better teacher; it makes them a worse teacher. So, let’s acknowledge that, and let’s allow space for some critical thinking and dialogue about how our regular-ed teachers of special-ed students could be spending their preparation time in a way that better benefits students with IEPs and 504s.
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