Interview of Rose Griffin, SLP & BCBA

Rose Griffin, SLP & BCBA


Anne Zachry
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Today is September 27, 2022. This post and podcast is titled, “Interview of Rose Griffin, SLP & BCBA,” which was originally recorded on August 29, 2022. In this podcast, I interview Rose Griffin about her past work in the public education system and the work she is doing now to educate professionals and parents to support children with special needs to address their challenges at the intersection of communication and behavior.

We’re here with Rose Griffin, who’s a speech language pathologist as well as a board certified behavior analyst. Correct?

Rose Griffin
That’s right, yes, less than 500 of us in the world. So …

Anne Zachry
Yeah, you’re a … you’re a rare species, and you’re very valuable. The crossover between your disciplines is really very valuable. I have another colleague, relatively local to me, who’s an OT and a BCBA. And …

Rose Griffin
… oh, yeah, that’s very rare. I probably know them. There’s not many of those at all.

Anne Zachry
Yeah … and, and so you know, her whole thing is, you know, kids, especially on the autism spectrum, that have sensory integration issues. And the degree to which that interferes with behavior, or it creates sensory-seeking behaviors that interfere with learning in the school setting, or whatever the case may be, but that sensory-behavior connection is where, you know, she really knows her stuff. And that’s very rare that I run into people who have, you know, those dual disciplines and understand the connections. And I think when you and I first started communicating about doing this podcast together, you know, my mind immediately went to functional communication. Because …

Rose Griffin
Yeah!

Anne Zachry
… because we have a lot of kids who … they have the speech and language services to teach them, you know, often in a small group or an individual one-on-one situation, sometimes pushed into a classroom situation, but most often not in my experience, and then somehow they’re supposed to generalize that to the world at large. And …

Rose Griffin
Right! It’s supposed to miraculously happen. Yeah.

Anne Zachry
Yeah, it’s just gonna be osmosis or something. And so, you know, there needs to be that explicit reinforcement of the behavior in the in vivo context, in order for them to make the connection between what you’re talking about in a therapeutic situation and real life. And that’s where the the behavioral supports come in, where functional communication skills are used as behavior strategies in an ABA based program. And so that in my mind, that’s that was where everything immediately went when I saw your qualifications, because I’m like, “Oh, she’s in that nexus of, you know …”

Rose Griffin
Heh, heh – yeah.

Anne Zachry
… where the … because all, all communi-, what is, what is the saying? “All behavior is communication”?

Rose Griffin
Right. There’s that saying. They say that a lot. Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
And all language is a learned behavior. So you know that the language-behavior, there really is no divide. And …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… it’s just … it’s more as … it’s different nuances of the same thing parsed out and, and so what have been your experiences? Because, I’m assuming you go into the schools or you do work with the schools as well.

Rose Griffin
Yeah, so, for 20 years, I worked as a school based speech language pathologist …

Anne Zachry
Okay.

Rose Griffin
… and I started my own business called ABA Speech five years ago. And I actually just decided in May to step away from the schools to focus on my business where I offer courses, and I have a podcast called Autism Outreach, and we have products, but I still love to be in touch with the schools. So it looks a little bit different now. Now, I’m just kind of seeing a handful of a private clients. But yeah, for 20 years, I worked as a school-based SLP. And I really loved being able to provide therapy in that natural setting. And I really did a lot of push-in therapy into the classroom and some students that I needed to see in my office, but you know, I worked in middle school/high school, so maybe I had kids with selective mutism. Or maybe I had a kid who was stuttering or maybe the classroom was really loud and I needed to pull a student …

Anne Zachry
Right.

Rose Griffin
… into my office to give them a break from the classroom.

Anne Zachry
Right!

Rose Griffin
But I’ve definitely tried to push in and do like a group so I can model therapy strategies for the teacher and one on one staff and things like that. Yeah.

Anne Zachry
Well, and the push-in model is so much more supportive of generalizing those skills from a pull-out situation to real life that gives you the opportunity to go into the real life classroom and say, “Okay, here’s where you need to do this, bro,” you know?

Rose Griffin
Yeah! No, absolutely!

Anne Zachry
You’re coaching people on the pragmatics, you know, people who have a hard time reading the room?

Rose Griffin
Yeah, that’s always … Yeah, that’s what … that’s hard. That’s ever-changing for everybody. I had some students that had more direct instruction, more traditional type ABA services, and I would go into the classroom and see them in their teaching area. And every student was just so individualized.

Anne Zachry
Exactly!

Rose Griffin
But, I tried to do whatever works for the student.

Anne Zachry
That makes sense. That totally makes sense. And that’s really how it should be done. It is supposed to be individualized.

Rose Griffin
Yeah!

Anne Zachry
I just … I think it’s a, it’s a fascinating overlap that a lot of people fail to appreciate … that, that connection between language and behavior, and how much …

Rose Griffin
Oh yeah.

Anne Zachry
… how much, you know, how often do we say, “No hitting; use your words,” and yet, that connection still doesn’t get made in people’s minds? You know, it’s like, well, after they’re toddlers, that doesn’t count anymore. It’s like, “No, it always counts! …”

Rose Griffin
Right!

Anne Zachry
“… That never goes away!”

Rose Griffin
That’s my own kids. Yeah, they’re like, you know, in upper elementary school and middle school …

Anne Zachry
Right. Well, and I have to say, you know, I mean, I use these skills just as much to navigate the politics of the IEP process, as …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
I’m using the same skills to deal with the adults in the situation, and to try …

Rose Griffin
Yeah. Yeah.

Anne Zachry
… and get an IEP to say what it needs to say,

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… without ruffling feathers, and without people getting their feelings hurt …

Rose Griffin
Oh, yeah!

Anne Zachry
… and taking things personally, when it’s about the construction of a legally binding document and not anybody’s personality, and …

Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, yeah.

Anne Zachry
… and so it’s, you know, having to dance around all of that, I find that … I mean, that my … I have my master’s in educational psychology. I’m qualified to go in and do school-based …

Rose Griffin
Yeah.

Anne Zachry
… you know, behavior assessments, but I don’t go in as an outside assessor. I’m there as the lay advocate. And so I keep that hat on.

Rose Griffin
Oh, okay. Yeah.

Anne Zachry
But I’m going in as an informed lay advocate, and I’ve also paralegaled all the way up to the Ninth Circuit of the Court of Appeals. So the only place I haven’t gone yet is the US Supreme Court. And so, so I … I’m coming at this from both a compliance standpoint, and from a science standpoint …

Rose Griffin
Uh-huh.

Anne Zachry
… that the law mandates the application of the peer-reviewed research to the design and delivery of special ed.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
But we don’t have any mechanisms in place to really truly facilitate that. And so when I find people who have extraordinary qualifications, who have worked in the school setting, who have like, “Okay, I found my work-around.” You know, it’s you’re having to drag the science into a setting that really isn’t designed for it …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… and, and trying to implement it in a situation where you’re having to sell everybody on the inside of the legitimacy of what you’re trying to do …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… because it’s not how it’s always been done.

Rose Griffin
Right.

Anne Zachry
And so, there’s a lot of politics and culture, you know, internal district culture issues that have to be overcome before … you know, sometimes … the science will be legitimately applied. And so I see varying degrees of success with kids who have IEPs that call for certain things, but they jump from one school district to another. And what that looks like in one place to a different place are two totally different things. And the child does better in one setting versus the other with things that say they’re … identically described on paper.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
And it really does come down to quality control at the individual school sites. And what I one of the questions I wanted to ask you was about fidelity and data collection …

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
… because one of the biggest issues that I’ve run into in any aspect of special ed is the validity of how the data is being collected, basically going to the measurability of the goals, whether or not they’re legitimately measurable.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
Because, back in the 90s, to backtrack a little bit, there was some kind of workshop for teachers somewhere, and I’m not sure who the entity was that put it on, I have my suspicions. There’s organizations out there that tend to disfavor special ed …

Rose Griffin
Oh, okay.

Anne Zachry
… as something no government should be doing.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
And there’s a number of those individuals, certainly not the majority of people in public education, but there are a number of them who are employed within public education, who truly do not believe that this is how government resources should be expended. And they’re in the camp of Betsy DeVos, who wants to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.

Rose Griffin
Yeah.

Anne Zachry
So, they’re there to undermine it from within and prove that somehow government doesn’t really work. “Well, yeah, not when you’re there, doing that kind of stuff!”

Rose Griffin
Uh-huh.

Anne Zachry
And so there’s people of that ilk who are peppered throughout the system, who are trying to prevent anything that’s going to produce a system of accountability, anything that’s going to create an audit trail. This is why you haven’t seen all of the business automation technologies that were perfected in the private industry over the last 30-40 years. They still have not been deployed throughout all of our public agencies …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… because then you … the people who are misappropriating funds and doing illicit things, they have no shadows to hide in anymore.

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
And similarly, when ABA showed up in the special ed arena with all of the data collection and doing it according to a scientifically valid method …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… well, that meant that you were going to take data on everybody blowing it …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… and you were gonna … you were gonna create evidence that families could use to hold their school districts accountable if you actually took data on what was really going on. And you know, as … as a BCBA, I know you know this, that it’s not just … when you’re doing a truly scientifically rigorous ABA program, you’re not just taking data on how the individual responds to the intervention, you’re also taking data on how the implementers are implementing the plan with fidelity. You’re taking fidelity data on how well the plan is implemented, because it can only fail for one of two reasons: either a design flaw or an implementation failure. So you’ve got to have data on “Is the design working?”, which you only know, if you’re trying to implement the plan, according to its design. We have seen a huge, huge push against taking fidelity data as part of any child’s behavior intervention plan in an IEP because of the audit trail it will create, and the fact that it will capture people not doing the job rather than you know, using it as a quality control measure. And so it seems to … in my experience, what I’ve run into it, you know … and bearing in mind that I only get contacted by people whose kids IEPs are just gone off the rails, and it’s a horrible situation.

Rose Griffin
Yeah.

Anne Zachry
Nobody calls me up to tell me how great is going. So I’m only coming into the worst of the worst. But stepping into the worst of the worst, what I find are concerted efforts to cover things up when things have gone wrong, and then try to create a some sort of legal defense that shifts the blame away from the school district. And, you know, one of the preemptive legal defense strategies that their lawyers will, will have them do is like take as little data as possible. And, and so you have this … this energy against valid data collection and fidelity measurement that undermines the integrity of the process, even though the law mandates the application of the science. And that’s not the science, you know. And so, families … but families are the enforcement arm of the law, because you know, we’re a government of the people. So if … there’s no, you know, special ed police running around to make sure everybody’s doing it the way it’s supposed to be done. The only way the law gets enforced is when somebody breaks it and a parent reports them.

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
And so, we have parents having to bear the burden of understanding what the science is to even be able to know that it hasn’t been applied. And we have people in the schools who don’t know the science, much less how to apply it. And so we’ve got a lot of changes coming up on the horizon that we see are inevitable in that regard, but having worked for 20 years in the public schools having tried to apply the science to the benefit of children, what have your experiences been of trying to stick to the … to the fidelity of the science that’s behind what you’re doing? Has that been a challenge for you?

Rose Griffin
Yeah, I’ve had great experiences. Yeah, I’ve been a school-based speech therapist and have worked really hard to build rapport with families and teams, and, yeah, we really help students and support them in that natural environment of a public school. So yeah, on my end, it’s been really, it’s been really positive for my students to get those services within public school. It’s been great.

Anne Zachry
Have you had a hard time, though, with respect to the peer-reviewed research and being able to bring in the current research into the school setting and implement the new stuff?

Rose Griffin
No, and it might just be where I live, you know, I live in Cleveland, Ohio, a suburb of that. And we have a lot of really great providers here. And, yeah, I’ve just had really great experiences. And haven’t really had …

Anne Zachry
That’s fabulous to hear, because I’m telling you this, this is my uphill battle all the time. And I’m in California, which is one of the most progressive and heavily regulated states in the country for special ed.

Rose Griffin
Oh yeah. Wow!

Anne Zachry
I mean, we kind of set the tone for because we have more special ed due process cases every year …

Rose Griffin
Oh, I’m sure.

Anne Zachry
… that I mean …

Rose Griffin
It’s so big.

Anne Zachry
Yeah, some states go for years without having any at all.

Rose Griffin
Right! Lucky them!

Anne Zachry
And, and so it goes to the degree that the parents don’t know their rights …

Rose Griffin
Right.

Anne Zachry
… or things are going successfully and you don’t have the kinds of challenges that you know, that other districts run into. And I think it goes to quality of leadership. So it sounds to me like you’ve been in a very blessed situation where you haven’t had to contend with those kinds of situations, which are just, you know …

Rose Griffin
Yeah.

Anne Zachry
… more, more common …

Rose Griffin
Yeah!

Anne Zachry
… than people would like to think. I mean, you know, we have…

Rose Griffin
Right. Um-umm.

Anne Zachry
… our organization was actually founded in 2003, following the death of a classmate of our founder’s nephew, who was …

Rose Griffin
Awww!

Anne Zachry
… was smothered to death by his teacher in front of everybody in the classroom during an unlawful prone restraint. And …

Rose Griffin
Oh dear!

Anne Zachry
Yeah, and …

Rose Griffin
No wonder!

Anne Zachry
… and it was horrible and … and he never went back to school after that. It was a class for emotionally disturbed children, and this teacher was …

Rose Griffin
Oh dear!

Anne Zachry
… supposed to be there to help all these children with these mental and emotional health needs get better. And, instead …

Rose Griffin
Umm, oh dear!

Anne Zachry
… she was this authoritarian monster who just bullied them. And … and so, you know, these things do happen. And it’s not as rare as people would like. That case actually ended up being included in … and I’ve got written in the blog post that goes with this podcast, I’ll include links for it …

Rose Griffin
Yeah.

Anne Zachry
… we have an article about this from a while back, but that just explained our history and how this all happened. But this particular child’s family, he was a foster child. And so the moment his life was terminated, so was his foster mother’s parental authority. And so she couldn’t do anything to hold anybody accountable, because she no longer had parental rights at that point. She had no authority and no standing.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
But, a few years after that, Congress had commissioned a study on the use of seclusion and restraints and special ed in the public schools. And, it was public schools in general, but it turned out that special ed kids were the ones who are most commonly restrained and secluded. And, this young man’s case was in part of the that federal investigation.

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
We were shocked to see it, because it’s the reason why we founded our organization. It was the, you know, the final straw …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… that made us pull that plug. But, to see that in the federal report, and it was actually, like, one of the feature cases, and they actually had the foster mother go to Washington, DC, and testify before Congress about what had happened.

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
And, what they determined was the teacher had never been held accountable, that she had never received any kind of negative consequence for any of this, and was able to leave the state of Texas and go to Virginia. And, at the time of the hearing, when this foster mother was testifying, this teacher was only 45 minutes away running a special ed classroom in Virginia from where Congress …

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
… was hearing testimony about how she had murdered this child and got away with it. It’s a failure of multiple systems. But this goes to our whole thing that special ed is really … the work that we do in advocacy to address these kinds of problems is really part of a larger social justice issue. Because …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… it wasn’t just the special ed system that failed.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
It was the foster care system, it was the criminal justice system, it was the teacher credentialing system, it was … there was all kinds of parts of the system that broke down that allowed this to happen. And a lot of it goes to the bureaucracy and the lack of communication. And if all of these agencies were actually interconnected in a wide area network, enterprise-class computing environment, the way that, like Walmart, or Sanyo, or UPS Freight, or any of these big global organizations that have these huge computing environments … they overcame these obstacles decades ago, but we don’t have the same consistency of flow of information. And because of that, we’ve got consumers having to go to 15 different agencies and applying for 15 different types of service, you know, and maybe you’re talking about somebody in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank, who has to go trucking around all over the place, instead of the money following the consumer, the consumer has to go chasing after the money. And so we’ve got a lot of organizational defects, you know, when you start looking at … you talk to … start talking about a plan and looking at a behavior plan versus a plan for the operation of an entity, it really isn’t that remarkably different. And does this plan actually support the functions of the behaviors that you know … do these behaviors support the function of the organization? Are we rewarding …

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
… are we reinforcing the right behaviors in this organization? And so for me, I think that there’s also a carryover of what you do into the organizational structure of, you know, in the organizational cultures. I know that ABA is used very much in an industrial sense, by private industry, but to create …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… you know, positive workplace environments. And do you see a value of your profession and people in your profession, you know … crossover between both, really … of going in and doing professional development and positive culture building and in help healing the cultures of some of these environments where people are not invested in their constituents?

Rose Griffin
You know, yeah! There’s a whole branch of ABA called OBM. Organizational Behavior Management, I think it’s what it’s called.

Anne Zachry
Yep.

Rose Griffin
I don’t have any experience with that. But I think it makes a lot of sense to use the science and there are people that specialize in just doing that. And they’re doing … going into organizations helping with the culture, helping streamline workflows, and I think that is definitely something that’s positive. There’s so many different things that you can do with the science of applied behavioral analysis …

Anne Zachry
Oh, I know!

Rose Griffin
… autism is just one very small area. So …

Anne Zachry
That’s what I tell people!

Rose Griffin
People make mistakes about that, as well.

Anne Zachry
I tell people that. I’m, like, look! ABA is a science; it is not an autism service.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm!

Anne Zachry
It’s the science behind certain autism services that address behavior, but it is not an autism service, per se. And a lot of people don’t realize that I’m like, no ABA applies to crustaceans and computer code …

Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, yeah!

Anne Zachry
… you can analyze anything that behaves and there’s always a cause for everything, you know, and everything serves a function, and so that’s something that I think that there needs to be more discussion around and more research done into of how that organizational aspect of ABA can be used as part of the healing process of all of these things that we’re dealing with in our culture right now. I mean, all of the conflicts and the dividedness, and the fights and, you know, it just I think that ABA sort of takes the temperature down because you’re doing nothing but black and white neutral statements of fact …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… and only things that are objectively observable, like this is what we know to be true. And I think that bringing the conversation back to … I mean … getting away from the hysteria and coming back to the rule of law and back to scientific method, both of which are evidence-based, you know … you have to use logic statements … they are very similar in to how you execute both … that calmer heads can sit there and do that kind of black and white analysis and like, “Okay, let’s get to the to the bottom line of what is, and then we can decide how we’re going to emotionally react to it.” But right now …

Rose Griffin
Hmm! Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… we’ve got everybody reacting to the data rather than to the outcome of the analysis.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… that, you know, people are pre-judging what a piece of data might actually mean rather than putting it all together and reaching a logical conclusion, “Okay, here’s the story is told by the evidence.” And I think that we do our young people a huge disservice by not teaching them to think that way, as just simply part of curriculum. I think that there’s a huge value in teaching people about ABA as part of like a high school psychology class, I think that it’s a skill that is …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… all it is, is the ability to see what is without cluttering it up with a bunch of other superfluous details. It’s about how to prioritize your data and focus on what’s the most important thing …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… and engage in that neutral fact-based decision-making. And I think that if that were taught as a skill just in, in general, for all kids, I think that would help develop them, especially in high school, when that prefrontal cortex is starting to come online, and they’re starting to think more abstractly, and they’re looking for that kind of structure to structure their thoughts. I think that that’s something that we need to start really thinking about, as we we try to … to develop tomorrow’s leaders and problem solvers. That ABA, just as a skill, as a science …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… is valuable, just as much as it is to learn about the law of gravity.

Rose Griffin
Heh, he, um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
You know, I think that we focus on the physical aspects, and we consider the hard sciences more legit than the soft sciences. And I’m like, I don’t see how you think that ABA is not hard science …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
And so I’m, I mean, what are your thoughts about making the science just more part of a mainstream part of the human experience and making it more part of the … of just common knowledge? How valuable do you think that is?

Rose Griffin
Yeah, I mean, you know, with my business at ABA Speech, I disseminate information daily. And I don’t always even say that it’s ABA. But I just talk about the way that I use the science of applied behavior analysis is by helping autistic learners find their voice and increase their communication skills. And so everybody that is a BCBA definitely has the opportunity to disseminate and to share how they’re using the science to help support students or whatever facet, they are included in. So I think that being able to share that is important. And that’s what I do through my online business. So it’s important to me to share that.

Anne Zachry
Yeah, I think the more that the folks I work with understand the science that is being applied to their kids, the more comfortable they are with it, and it logically makes sense to them. And I have moms who will … are like Goddesses at coming up with goals and how to track the data …

Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha!

Anne Zachry
…. and how you know which method, you know, “I’m gonna do DRI or a DRA.” And I’m like, “Okay.”

Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha!

Anne Zachry
And they’re like, you know, honorary BCBAs after a while, and I …

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
… it’s because all it really does is measure what already is.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
It’s not like you made up something new. you’re just trying … it’s a way of documenting what’s happening in the environment, and then what to make of that data once you’ve collected it. So it’s not like you’re making something new out of what is or, you know, inventing a new chemical or something. It’s looking at, “Okay, here’s what’s going on in this actual real world environment,” you know, and then to the degree that language plays into it, which is always, you know, usually part of it.

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
And so to circle back around to the school and the speech and language and the ABA overlaps, do you find that it is more efficient for you to be able to wear both of those hats? Or do you find that it can be equally effective to have a team where you’ve got a BCBA and a speech-language pathologist working together? I mean, what do you … how do you see, you know, all the different ways to still come up with the same information that a team might need with respect to behavior and communication?

Rose Griffin
Yeah, in a school setting, you’re typically going to have one person that’s a speech therapist, and one person that’s the BCBA, and they can work collaboratively together with the students, the family, the teacher. Even though I’m dually certified, my role on the team in this particular job setting was as a speech-language pathologist …

Anne Zachry
Got it.

Rose Griffin
… so we actually had an outside consultant that we would work with. And it’s so much easier for me to work with outside consultants, because I’m a BCBA, so I understand all the different things that they’re talking about. So is it easier for me to work with consultants, and to make that a cohesive team? It absolutely is. But you know, being dually certified, allows me to work with ABA providers that want to offer speech therapy or offer consultations, or I help different ABA providers with professional development about communication. And so being dually certified is a very special niche area. And I can help businesses and families and individuals in a very specific way. But if you have a team and you have a few therapists, and you have a BCBA, and they’re able to collaborate, that’s just as impactful.

Anne Zachry
Yeah, it does … I mean, it’s sort of like, well, you have all your eggs in one basket on the one hand …

Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha.

Anne Zachry
… but at the same time, you’re also got a more efficient a … you know, a faster machine and in a manner of speaking, because you’re not having to do the … everybody on the team coming together and collaborating. It’s all in one brain and they can just, “Blech, there it is.”

Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha.

Anne Zachry
So, I mean, I, you know, and I totally get that. And I mean, I’m in a similar situation in that I’m in the nexus between the legal side of it as a paralegal and a lay advocate …

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
… but also coming from the scientific side of it with my master’s in educational psychology and all the work that I’ve done in that regard …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… and so I’m straddling that nexus between where normally you would have to have an attorney who brings in an expert to tell them …

Rose Griffin
Right.

Anne Zachry
… the science part of it. So you’ve got the expert who knows the science, and you’ve got the lawyer who knows the law, but sometimes there’s things they miss, because they’re talking apples and oranges. And they don’t, you know … and it’s not quite the same, because I think the connection between speech and language pathology and behavior is like way closer. I mean, it’s really just, you know, two sides of the same coin.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
Whereas, what I’m doing, I’m really having to straddle two different universes and trying to get these people to understand each other’s professional lingo, because, you know …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm. Yeah!

Anne Zachry
… you know the educators have their their jargon. And, the lawyers have their jargon. And, a lawyer may be able to identify that, you know, a timeline was violated, or, you know, “Well, this kid’s nonverbal and you didn’t do a speech and language assessment at all. How is this possibly a comprehensive triennial evaluation?” You know, it’s like … when it’s really over the top egregious stuff like that, a lawyer will recognize the failure.

Rose Griffin
Yeah.

Anne Zachry
But, when you’re talking about, “Well, this child has the potential to make X amount of growth in reading ability over the next year, but you’re not targeting an outcome that’s that aggressive; you’re low-balling this kid on his IEP goals,” a lawyer is not going to look at an IEP and be able to recognize that.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
You’ve got to have somebody who’s an expert in the data and the assessment stuff to be able to look at, “Okay, well, what did the assessment data say about this child’s capacity to learn? And how …” you know, “… and where their baselines were at the time everything was written, and how aggressive is this goal relative to their baselines based on what we know about their capacity to learn?” So you’ve got a scientific analysis that has to happen that a lawyer is not going to be able to do, but then you have educators who come into it and don’t know the legal side of it. And so they’ll see that discrepancy, but they don’t know how to advocate for the right thing. And a lot of times, if they’re going to a school district administrator who doesn’t know that, either, they’ll just “Oh, I guess that’s just the way it is.” It doesn’t occur to them that there’s something that can be done, or that the law requires more …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… and they … and it comes down to professional development. It’s not because anybody has ill intent. It’s not because somebody is trying to hurt a kid. More often than not, what I run into, when I run into the challenges that I run into, it’s not because somebody’s mean and they want to hurt somebody. It’s because they don’t know …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… and they don’t have the resources, and nobody told them. You know, I think it’s exciting for me to hear from professionals who come from schools where that’s not so much the case. That you’re … you’re in a situation where you’ve got a really progressive team. And I’ve talked to other educators who come from really progressive public schools and school districts where, you know, everything is evidence-based, and you’ve got a really amazing people who are pushing forward, really progressive and collaborative types of projects that include the families and don’t vilify them. But, you still got some really weird, old, cronyistic, “Boss Hogg/Roscoe P. Coltrane” kind of stuff going on out there, too.

Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha.

Anne Zachry
And so it’s a mix, you know? Iit’s a mixed bag. And I think that where you are has a lot to do with it. So it’s exciting to hear. And you said, you’re in Ohio.

Rose Griffin
Yes, I’m in Ohio. So yeah, I’ve had really positive experiences. It’s been … it’s been really wonderful. I was sad to step away from the schools after 20 years, but I just … my business has grown so much at ABA Speech that, you know, it’s just what I needed to do. So …

Anne Zachry
That’s exciting to hear too. Because you know, all growth is just part of life. You have to grow and evolve into something else.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
And whatever skills you acquire in one situation, and the benefit you serve to people while you were there just equips you to serve other people in a different kind of way better, stronger, you know. And so it sounds like that’s what you’re doing. So with your practice, now, you’re mostly working with private families, and then consulting with organizations?

Rose Griffin
Yeah, so I divide my time. My podcast, Autism Outreach, is a big part of what I do. Yesterday, I batched three episodes. And so we have monetized my podcast. And so we offer it for continuing education units for … geared towards speech-language pathologists.

Anne Zachry
Nice!

Rose Griffin
And then I do some therapy. I see a couple clients privately, and then I do some telehealth. I’m actually licensed in Washington State.

Anne Zachry
Nice!

Rose Griffin
And so I act in the capacity of helping ABA centers sometimes provide speech therapy. And then sometimes I just do consultations for complex communication cases. And I do a lot of presenting. I do a lot of speaking about working on autism and communication and how to help students at various levels along their communication journey. And we offer courses. That’s the biggest thing that we do is we offer courses about autism that are geared towards professionals and parents that are a little familiar with the science of applied behavior analysis, would probably be the best way to describe it. And we’ve just had a great chance and opportunity to be able to reach people through our courses. That’s been really something that’s been very rewarding.

Anne Zachry
That speaks to the concern I was having before about, you know, just how difficult it is to get the science pushed into the schools.

Rose Griffin
Really?

Anne Zachry
So, people who are doing the kind of work that you’re doing …

Rose Griffin
Yeah.

Anne Zachry
… and be able to reach through to them through the internet and nonetheless get the information out to these people. So they have access, I think that is so incredibly important. And that’s going to be such a huge part of what makes things better is people like you doing the kind of work that you’re doing, because you found a workaround.

Rose Griffin
Right!

Anne Zachry
It’s like, “Okay, well, maybe I’m not gonna go down to the local school district and hold a workshop today. But I don’t have to,” you know? “I can do it myself …

Rose Griffin
Right!

Anne Zachry
… and put it out there, and people can get their continuing ed units.” And then, you know, Bob’s your uncle, there it is.

Rose Griffin
Yeah! Yeah!

Anne Zachry
And so I think that that’s very encouraging,

Rose Griffin
Because our courses are offered for speech language-pathologists for their CEUs. Also, for board certified behavior analysts, they’re called ACEUs. And then also, we do general certificates for teachers and parents. And that’s been really great. So it’s really just a mix of I do live presentations. But then I also have these courses that are usually on Evergreen. And we have a new course coming out in September, that is called The Advanced Language Learner. And that is going to be about students who are using two to three words on their own, and how to help them go beyond basic communication skills. So I’m very, very excited and have been working diligently on that launch. So that will happen mid-September.

Anne Zachry
That sounds really exciting! All of that sounds amazing and wonderful. So, well, I’m excited to be able to share that with our audience, because I know there’s gonna be a lot of families out there who will benefit from it. I mean, by no means are our entire caseload, you know, kids with autism. That’s some, you know … a good fair percentage of our caseload.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm. Yeah.

Anne Zachry
But, you know, and that’s … they’re not the only kids who would benefit from something like that either. And then I have lots of kids with other types of issues …

Rose Griffin
Yep. Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… that that would really speak to their needs as well, and that knowledge being out there for the professionals in their lives, as well as their parents. The parent education piece is really important. And I … so here’s a thought …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm?

Anne Zachry
The implementing regulations of the IDEA include in its description of all the different things that can be related services … like speech and language, or transportation, or OT, or whatever …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
parent training and counseling is also listed. And …

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
… and so some … and the purpose of that being as a related service is so that parents can understand their children’s disability better and be more effective participants in the IEP process and understand the IEP process … because they have federally protected rights to informed consent and meaningful parent participation in the IEP process, and they can’t participate meaningfully if they don’t understand.

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
So, the parent counseling and training component is to help the parents get up to speed on what’s going on with their kid based on what the assessment … help them understand the disability, and also, you know, how to support and be part of the IEP team.

Rose Griffin
Right.

Anne Zachry
And, be able to be a collaborative member of the whole process …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… and have that meaningful parent participation where they’re not in there, just you know, having hysterical fits, because they don’t understand and nobody can get anything done, you know? Because that can happen. And so, I’m wondering how easy it would be for a parent to be able to get the cost of doing training through your program covered as an IEP cost?

Rose Griffin
Yeah, you know, I actually did have somebody reached out from California …

Anne Zachry
Where I’m at.

Rose Griffin
… where they wanted to sign their parent up for this parent training. That they wanted to know if I was a provider, which I think is something that’s very specific to California and the region.

Anne Zachry
Right, you have to be …

Rose Griffin
I have a friend that is an SLP.

Anne Zachry
Um-hmm. Yeah.

Rose Griffin
And I was, like, “Oh, I’m not covered on that.” So, I mean, if there’s any way that I could be covered on things like with that, she said that I would have to have a physical location in California …

Anne Zachry
No, no, no, no!

Rose Griffin
… which I’m not going to do from Ohio.

Anne Zachry
Here’s what you do. You do it as a reimbursement model. The parent pays you directly …

Rose Griffin
Oh!

Anne Zachry
… and the parents simply gets reimbursed.

Rose Griffin
Yeah!

Anne Zachry
That’s how you work around that requirement.

Rose Griffin
Okay!

Anne Zachry
Because, what you’re talking about is in California, in order for an agency to contract with the school district to provide anything special ed-related …

Rose Griffin
Yeah.

Anne Zachry
… they have to be a non-public school or a non-public agency. There’s a license you have to get from the California Department of Education.

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
And you have to have all this, like, this behemoth of a red tape process. It’s almost not even worth it for a lot of people …

Rose Griffin
Okay. Right.

Anne Zachry
… and which is why it’s so hard to find people to do it.

Rose Griffin
Yeah.

Anne Zachry
The workaround is if you have someone in private practice, and the parent simply pays and then gets reimbursed. If they have the means to do that, then a reimbursement model is the workaround for those kinds of things in special ed and that’s … you can write it into the IEP that way, or sometimes it will come up as part of a settlement agreement. And …

Rose Griffin
Okay, because I’ve had some people reach out to me that way, from California, but I’m just I’m not there. I’m not licensed in California. And …

Anne Zachry
You could do it remotely. And yeah, I mean, there’s your answer. So, if that helps you, you know, serve families in my state, that would be great! Ha, ha, ha!

Rose Griffin
Okay, good to know.

Anne Zachry
Yeah, no! There’s absolutely a work-around.

Rose Griffin
We definitely have courses that parents really, you know, enjoy, so … and just helps them feel like they have a better understanding of what’s going on in therapy, even if they’re not going to be the therapy provider themselves …

Anne Zachry
Right.

Rose Griffin
It just gives them more of an overall …

Anne Zachry
Well, yeah. That’s the whole point of understanding what’s really going on and why these things are important …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… and why it’s important for them to …

Rose Griffin
Yeah.

Anne Zachry
… you know, facilitate it and, you know, be part of the team to make it happen. You know, I would say to any parents who may have already paid for your services, especially if it’s been within the last year or two, you know, and a lot of people coming off the pandemic have had to go out and privately fund a lot of stuff that they wouldn’t have otherwise expected to have to do …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… that, they might want to save those receipts and their proofs of payment. And if they are …

Rose Griffin
Right.

Anne Zachry
… in any kind of dispute with their school districts trying to get services that they’ve otherwise had to get from you, that …

Rose Griffin
Right.

Anne Zachry
… if they were out of pocket for that, that that could be a reimbursable expense. And if they are going down that route, they do have an attorney or someone helping them with that process to have that person to look at the situation, the facts of their case, and how much they’ve had to spend on that, to see if it’s recoverable. Because you know, in very … a lot of instances, I would think that not just the speech and language or the ABA or any of this … that stuff you’re doing, but also the parent training could be a recoverable expense, because of that provision under the IDEA a that provides for parent training and counseling. So, just something to keep in mind. It could get get written into a kid’s IEP, and then, you know …

Rose Griffin
Right.

Anne Zachry
… if it’s not California, the district could potentially contract with you directly. Yeah, because we’re regulated …

Rose Griffin
Right.

Anne Zachry
… we’re so regulated. And you know, it offers a lot of good protections that the federal law doesn’t offer. But it sometimes …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… also creates additional bureaucracy. It’s like “Really?” Yeah, in other states, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case. And you could actually get your product and your services written directly into a kid’s IEP …

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
… and get funded by the district for that. Another …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… thing that I’ve seen with people doing similar kinds of programs like yours is that sometimes they will be able to get a contract with a school district to use the product, like on a licensed basis, where …

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
… you train the speech and language pathologist

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… to replicate your content in their setting.

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
And, you know, any therapies or anything that you’ve developed or any strategies you develop that are branded to you then becomes …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… it’s like … it makes me think of, for pragmatic language assessments you have was Michelle Winner-Garcia, Michelle Garcia-Winner, I never can remember …

Rose Griffin
We really don’t use her that much anymore. I mean, I think …

Anne Zachry
Yeah, but back in the day, I remember that was…

Rose Griffin
… the test for pragmatic language is the CASL. Yeah.

Anne Zachry
Well, but the CASL is a standardized measure. So a …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… norm-reference test is not …

Rose Griffin
… not observation …

Anne Zachry
going to get you …Yeah, it’s not going to give you the exact same kind of a thing as an …

Rose Griffin
Right, right.

Anne Zachry
in vivo, authentic language sample.

Rose Griffin
We always do an observation.

Anne Zachry
Yeah.

Rose Griffin
Make sure that we’re observing in the natural environment. Yeah.

Anne Zachry
You want the language sample and … But her … the thing that I liked that she did was the “Double Interview.”

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm! In one of our podcast episodes, with Lisa Chattler. She’s actually a speech therapist. She lives in Orange County …

Anne Zachry
Oh, right on!

Rose Griffin
… and she talked about the double interview and asking questions. And, yes.

Anne Zachry
I think that’s really important, too. I mean, I think that there’s value in norm referenced standardized tests, but to us … especially when you’re talking about school psychology, because that’s more my domain, you could be a psychometrician and paint by numbers, and not understand what any of those tests do. You can go through the motions of administering and scoring that test, and that doesn’t mean that you appreciate what the data means. I actually had a case a few years ago, where we had an audiologist supposedly doing an assessment for an auditory processing disorder.

Rose Griffin
Hmm!

Anne Zachry
She was with … the district had the choice of who was going to do it. They didn’t have an audiologist on staff. And so they outsourced it to a non-public agency. And the young woman who was the licensed audiologist who administered the test, none of it made any sense. And she had transposed percentile rankings and standard scores on her scoring charts and whatnot. And I was like, I don’t think she understands what these numbers mean.

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
And her report made no sense. And so we asked for a second opinion at public expense, an IEE … for the district to fund an outside second opinion. And they said, “No.” And so we had to go to due process to argue over whether or not they had done a good job, and we needed a second opinion. And she gets on the witness stand, and we asked her, “Well, what’s the difference between a standard score and a percentile ranking?” And she was like, I don’t know. I’m not a statis-, statis-” (she couldn’t say “statistician”). She goes, “I’m not a statistics person.”

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
And I could just feel the attorney for the school district die inside right next to me …

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
…. because this was his case. You know, he was the one arguing that she knew what she was doing. He was a lawyer. He had no way of knowing that she didn’t know what those things were because he didn’t know what those things were.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
So, he was just … she would say, “Well, of course I know what I’m doing!” So, he had her back. And, then we get in front of the judge and she just tanks! She couldn’t explain any of her data. And, then we had our own audiologist who came and testified who was an expert witness on how it should have been done, and, it was just night and day. And so, there are people out there who are going through the motions, who can administer and score a standardized assessment, but they don’t necessarily understand how to interpret the data. And they may not have even chosen the right test. In this particular case, she just used a boilerplate list of assessments that the owner of the company she worked for, who was also an audiologist, said, “This is what you do when you test for this.” And, so everybody was getting identical measures. None of it was individualized. And … I mean, for a large part, for that kind of testing, there’s only so many things you can do, but still. And so, she was just going through this list of tests that her boss had said, “This is what you do,” and listing the scores, but not explaining what any of it meant, and, in fact, she had her scores were all transposed and she had them jumbled up, and it didn’t mean anything. It made no sense whatsoever. And, so how can you trust that she even administered and scored them correctly? That does happen. For people who are thinking, “Oh, well standardized measures for pragmatic language …” If you know what you’re doing, you can go do an authentic language sample and the CASL, and that’s going to get you there. But, for people who are paint-by-numbers folks who really don’t understand, thinking they can do pragmatic language in a paint-by-numbers manner, you have to be able to engage in the act of pragmatic language of reading the person yourself in order to take the data necessary to read whether that person has intact pragmatic language skills. And, if you don’t know how to do that type of analysis, then you’re going to have … what I see is people falling more and more back on the standardized norm-referenced stuff and getting away from the observations … getting away from things like the double-interview, where they have to actually use judgment and there’s a professional level of skill that … and understanding and higher-level thinking and critical thinking skills that are required, that a paint-by-numbers, “Let’s just do a norm-referenced test and it will tell us what’s going on” … Up to a point, yes. But, that shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all. I think there’s a lot of value in some of these other, maybe standardized but not norm-referenced, maybe more criterion-referenced kinds of measures. One of the tools that I’ve seen used out here is called the Southern California Ordinal Scales of Development

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
… and, it’s broken into a cognition, a communication, an adaptive behavior, a motor skills, and one other that I’m not remembering, but all these different aspects of development that you have these subtests in.

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
And, it’s based on a Piagetian model …

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
… where you’re trying to figure out what stage of Piagetian development the individual is in each of the different domains. Because, when you’re talking about someone with a developmental disability, in particular, there’s going to be scatter. That, they may be higher in cognition but lower in communication, if they have apraxia. They may be higher in cognition and communication, but lower in adaptive skills. It’s just, everybody’s different, right? And so, what it looks at, is it’s criterion-referenced, not norm-referenced, and you’re coming at, “Can this person do this thing in any kind of way, yes or no?” And, so, like, when you’re testing for whether they’ve mastered the concept of conservation, the idea that mass doesn’t change even if the way that the mass is arranged is different. So, like, if you have … or volume. So, if you pour water … a cup of water … you’re talking about, like, if you have a tall skinny beaker or a short fat beaker, and you pour a cup of water into each, and you ask the kid, “Which has more?” Well, neither, because it’s both a cup of water.

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
But, a kid who has not mastered conservation is gonna say the tall skinny one has more water because it goes up higher, and the short fat beaker has less because it’s shorter, relatively. And so, they’re only looking at it from one dimension. And someone who has mastered conservation knows it’s still the same amount of water. Or, you take a ball of clay and roll it out into a snake and you say, “Is it still the same amount of clay, or is it more or less?” And, a kid who hasn’t mastered conservation will say it’s more because it’s longer, but the kid who has will say, “It’s the same amount; I just changed the shape.” And so …

Rose Griffin
Hmm.

Anne Zachry
… when you’re doing things like that, sometimes what can happen is … when you’re talking about doing those kinds of things … sometimes, the example in the test … in the Ordinal Scales … will say, “Here are some ways you can test for this,” but it doesn’t obligate you to do it exactly that way, the way a norm-referenced test would … where you’ve got to administer and score it exactly the same way for everybody … well, the scoring is the same, but the administration is not the same on a criterion-referenced … because you’re trying to whether a kid has a skill or not, not how they display it. So, if you have to do something different, like if the ball of clay doesn’t work but the beakers of water gets you there, and they can still demonstrate they have at least, you know, emerging conservation skills. But, you only do one thing with the ball of clay and that’s where you leave it, and you don’t experiment with it, it’s like when you’re testing your hypotheses when you’re doing ABA. You’ve got to fool around with it to see if you’re actually … your hypothesis is right. So, for that kind of measure, what are the various different types of measures do you think are really the most reliable for giving you the broad, full picture of how someone … someone’s communication and behavior plays into each other?

Rose Griffin
Yeah, I think what’s most important is to … whatever you’re doing, it’s going to be dependent on your work setting. So if you’re in a public school, there might be a certain expectation of what type of evaluation tests you’re going to use versus being in a practice that is either private pay or is insurance led. Every work setting is going to have an expectation of what is going to be an assessment. But I think what’s most important with an assessment is to make sure that you talk to the student, you talk to the family, and that you observe the student in different settings. So observing the student in a classroom lesson; observing the student in a less structured environment, like gym or recess or lunch, to try to get a snapshot of the student’s skills. But I really think assessment is an ongoing process and that every time that you see a student, and you work with a student, you’re going to be assessing, “How is the student doing?”, “Are they generalizing their skills?”, and “How can I help support my students?

Anne Zachry
And that makes a lot of sense. I agree with you. I think … that’s music to my ears, because I think that that’s something that’s really important is the observation of students across various different settings, because you’re going to see different presentations …

Rose Griffin
Um-hmm.

Anne Zachry
… based on different environmental stimuli, and different social demands. So I think that that’s hugely important. I think that’s where a lot of the pragmatic stuff really comes out. I think that you coming at it from the perspective of both a BCBA and a speech and language pathologist … that your ability to see the function of the behavior and a moment where pragmatics are not working for someone has to be so much more informed and enlightened than, you know, different brains having to come together to piece together the same story. So I really, truly appreciate, you know, what you’re bringing to the table and your insights into this. This whole realm of how to, you know, help people who are struggling with these kinds of issues and all the different ways that can be done. And I’m excited to share your information with our audience as well so they can go to your site and your podcast and …

Rose Griffin
Ha, ha, ha! Well, it was really nice to connect. And yes, definitely feel free to reach out to me during the podcast, my free resources, and also the courses that I discussed today.

Anne Zachry
Absolutely! And I’ll be sure to include links to everything because a lot of my families are in, like, parents support groups and stuff they’ll benefit from it.

Rose Griffin
Yeah! That’s awesome! Yeah. so it was great to connect today. Thanks for having me on.

Anne Zachry
Thank you for listening to the podcast version of interview of Rose Griffin, SLP and BCBA. KPS4Parents reminds its listeners that Knowledge Powers Solutions for Parents, and all eligible children, regardless of disability are entitled to a free and appropriate public education. If you are a parent, education professional or concerned taxpayer, and have questions or comments about special education-related matters, please email us at info@kps4parents.org or post a comment to our blog. That’s “info” at “K” as in “knowledge,” “P” as in “Powers,” “S” as in “Solutions,” the number “4,” “Parents,” (“p,” “a,” “r,” “e,” “n,” “t,” “s,”) dot, “o,” “r,” “g.” We hope you found our information useful and look forward to bringing more useful information to you. Subscribe to our feed to make sure that you receive the latest information from making special education actually work, an online publication of KPS4Parents. Find us online at KPS4Parents.org. KPS4Parents is a nonprofit lay advocacy organization. The information provided by KPS4Parents in Making Special Education Actually Work is based on the professional experiences and opinions of KPS4Parents’ lay advocates, and should not be construed as formal legal advice. If you require formal legal advice, please seek the counsel of a qualified attorney. All the content here is copyrighted by KPS4Parents, which reserves all rights.

Is LAUSD Run by a Fascist Mafia?

LAUSD Main Offices – Downtown Los Angeles

The school year hasn’t even started yet and Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second-largest school district in the country, has already hit the ground running with illegalities left and right, not the least of which is the systemic policy issue that I’m focusing on in today’s post. It’s hardly the only violation, but its a systemic one that stands to continue hurting a lot of children with disabilities, particularly our kiddos on the autism spectrum.

What I’m about to tell you would sound far-fetched if it was not for the fact that the United States is currently engaged in a soft civil war in which right-wing extremists are attempting to change us from a democratic republic to a ethno-religious dictatorship. The evidence indicates these decades-long plans were started at the local level in city councils, school districts, and various county agencies, then percolated upward into our federal agencies before culminating in the January 6, 2021 insurrection against our democratic republic.

The reality is that I’ve been dealing with these kinds of behaviors from local education agencies for the last 31 years, and there is no end in sight for many families in local education agencies as large as LAUSD. It’s the Titanic, it’s been on a direct course for an iceberg for decades, and it will collapse and sink under its own weight before too much longer at the rate it’s currently going.

This is particularly the case as the pro-democracy backlash to recent fascist efforts to overthrow our system of government is gaining momentum as more and more high-ranking fascist individuals at the federal level face the consequences of their actions with the J6 Hearings and related Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations. When the example is finally set at the national level and all of those responsible for J6 are either behind bars or being pursued by the feds and Interpol after fleeing the country, the trickle-down of legal consequences to State and local government agencies that have been engaging in fascist practices all this time will be severe.

But, we’re not there, yet. The only way to really get there is to make public what the heck is really going on so that taxpaying registered voters in Los Angeles can make informed decisions about the people they entrust with the responsibility of educating their children, particularly their children with disabilities. So, let me get into the actual issue to which I want to call immediate attention, that being LAUSD’s unlawful and unethical method of conducting Functional Behavioral Assessments (FBAs), which it has implemented as a policy, district-wide, according to District personnel.

Title 34, Code of the Federal Regulations (34 CFR) Section 300.304 describes the parameters for how special education assessments are supposed to be conducted. 34 CFR Sec. 300.320(a)(4) mandates the application of the peer-reviewed research to the design and delivery of special education, which includes the assessment process. Taken together, these laws require that competent assessors acting within the scope of their qualifications conduct assessments according to the professional standards that apply to each of the various types of assessments being conducted, in conformity with the peer-reviewed research.

There is no standardized measure, like an IQ test, when conducting an FBA, though there are assessment tools and instruments that can help inform the process. Instead, the applicable science describes the types of critical thinking and lines of inquiry a properly trained behaviorist must apply when determining the function of a maladaptive behavior and the most appropriate ways of responding to it. The science used is referred to as Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA).

ABA is not a special education service, per se. ABA is the science behind effective behavioral interventions. ABA services requires scientists to think independently in applying the known science to the unique facts of each individual person assessed. It’s not a paint-by-numbers, one-size-fits-all measure. It’s not psychometrics in the sense that norm-referenced standardized tests will be administered to the student. It requires more thought and higher-level critical thinking skills than that, and the people who are certified to do it must prove their abilities to function that way.

There are no formal criteria for FBAs, specifically, but they are based off the Functional Analysis (FA) procedures developed by Dr. Brian Iwata and his colleagues in their published research. While being certified as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) is supposed to confirm that a behavioral scientist is adequately qualified to analyze behavior, BCBA certification is not required in California for conducting FBAs in the special education context. Anyone who has gone to graduate school for a school psychologist credential should have theoretically been trained on ABA just as a part of their grad school education.

My master’s degree is in educational psychology and I had to study ABA more than once during my higher education. It is not typically part of a special education teaching credential program, other than to mention that other professionals are available in the special education context to conduct FBAs and provide ABA-based behavioral interventions.

That is, except, in LAUSD, which is using special education teachers to conduct its FBAs. It will hire Non-Public Agencies (NPAs) that specialize in providing ABA services through and under the supervision of BCBAs, but it will not allow the BCBAs to actually conduct their own FBAs to inform their own Behavior Intervention Design (BID) services, which then compromises the quality of the Behavior Intervention Implementation (BII) services. This is a district policy, according to various LAUSD employees with whom I’ve been speaking about this since April, and they don’t seem to understand why I have such an issue with it.

First, the 8th grade LAUSD student I’m currently representing in which this issue has come up has been “assessed” under this model since the 1st grade and he still has the same behavioral challenges today that he had in 1st grade. He’s made no improvements and now he’s over 6 feet tall. His toddler-like tantrums result in significant property destruction, which has only gotten worse as he’s gotten smarter and bigger over time, and he puts himself and others at risk of injury when he throws them. Not only does LAUSD’s method of conducting FBAs fail to comply with the applicable science and law, it does not work!

LAUSD’s solution is to offer yet another illegal FBA conducted by an inexpert special education teacher who must then hand off their “data” to a BCBA who is then supposed to somehow magically engage in scientifically valid BID and supervise a Registered Behavior Technician (RBT) who is supposed to provide the BII in conformity with the plan designed by the BCBA. When I point out the epic failure of logic behind this practice to LAUSD personnel, I’m met with the Orwellian Doublespeak of corrupt District administrators and the blank stares of ineptitude and rote recitations of District policy from school-site personnel.

One school site administrator actually tried to get me to lie to the parent and trick him into doing something he otherwise was not inclined to do. I analyzed her behavior according to ABA standards based on what information I could gather and ultimately concluded that she’s as stupid as she is corrupt; her behaviors were automatically reinforcing and externally reinforced by her employer, which appears to employ the dumbest people it can find in positions of authority well beyond their critical thinking abilities and professional skills so that they can be the clueless, easily manipulated henchmen of the mafiosos at the main office on Beaudry.

Basically, what we are dealing with here is science denialism and unconstitutional conduct on the part of public officials to the tune of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. LAUSD is the government, regulated by the rule of law and answerable to its local constituency, but the people generally have no voice against this behemoth of a self-serving institution, which is why I’m talking about it, here.

LAUSD is long overdue for a reckoning regarding its systemic illegal conduct across all aspects of special education, and it’s probably safe to say that if the District is willing to compromise its most vulnerable constituents, that being children with disabilities, it’s likely equally comfortable violating everybody else’s rights, as well. I can’t speak to the other social justice issues in which the District might be in the wrong, but it has historically failed on the special education front ever since special education and related civil rights laws were first passed in the 1970s.

Disability-related civil rights law is truly the canary in the coal mine for American democracy. The measure of how civilized a society is can be determined by how well it takes care of its most vulnerable members, and children with disabilities are among the most vulnerable humans on Earth. If LAUSD is willing to treat children with disabilities this way, it’s top administrators should probably swap out their dress suits for animal pelts so that their lack of civility is adequately conveyed. Otherwise, they’re just wolves in sheep’s clothing, preying our our most vulnerable children.

The Chanda Smith Consent Decree came after decades of unlawful special education conduct and was in place for decades thereafter in an effort to end the District’s unlawful conduct, which it failed to do. The courts attempted to pull LAUSD out of the gutter with the consent decree, but LAUSD just pulled the courts into the gutter with it. An Independent Monitor was hired to oversee the consent decree until such time that LAUSD came into compliance with special education law, but that day never came.

Apparently, presuming that compliance would never happen, the Independent Monitor began engaging in equally corrupt behavior, assuming lifelong job security for so long as LAUSD continued to violate special education law and grifting the system by overpaying consultants who failed to make any kind of perceptible difference with respect to LAUSD’s compliance. The Office of the Independent Monitor was shut down and the consent degree was closed out following an audit that revealed excessive unnecessary spending by the Independent Monitor that could not be related to the District’s conformity with the consent decree.

Further, while it may be true that the District legitimately improved some of its special education programming, by no means had to come close to a reasonable degree of compliance, as evidenced by the number of families who have still had to file lawsuits to get services, and even that doesn’t guarantee they’ll get all of the right services for their children. Many get only some of the services their children need, making their IEPs as effective as watered-down penicillin in the face of a raging bacterial infection. For all the services they may actually get that they need, the absence of the other services they also need undermines any successes they may have in the areas in which they’ve actually received help.

Which circles back around to the question that serves as the title to today’s post/podcast, which is, “Is LAUSD Run by a Fascist Mafia?” From the outside looking in, this seems to be a legitimate question.

Let’s start with the fact that LAUSD hired computer coders to work with its in-house counsel decades ago to bastardize a piece of insurance software known as Welligent into its IEP software. As a result, LAUSD has basically bureaucratically obligated its school site personnel to break the law because of the software limitations of Welligent, or at least how it has been coded by the District, that fail to even offer compliant options to its users in many areas of special education.

For example, let’s look at the assessment plan, redacted for privacy, that was offered to my current LAUSD student, which was generated from Welligent, and compare it to another redacted assessment plan for another student on my caseload in a different school district who also needed an FBA.

Example 1, below, is the assessment plan offered to my LAUSD student, and shows the FBA as an “alternative assessment” to be conducted by a special education teacher. “Alternative assessments” usually refer to non-traditional assessment measures or methods from those typically used in the place of standardized testing.

For example, using curriculum-based assessments in the classroom to gather informal data on actual classroom performance can be a more reliable method of assessing academic achievement than a standardized measure like the WJ-IV or the WIAT-4. None of this assessment plan makes sense with respect to the FBA.

Example 1 – page 1

Looking at the table of “standardized” testing from page 2 of this assessment plan, which is referenced by page 1, FBAs are not listed. Item 7 targets “Adaptive Behavior,” but that goes more to independent living skills and self-care, like dressing, toileting, and navigating the school setting. FBAs do not fit that category and the LAUSD assessment plan has no category that FBAs would logically fit. This was a deliberate coding decision made in Welligent by the District that has absolutely nothing to do with adequately assessing children with special needs and offering them appropriate behavioral supports at school.

Example 1 – page 2

Example 2, below, shows a different student’s assessment plan from a different school district. This assessment plan offers the student involved an FBA to be performed by the school psychologist in collaboration with a district behaviorist. This actually makes sense.

In this student’s case, it turns out the special education teacher was the problem and she got reassigned to a different classroom. This student had gone without behavioral challenges until she was placed in this teacher’s class, and the FBA made clear that the teacher was the one provoking the behaviors. Objectivity is one of the most critical aspects of science that must apply to special education assessments. Can you imagine if she had been trusted to conduct the FBA?

I can assure you the quality of the outcomes using appropriately qualified people who actually care makes all the difference in the world. Whereas our LAUSD student has historically been assessed according to plans virtually similar to Example 1, above, and has now gone for over six years with next to no improvements in his behaviors, our student from whose case Example 2 was taken is now thriving in school with no serious behavioral challenges of any kind.

To be clear, it’s not like the student in Example 2 has never had issues with this school district. There were problems years ago when she was little that I had to deal with, but it had been smooth sailing until she ended up in that whacko teacher’s classroom, last school year.

Because the student’s behaviors were interfering with her learning, even though we suspected the teacher was likely the problem, we didn’t go in accusing the teacher of anything. We simply asked for an FBA to get to the bottom of the behaviors and the next thing we knew the teacher was gone. The FBA report we got back was very well-written and explained the facts without demeaning the teacher or doing anything else unprofessional.

We hit a huge bump in the road that had the potential to go really badly, but the District in that student’s case handled it professionally, compassionately, and responsibly. I’ve yet to see any of those qualities from anyone I’ve dealt with from LAUSD regarding my LAUSD student. The difference in handling is night and day, and I’ve caught both districts messing up before. The difference is that my other student was met with professionalism, while my LAUSD student is being met with science denialism and an utter abandonment of the rule of law.

It is this refusal to abide by science and law on the part of the second largest school district in the nation that raises the specter of fascism. It’s all very “Marjorie Taylor Green-ish.”

Consider that California has adopted the Common Core as its State Standards. The purpose of these standards is for our public schools in California to teach students how to use academic knowledge and skills to solve real-world problems, yet LAUSD doesn’t use academic knowledge and skills to solve problems. It denies science and breaks the law.

How can people who deny science teach our kids to use science to solve problems? How can people who have abandoned the rule of law credibly teach social studies, particularly civics, and educate our kids to become knowledgeable participants in American democracy? How is this anything other than fascism and when are the feds going to do something about it?

I tried filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), but it twisted my words into a narrower complaint than what I alleged and then declined to investigate its twisted version of my allegations, which is a first for OCR with me, I have to admit, and it makes me fear for our democracy even more, now.

If OCR is too intimidated by LAUSD to investigate such that it makes up lame excuses as to why it shouldn’t have to, how does that not also suggest the presence of organized crime within LAUSD so large and expansive that even the feds won’t touch it? DOJ is a little busy with the J6 investigations, but I suspect all of this stuff in inter-related as multiple spokes of a wheel-and-spoke conspiracy to overturn democracy in America.

Remember that Betsy DeVos tried to shut down OCR after she was appointed Secretary of Education by the 45th President until she had the snot sued out of her and subsequently reinstated it. She also admitted that her goal was to abolish USDOE as the Secretary of Education; she took the job with the specific intent of shutting down the entire agency from within.

How many people from the last administration continue to poison the well at USDOE? It’s the same question Americans have to ask about every single federal agency, but as pointed out in the above linked-to article from The Root describing DeVos’ desire to abolish USDOE altogether also describes the conference at which she recently shared her continued desire to shut down USDOE as teaching far-right parents how to build conservative-dominated school boards in their local communities, ban books, and a host of other undemocratic activities intended to deny the civil rights of children with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, students of color, and students from other protected classes.

It’s an anti-science, anti-democracy approach that includes anti-vax, anti-masking nut-jobs who are too dumb to know how dumb they are and/or are profoundly mentally ill, being manipulated by grifters like DeVos to vote against their own interests in favor of the interests of the grifters. It’s the “have-nots” falling for the tricks of the “haves” who know the only way they can have way more than what they actually need is to make sure others don’t have enough.

Today’s post isn’t about documenting how I’ve figured out a way to overcome whatever fascist mafia might control LAUSD. It’s about exposing what I’ve witnessed and adding my voice and the voices of the LAUSD students who aren’t getting what they need to the conversation in the hopes that it will spark others to also help hold LAUSD to account for its egregious violations of special education law.

I’m hoping that voters in LA will learn more about these issues, understand that special education social justice issues cuts across all other demographic groups, and no segment of society is safe for so long as our government is allowed to conduct itself in this way. If you are involved in any type of social justice issue in which LAUSD has engaged in discrimination and withheld services it is legally required to provide, consider getting involved with our Meetup Group, Social Justice Series – Everyday Local Democracy for All.

Our Meetup Group is not limited to people living within the LAUSD attendance area, but we certainly have Angeleños already in the Group. You can comment/DM us directly on Meetup or on our social media, or use our Contact Us form on our site with any questions/feedback. We don’t have all the answers, but awareness is the first step to solving a problem, so we’re starting there.

Interview of Dawn Barclay, Author of Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible, and the Neurodiverse

Anne Zachry 00:00 Welcome to Making Special Education Actually Work, an online publication presented in blog and podcast form by KPS4Parents. As an added benefit to our subscribers and visitors to our site, we’re making podcast versions of our text only blog articles so that you can get the information you need on the go by downloading and listening at your convenience. We also occasionally conduct discussions with guest speakers via our podcast and transcribe the audio into text for our followers who prefer to read the content on our blog. Where the use of visual aids, legal citations, and references to other websites are used to better illustrate our points and help you understand the information, these tools appear in the text only portion of the blog post of which this podcast is a part. You will hear a distinctive sound [bell sound] during this podcast whenever references made to content that includes a link to another article, website, or download. Please refer back to the original blog article to access these resources. Today is April 28 2022. This post/podcast is titled, “Interview of Dawn Barclay, author of Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible and the Neurodiverse.” In this podcast, which was originally recorded on April 1 2022, Dawn and I discuss her book and the challenges that children with various special needs can experience when it comes to going places in the community, including travel and vacations.

Anne Zachry 01:28 Thank you so much for doing this with me. So, you know, just to get started, if you could just introduce yourself, and then tell us about the book you’ve written and more or less the core issue that you were trying to tackle with it.

Dawn Barclay 01:40 Okay, terrific. So my name is Dawn Barkley and I have written a book called Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible and the Neurodiverse. I have been a travel writer for the past 30-some years. I specialized in travel trade writing. And when I needed a book like this back in around 2008-2009, there wasn’t a book like this. So I wanted to write a book that would help the parents of children on the autism spectrum, as well as with mood and attention disorders. What I what I found was that the tips would help in a neurotypical family, as well. Anne Zachry 02:31 That stands to reason. I mean, that’s one of the things that research bears out, that when we start creating accommodations for people with special needs, that it turns out that it benefits everybody. I mean, look how people are now using text-to-speech to text when they send their text messages, right, you know, and that was started out as an accommodation. And now just people do it because it’s a convenience. And so it just becomes adopted as, “Well, of course. Why wouldn’t you use a calculator?” And so that totally makes sense that you would find overlap there that, you know. When you’re having to think very deliberately for someone who needs that level of deliberate thought in order to simply access the situation that, you know, it’s also going to benefit other people. So that’s an interesting finding that you’ve made.

Dawn Barclay 03:16 Well, I think it stands to reason also that when a child is taken out of their comfort zone, they can be anxious or inflexible, you know, everybody is a little out of it when they are out of their comfort zone. And children haven’t experienced those transitions as much as adults …

Anne Zachry 03:32 True.

Dawn Barclay 03:33 … they really need … It’s great when people take the time to really explain to a child what’s going to happen on a trip, or get them involved in the planning of a trip. So they have a vested interest in being successful. So little things that you can do like showing videos to a kid before they travel, so they know where they’re going. It’s not all super exciting …

Anne Zachry 03:54 No, it’s all it’s all common sense stuff. But it’s you know, when we’re talking about our special needs kids, these are things we would write it into, like, into an IEP, an accommodation for priming or front-loading, you know …

Dawn Barclay 04:06 Right.

Anne Zachry 04:06 … to warn them of transitions ahead of time, to give them a visual schedule so that the …

Dawn Barclay 04:11 Right.

Anne Zachry 04:11 … daily routine is predictable. And you know, and it really goes to … you’re right, it’s a fundamental human thing, that anxiety is about lack of predictability.

Dawn Barclay 04:20 Yes.

Anne Zachry 04:20 And when you don’t know what is coming next, it makes you anxious. And so you know, we all have our ways of dealing with that. And when you’re talking about kids, they haven’t necessarily develop the repertoire of skills …

Dawn Barclay 04:34 Right.

Anne Zachry 04:34 … and certainly as you were talking about a kid with special needs, the speed with which they’re acquiring coping skills may not be as quickly as, you know, typically developing kids who may pick them up through observation, whereas some of our kids may need to be explicitly taught.

Dawn Barclay 04:48 Yeah, you’re totally on target. And that’s what I found. And that’s what a lot of the advice revolved around is how to prep the child for each different type of trip. Whether depending on mode of transportation, or whether it evolved through restaurant or camping, or going to a hotel versus a vacation rental, any type of situation they might be put into, “How can we prepare?” and, “How can we smooth the way?”

Anne Zachry 05:16 Yeah, so that you know what to expect, and you’re not worried or freaked out and anxious. That totally makes sense. And yeah, and it goes to ecological control, too. And you said something interesting in your email to me when we were setting all of this up about how some kids may need to start small. And maybe it’s not even like an overnight trip anywhere, it’s like going to a garage sale, or, you know, just going through a novel environment of any kind. And just, it’s a skill that needs to be generalized. And so what …

Dawn Barclay 05:45 Yes.

Anne Zachry 05:46 … what was, what were your findings with regard to scaling and in scaffolding the complexity of the outings?

Dawn Barclay 05:54 Well, I have devoted a whole chapter to starting small, because I think it’s vital to preview what the trip is going to be like, before you actually do it. And you’ve got a lot of time and money and energy invested in it. And so a lot of it involved social stories, which I would imagine that …

Anne Zachry 06:13 Yeah.

Dawn Barclay 06:13 … you’re familiar with.

Anne Zachry 06:15 Yep.

Dawn Barclay 06:16 And also videos. But even before all of that, to do something small, like you said, like maybe if you’re planning a trip to Italy, you would have some Italian food and talk about currency, or maybe introduce some Italian words, and just try to teach children that there is life that out there that’s different than the way they experience it, and just make it fun for them. But also, like you said, like a garage sale, or a trip to the post office, any trip, you can take a child on can be a learning experience, if you couch it that way.

Anne Zachry 06:55 Right.

Dawn Barclay 06:55 I mean, I take them to a bakery that specializes perhaps in you know, like an Italian bakery or German bakery. And there are things that they’re not familiar with and little by little get them excited about maybe trying something new. Local festivals in your town might be a good short trip, or a zoo, or an aquarium. Any of those can start the child getting used to something that will involve maybe a tour later on, on a vacation. And you can always refer back and say, “Oh, remember when we went on that tour to the aquarium? You’ve sort of experienced that.”

Anne Zachry 07:32 You can even create a social story about outings in general based on past experiences on a smaller scale like that, and take photos and then, “Okay, well, when we go on the big trip, we’re gonna go to other places where we take a tour. You remember the rules for tours, right?” And …

Dawn Barclay 07:48 Right.

Anne Zachry 07:49 … and whip out that social story with pictures of them having successfully done it before, and it just reinforces “Oh, I can handle this.” So I think that’s really smart. Well, that’s really clever stuff. Well, so can people … where can people get the book? Is it on Amazon or other places? Where are you selling it?

Dawn Barclay 08:06 Right now it’s on pre-order. It’s coming out August 15. But it is on pre-order on Amazon, on the Rowman and Littlefield website, on almost any online retailer. And we’re hoping that we’ll be in libraries as well. Right now you can preorder in hardcover, or in audiobook.

Anne Zachry 08:27 Okay.

Dawn Barclay 08:27 The … that … you can’t preorder the digital the ebook yet.

Anne Zachry 08:31 Got it. Okay. That’s good to know. Well, we do have our own online store of books, that is really just Amazon, that we use for fundraising for our nonprofit organization and to put useful tools in the hands of the families we serve. And so if you’re listed on Amazon, that’s easy enough for me to just, you know, include you in there so folks can pre-order, so I’ll be sure to do that. And then, yeah, and then we’ll have a link for that to the post as well, so that people can just click right on over. In your situation, what you’re doing is so elegantly simple. And so, you know, most brilliant things are. Because you’re just … you’re whittling it down and distilling it down to, you know, you don’t need to overcomplicate this. That’s what freaking everybody out is it’s overcomplicated in their mind, and it’s too chaotic, and you’re just, like, bringing it down to a succinct, “No, here’s what’s going on. Here’s the predictable thing that you can expect.” And you’re taking something that’s unpredictable and turning it something … into something predictable and more easily managed emotionally for …

Dawn Barclay 09:31 Yes.

Anne Zachry 09:32 … for people who struggle with lack of predictability for, you know, for whatever reasons, which we all do to one extent or another. But I think that there’s very definitely … I know for my families that have to struggle every summer with, “Do we accept the offer of extended school year services from the school district, or do we send our kid to some kind of camp where they could potentially get more, or do we do a family vacation?” and, you know, “What if we want to do all three? And how do we schedule all of that?” And I think that your, you know, your bottom line point that as long as you’re -predicting and you’re front-loading and you’re priming. And you’re thinking deliberately about how you’re going to pace everything that it can be done. And very often, you’ll have kids who do extended school year to work on things like social skills, or their …

Dawn Barclay 10:21 Yes.

Anne Zachry 10:21 … you know, their communication and their behavior. Well, they can also work on those same things if they’re in a national park, you know, listening to the park ranger explain how, you know, what to do if you see a bear.

Dawn Barclay 10:35 True, and there are special passes for those with invisible disabilities for national parks.

Anne Zachry 10:41 Yes, there are.

Dawn Barclay 10:42 I talk about how you get that, and I talk about camping as well. If you want to take a small trip that might start with an overnight in your backyard, just so you can test what camping is like …

Anne Zachry 10:52 Exactly.

Dawn Barclay 10:53 … and then how to gauge … how to evaluate a campground ahead of time to make sure it’s going to work for you. There’s a checklist for that. There are checklists for if you’re going to rent a vacation rental, things you should look for.

Anne Zachry 11:06 Oh, that’s so huge.

Dawn Barclay 11:08 Yeah. And when you talk about hotels, another tip for starting small is maybe just spending a night at a friend’s house with a guestroom …

Anne Zachry 11:17 Yeah.

Dawn Barclay 11:18 … the child can get used to just staying in a different location and sleeping, to see how they adapt to that.

Anne Zachry 11:25 That makes a lot of sense, that makes a … totally makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I mean, it’s the baby steps sometimes before you take the large leap.

Dawn Barclay 11:33 Yes.

Anne Zachry 11:33 And, yeah, and it’s scaffolding, I mean, when you’re when you’re talking about instruction, when you’ve got a child whose functioning below grade level, you just don’t hit them full force with the grade level content. You back up a little bit, and you teach the prerequisite skills that they need to master that might be at a lower level. But if you don’t know that, the bigger thing is not going to make any sense, you know?

Dawn Barclay 11:55 Sure. Of course.

Anne Zachry 11:56 And so it’s you have to take those baby steps and work someone incrementally towards their comfort level, and where they’re at a place where they can master something new. And that’s really what, you know, it’s the same concept just applied to, you know, the real life situation of just going out in the world and participating. And, you know, it’s not really about the academics per se, but the concept still applies to learning how to access the world around you. So I think that’s, you know, obviously, it’s a very transferable concept. And you’ve … it sounds like you’re applying it in a really smart way. I’m excited to see your book now that you’ve told me all these awesome things and planning the things that are in it, because I’m telling you, I have families who are like, “We don’t know what we’re going to do this summer.” And a lot of families who are just like, “We’re just not going to do anything, because it’s too hard to figure it all out.” But if there’s something …

Dawn Barclay 11:56 That’s so true.

Anne Zachry 11:57 … yeah, there’s something they can use that will help … because I think for a lot of moms in particular, it tends to be the case that moms are the ones saddled with the planning …

Dawn Barclay 12:53 Yeah.

Anne Zachry 12:53 … and the logistics, and getting everything together and organizing everything. And just the thought, I mean, I can feel my own heart palpitating. You know, I remember doing Girl Scout events and having to get all those things together. And I know what kind of anxiety is around being the planner.

Dawn Barclay 13:09 There’s been a study where they interviewed 1000 families and, of the ones with special needs, 93% didn’t travel but said that they would if they knew where to go and how to handle it.

Anne Zachry 13:21 Exactly. No, that totally makes sense. Well, I think, you know, this is a huge service for the community of families that we serve, this is definitely information that families need. So I’m excited to share it all out and see what the response is to it once it comes out. I mean that right now it’s preorder so no one’s it’s not available for review at the moment. But it’ll be exciting to see what people say once they’ve gotten a chance to look at it. How have the preorders been going? What kind of feedback have you been getting from people now that you’re going around promoting it?

Dawn Barclay 13:51 Well, I don’t get to see the preorder numbers. However, we did send it to some people … early endorsements for the back cover. And I was very, very happy with what people had to say, especially people who had written books about autism, and they were very positive about it. So that made me feel good, because the only people who had really read it before that was my agent and my publisher …

Anne Zachry 14:14 Right, on.

Dawn Barclay 14:15 … you know, I really hadn’t heard from the community. And when I heard from them, and they felt that this was a very helpful book that made me feel great, because if I get a letter from someone in the future, who’s read this book and said, you know, “Because of what you wrote, we traveled and thank you because you opened up the world to us,” that will have made it all worthwhile for me.

Anne Zachry 14:36 I totally understand that. I mean, that’s as advocates, that’s what we’re doing is, we’re in the business of opening doors for people who otherwise they wouldn’t open for, and it is. It’s incredibly gratifying to realize that, you know, even if it’s something simple, but certainly when you put forth this kind of effort to know that other people are benefiting from it. Yeah, it’s very … it’s just, you know, you’re reason to get up in the morning. I get it, I totally get it.

Dawn Barclay 15:04 It’s true, and there’s so many people out there who don’t know what the resources are, like there are certified autism travel professionals out there who have dedicated themselves to being able to plan trips for families …

Anne Zachry 15:17 Holy Moly!

Dawn Barclay 15:17 … on the spectrum, and there are different certification companies like IBCCES, and that stands for the International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards.

Anne Zachry 15:31 Right.

Dawn Barclay 15:31 … IBCCES, they created the Certified Autism Centers, and they go around certifying and training different venues to know how to work with the autistic population. And that’s so important, because then you have certain resorts who have dedicated themselves to training their staff to helping.

Anne Zachry 15:50 That is so cool. Well, it’s interesting now that you’re saying all of that, because separate from the work that we do through our advocacy organization, I also have a separate program that I created that we operate, called the Learn & Grow Educational Series, which is part of the ecotourism circuit, and we address food security and sustainable living instruction through project-based learning and modeling. So online and in-person teaching, and we’ve actually got a teaching garden in a space that we use to do that kind of instruction. And that’s something that actually I’d be interested in doing is getting us certified that way, because I’ve already got the master’s degree in educational psychology, I already serve people on the spectrum every day, I understand how to apply the science but having a certification that says, “Yes, Anne knows what she’s doing,” I can see the value in that as well. So that’s really interesting.

Dawn Barclay 16:42 Yeah, I can certainly tell you who to speak to, because not only does IBCCES do it, sorry, I’m tripping over myself …

Anne Zachry 16:50 No worries.

Dawn Barclay 16:51 … there are other organizations that are also starting to certify, like the Champion Autism Network, there’s Culture City, there’s Sensory City, just a number of people who are taking up the cause. But of all of them, I believe IBCCES has been around the longest, and they have done the most work for the certifying …

Anne Zachry 17:10 Right.

Dawn Barclay 17:10 … if you go to autismtravel.com, you can download their most recent list their catalogue of different locations. And what I have done is combined a lot of what they’ve done with other autism friendly resorts and attractions. And you have to be very careful whether it’s certified or autism-friendly, because these things always change …

Anne Zachry 17:34 Right.

Dawn Barclay 17:34 Certifications change. In fact, the new catalog just came out in there are some that are not in my book. And that drives me crazy. So I’ll be running the Traveling Different blog that will update my book. That’s the only way I can live with myself.

Anne Zachry 17:50 I totally get it. Yeah, because once it’s printed, you’re like, “Oh!” and then things change.

Dawn Barclay 17:56 “Ahh! I don’t have that one.” But what’s also important is, and I mentioned that several times in the book is if you see something that says “autism-friendly,” you have to do your due diligence. You have to call them or write to them and find out exactly what that means. What is their training entail? What have they actually done? Because it means different things to different suppliers, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be right for you. And also then you might be autism-friendly on the weekend, or on certain days in the month. That doesn’t mean that they’re always gonna have like autism-friendly days or low-sensory days at a museum every day.

Anne Zachry 18:33 Right.

Dawn Barclay 18:34 It might be one Saturday, a month. You have to be careful.

Anne Zachry 18:36 Right. No. And I know that in the greater Los Angeles area, and that the museums and the different aquariums and things that they’ll have those types of events, but you’re right, it’s scheduled. And it’s only like once a quarter or once … Yeah, so you have to, it’s not like they’re just going to accommodate you like that on the fly necessarily. So …

Dawn Barclay 18:37 Right, you have to make sure that it’s going to happen while you’re there. What I’ve also done in the book that I think it was very important I thought for me is I think most people with children on the spectrum know that they can obsess about a specific topic for up to 16 hours a day. It’s their life.

Anne Zachry 19:13 Yep.

Dawn Barclay 19:13 So what I’ve included is a whole list of museums for special interests that are not necessarily autism-friendly, but they’re going to be autism-friendly for your child because your child is going to be so thrilled to be there, that it might help overcome other obstacles …

Anne Zachry 19:29 Yeah.

Dawn Barclay 19:29 … like flourescent lighting or other sensory issues because I think there’ll be so excited that here … like I talked about one child that was … I don’t know if they were in Montana or somewhere in that area … and there was a mustard Museum, and the kid was crazy about mustard and only talks about his how his parents took him to this museum. So museums all over the country. So say you happen to be going to Cleveland and your child is interested in something you know some oddball …

Anne Zachry 19:58 Yeah, area of interest. Yeah.

Dawn Barclay 20:01 … and that would turn the whole business trip into a really memorable trip for your child because you engaged in their interests. And the trip has to be child-centric. And once you get, you know, that idea that we’re going to build it around the child, I think everything starts to fall into place. So I do include a very large chapter about that, as well as ways to find other museums.

Anne Zachry 20:23 That is so cool, this is really interesting, I’m really looking forward to seeing the book when it comes out. Thank you so so much for tackling this, because you’re right, this is … this has been an area sore need for a long time. And you do have to have that blended knowledge of the travel industry and be a travel insider to be able to speak to what all these different places can do and what your options are, and how you go about asking for those kinds of things. But you have to understand what the needs are in the first place to know that you need to ask, and so, you know, you’re in this nexus between the travel industry and the disability community, you know, making those connections between where the needs of one overlap with the abilities of the other to serve. And …

Dawn Barclay 21:11 Well, and it does take a village right?

Anne Zachry 21:11 So, but you know, it also takes somebody to be that person who ties it all together and, you know, puts it down in writing for everybody to use in the, you know, your role is very significant in that because even though all of these people may have possessed all of this disparate knowledge, it needed to be distilled down into something that the lay public could access and make use of, and that’s where you basically act as a scribe and made that happen. So I think that that’s a gift to be able to take what you already know, and connect with the … with people who are going through these unique circumstances, and be able to create a tool like this. So this was really exciting stuff. Thank you so much for doing the work.

Dawn Barclay 21:11 And I thank goodness for the people who contributed to this book, because this isn’t my story, this is the culmination of over 100 interviews with parents, with certified autism travel professionals, with health professionals like Tony Atwood and Dr. Ellen Lippmann, and different organizations, and different advocates and allies, and all of them taught me so much. And that’s what … I couldn’t have written the book without them.

Anne Zachry 21:39 Thank you.

Dawn Barclay 21:39 I learned so much. I mean, I would have never known that there were therapeutic aspects to diving vacations, or to golf vacations, or to skiing, and there’s so much out there for this population now, because everybody is trying to be so much more inclusive than they were before.

Anne Zachry 22:35 Right.

Dawn Barclay 22:35 So it’s just fascinating that you can go to a dude ranch, and there are ones that will cater to your child, or you can go to rent a house boat, we should really know the safety measures that are involved in that or if you want to rent a yacht, because, you know, if you rent a private boat, you certainly have enough room to bring along friends or family that can help take care of the child. So it’s not only on the parents.

Anne Zachry 23:01 Right, no that’s a really good point, too.

Dawn Barclay 23:04 … all kind of gels together.

Anne Zachry 23:06 That’s really interesting. Now, I will say that a lot of our families are not going to be renting yachts anytime soon. I mean, a lot of folks, you know, what isn’t appreciated very often is the added expense that comes along with parenting a child with special needs, and that, you know, even a middle class family can find themselves struggling just because of those added expenses. So I think that the … you also, you know, talking about these other options, and that where you start small at a more local level, still builds the skills and still gives them that exposure, even if you know, we’re not going to go to Europe this summer, but we’re you know, maybe we’re gonna go, you know, we’re going to drive for six hours and go stay with aunts and uncles in another part of the state, you know, and, and so whatever the scale of it is, really, it comes down to the experience for the child and the predictability of it. And having your ducks in a row in terms of, like you said, planning it and making a child-centric plan about how you’re going to handle your trips, which I think is really smart. I mean, it’s not about saying that any one person is more important than everybody else; it’s just saying that this person’s needs are going to be the most demanding ones we need to accommodate, and at minimum, we need to make sure we take care of x, y and z. And then we can take care of everything else around that and you know, you get those those the hardest things you’re going to have to accommodate out of the way and then everything else is easy going forward. So …

Dawn Barclay 24:32 Right, and I agree with you, not everybody can afford a yacht. I certainly can’t. I do spend a lot of time talking about car travel, bus travel. I talked about how the Autism on the Seas Company has a scholarship or a grant for people who can’t afford to sail on their own …

Anne Zachry 24:51 Right on!

Dawn Barclay 24:51 … if they want to take advantage of an autism cruise. I do talk about how to handle restaurants and how to do camping, so I do include all that information and I’d like to think that this book can help people from, you know …

Anne Zachry 25:05 From across …yeah, across the socio-economic spectrum.

Dawn Barclay 25:08 Yes.

Anne Zachry 25:08 Yeah, because you were talking about camping and things like that. And I’m thinking to like, even if you do make it to Europe, maybe you’re not going to rent a car, you’re going to be using public transportation.

Dawn Barclay 25:17 Right.

Anne Zachry 25:18 And you know, and you’re gonna be using a Europass, or whatever. And so, yeah, so there’s a lot of things that have to be factored in. And everybody’s situation is unique. And yet there’s these things in common that, you know, these unifying factors that if you just attend to these details, then all of the things that are unique, will still be manageable. So …

Dawn Barclay 25:39 And also, like, how to keep safe, how to make sure you don’t lose your child, and safety measures to take. All information like that. That’s so important to have.

Anne Zachry 25:47 That’s so huge. Absolutely. My goodness! Well, this was just a very enlightening conversation. I really appreciate you sharing all of this with me. I’m looking forward to sharing your information with everybody and hearing what they have to say about it.

Dawn Barclay 26:01 Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you so much.

Anne Zachry 26:03 You’re so welcome.

Anne Zachry 26:04 Thank you for listening to the podcast version of interview of Dawn Barclay, author of Traveling Different: Vacation Strategies for Parents of the Anxious, the Inflexible and the Neurodiverse. KPS4Parents reminds its listeners that knowledge powers solutions for parents and all eligible children, regardless of disability, are entitled to a free and appropriate public education. If you’re a parent, education professional, or concerned taxpayer, and have questions or comments about special education related matters, please email us at info@kps4parents.org or post a comment to our blog that’s info at “K” as in “knowledge,” “p” as in “powers,” “S” as in “solutions,” the number “4,” “parents,” P-A-R-E-N-T-S dot O-R-G. We hope you found our information useful and look forward to bringing more useful information to you. Subscribe to our feed to make sure that you receive the latest information from Making Special Education Actually Work, an online publication of KPS4Parents. Find us online at KPS4Parents.org. KPS4Parents is a nonprofit lay advocacy organization. The information provided by KPS4Parents in Making Special Education Actually Work is based on the professional experiences and opinions of KPS4Parents’ lay advocates and should not be construed as formal legal advice. If you require formal legal advice, please seek the counsel of a qualified attorney. All the content here is copyrighted by KPS4Parents which reserves all rights.

Using ABA Principles to Navigate the IEP Process

Photo credit: Joe Loong

One of the things I’ve been trying to get across to people for years is the understanding that Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) is a science, not a special education service, much less a service specifically for students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). The confusion arises from the fact that instructional strategies and behavioral interventions based on the principles of ABA, which work with all learners, just so happen to also work for students with ASDs and often it’s the only approach that does.

As such, the demand for ABA-based programs for students with ASDs, and the peer-reviewed research around its efficacy with this particular population, has resulted in confusion among the lay public as to what ABA actually is. Because so many people in public education and the families that rely on it only see ABA used with respect to ASDs, they think that’s all it’s for, and this is a gross failure on the part of the professionals who know otherwise to set things straight.

This is why I’ve been trying to get this point across for so long. Knowledge powers solutions for parents, which is the whole reason our organization exists. The absence of relevant knowledge on behalf of any of the stakeholders in the IEP process can prevent students with disabilities from getting the kinds of help they actually need, so a failure to appreciate that ABA applies to anyone or anything that behaves can have dire consequences for students who would benefit from ABA-based interventions, even if they have conditions other than ASDs that create these needs.

That’s a whole conversation unto itself, but that’s not the focus of this post. Because ABA applies to anyone and anything that behaves, it therefore applies to all the members of a student’s IEP team. For parents, the science of ABA can be not only constructive with respect to developing an appropriate IEP for their children, but also in navigating the behaviors of the other IEP team members during IEP meetings and related exchanges with public education agency personnel, which is what I’m focusing on in this post.

To be clear, ABA is not a method or strategy. It is a way of describing behaviors according to how they naturally occur. When it is used to make something happen, it’s all about how to interact with others in a way that promotes the behaviors we want to see from them. Used ethically in a team context, it keeps conversations productive and collaborative. However, the proverbial snake oil salesman “selling ice cubes to Eskimos” abuses ABA as part of a con to manipulate people’s behaviors for personal gain at other people’s expense.

The thing to understand is that ABA is a reality-based approach to understanding what is going on and planning what to do about it. It isn’t an invention; it’s simply a tool that measures what already is. That data can then be used to change how things are. So, it’s not like I can give you a checklist of things to do, whether you understand them or not, and you’re off and running. You need to understand the underlying science, which I’m going to grossly oversimplify here to make the concepts as digestible as possible.

Before I launch into what ABA is, I first have to back up and explain the three key tenets of science. Science relies on:

  • Determinism – an understanding that there is a logical, evidence-based explanation for everything in existence.
  • Empiricism – an understanding that every evidence-based explanation can be described in quantifiable terms using fixed increments of measure.
  • Parsimony – the understanding that the simplest explanation that fits the measured evidence is the correct explanation.

That’s not an ABA-specific thing. That’s how all science works, and ABA is a science.

Like a financial audit, science renders reality down into measurable bits that can be analyzed for black-and-white, yes/no answers, regardless of what is being discussed. There is a reason that “accounting” and “accountability” share a common root word. Financial audits examine accounting records for accuracy because those records are supposed to account for where money has gone or will go. For this reason, accounting is actually a science.

All other forms of science account for things the same way, measuring what is according to fixed increments of measure and giving us an accounting of what is really going on. Such is the case with ABA.

The increase of neo-fascism in America, in which science is frequently denied, is really a rejection of accountability and/or a significant detachment from reality consistent with mental illness. It’s about skewing numbers (like the 45th President attempting to offload COVID-infected cruise ship passengers at the beginning of the pandemic onto Guantánamo Bay so as to prevent the numbers of infection cases in the United States from going up) or otherwise pretending the numbers are untrue (like “The Big Lie” told by the 45th President regarding the vote count in the 2020 Presidential election), so as to avoid being held accountable.

Science is all about explaining reality using numbers, which requires the application of mathematics. There’s only one right answer to a math calculation. It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who grasp this concept when it comes to money, but not with anything else.

These are generally the kinds of people who own profitable businesses and use their money to hire private jets to fly to Washington, DC, so they can attempt to violently overthrow our government because they fear accountability and equate any perceived loss of privilege or unfair advantage with oppression. Oppressed people can’t afford private jets, in case you were wondering. These are also the kinds of people who end up in handcuffs over cooking their companies’ books, once the accountability finally catches up with them.

When you understand science as a form of accounting for anything that exists in numerical terms, just as with money, it isn’t possible to take it as an affront to your belief system, unless you believe things – or are trying to convince other people to believe things – that are not true. There is no rule that says we have to like the truth.

An intact person will acknowledge an undesired truth and deal with it. A person engaging in disordered thought will attempt to argue against it and assert beliefs unsupported by evidence as fact, thereby confusing opinion with fact and arguing against what they don’t want to be true as though it really isn’t.

As a parent going into the IEP process, you need to stick to the facts. An IEP is all about measurable annual goals that describe what your child is supposed to be taught and how to measure the degree to which your child learns from that instruction. Services are determined on what is necessary to achieve the degree of success targeted by the goals and placement is determined according to what setting(s) are the least segregated from the general education setting in which the services can be delivered such that the goals are met. The entire process hinges on the appropriate application of the relevant sciences.

As a parent, know going into the IEP process that it is scientifically driven and, therefore, relies on measurable facts to inform your child’s educational planning, plus it must do so according to the rule of law. The whole system was designed with the education agency’s accountability to the individual student and the student’s family in mind, which is why it boggles my mind every time I encounter anything but that in the IEP process.

Specifically with respect to using ABA to navigate the behaviors of the other team members as a parent attempting to exercise your federally protected right to meaningful participation in the IEP process, there are some ABA-specific concepts you first need to understand. The first concept is that of ABC data collection and the second concept is that of reinforcement.

ABC data collection is a process used to determine the function(s) of a specific behavior. The “A” stands for “antecedent,” the “B” stands for “behavior,” and the “C” stands for “consequence.” Each of these has a specific operational definition in ABA, and any deviation from their respective definitions means whoever is taking the data is not actually practicing ABA.

An antecedent in ABA is whatever happened right before the behavior that triggered it. When you’re talking about students, the presentation of a task demand can be the antecedent to a challenging behavior being addressed by an IEP, for example. When you’re talking about corrupt and/or incompetent public agency officials in an IEP meeting, the presentation of a parent request could be the antecedent to some kind of challenging behavior displayed by educational agency personnel, as another example.

The behavior in the ABC data collection process is the actual observable behavior being addressed. In the example involving a student just given, let’s say the challenging student behavior upon the presentation of a task demand involving a worksheet, is verbal aggression while tearing up the worksheet. In the example of a difficult IEP team member, let’s say the challenging behavior upon the presentation of a parent request is a bunch of hyperbolic excuse-making and changing the subject.

The consequence in ABA data collection is the immediate outcome produced by the behavior, specifically the pay-off the individual gets by engaging in it. This is an important distinction because it is often inaccurately reported in school-based behavior assessments, where the previous century of relying on a punishment model of behavioral intervention regards “consequence” as something meted out by staff. That is wholly inaccurate. Anything the staff does in response to the behavior, whether it works or not, is a “reactive strategy,” not a “consequence” within the meaning of ABA.

The point of identifying the actual consequence achieved by engaging in the behavior is to determine the function served by the behavior for the individual engaging in it. Once the function of the behavior is understood, you can choose how you want to respond to it in a constructive way. When you don’t know the actual function of someone else’s behavior, you can respond to it in a way that hurts more than helps the situation. Identifying the function of an inappropriate behavior is entirely necessary before an evidence-based approach can be developed to address it.

So, using the examples I just gave, let’s say that the consequence of the student engaging in verbal aggression and tearing up the worksheet upon the task demand being presented is to escape/avoid the task demand. With respect to an IEP team member engaging in hyperbolic excuse-making and changing the subject when a parent makes a request, the function of the behavior is to escape/avoid addressing, much less honoring, the parent’s request.

In both of these examples, the function of each of the hypothetical behaviors described were both escape/avoidance, but this is not the only function a behavior can serve. Behaviors happen for only one of two reasons: to get something or get away from something.

As such, behaviors can be reduced to a one or a zero, depending on whether its function was to get something (1) or escape something (0). Even the most complex behaviors can thus be reduced down to simple binary code as the most parsimonious way to describe what is happening.

In ABA, the functions of a behavior are typically described as access/attainment, escape/avoidance, and automatic. Automatic reinforcement speaks to behaviors that address internal drive states, such as physical wellness and emotionality, but even those are based on access/attainment or escape/avoidance. Sensory-seeking and/or sensory-avoidant behaviors are based on automatic reinforcement for someone with sensory processing issues based on their unique neurology, for example.

That leads us to the second key concept of ABA that you need to understand, which is that of reinforcement. A reinforcer is anything that increases the likelihood of an individual engaging in a specific behavior in response to a specific antecedent. If the consequence of the behavior is reinforcing, the individual will continue to engage in it whenever that specific antecedent is presented in order to achieve the reinforcer.

For example, if you get hungry (antecedent) and go put money in a vending machine and push the right buttons (behavior), you will get food (consequence). The function of the behavior is access/attainment of food to satisfy your hunger. It’s pretty simple.

Reinforcement can be positive or negative, but these are not judgments of “good” or “bad.” Just as with magnets, the poles of the Earth, and batteries, the terms “positive” and “negative” have specific meanings within ABA that are also frequently misunderstood in special education behavioral interventions. In reality, when it comes to ABA, “positive” means “to present” and “negative” means “to withdraw.”

Positive reinforcement, therefore, is the presentation of something that is likely to reinforce a specific behavior. Negative reinforcement is the removal of something unwanted in order to reinforce a particular behavior. The aforementioned vending machine scenario gives an example of positive reinforcement because food is presented in response to the behavior of putting money into the vending machine and pushing its buttons. Both forms of reinforcement were best explained scientifically back in the early days of behaviorism by B.F. Skinner using what came to be referred to as a “Skinner Box.”

In Skinner’s positive reinforcement experiments, rats in a cage were taught to pull a lever in order to access food pellets. At first, pulling on the lever was accidental, but as soon as food came out, the rats quickly learned that engaging in the behavior of pulling the lever resulted in the presentation of a food pellet. The presentation of the food pellet reinforced the pulling of the lever.

In Skinner’s negative reinforcement experiments, rats in a cage with an electrified floor that delivered mild shocks to their feet learned to pull a lever in order to turn off the electrification of the floor. Again, at first, pulling the lever was accidental, but as soon as their feet were no longer getting zapped, the rats quickly learned that engaging in the behavior of pulling the lever resulted in the termination of discomfort caused by the electrified floor of the cage. The removal of the electrification reinforced the pulling of the lever.

In both cases, the behavior of pulling the lever was reinforced. It’s just that one form of reinforcement provided access to something preferred and the other removed something aversive. Again, this can all be reduced to getting something (1) or getting away from something (0).

In the IEP process, you’re either getting what you want for your child or you are not. The public education agency personnel are either satisfying their agency’s agenda or they are not. The whole situation is riddled with ones and zeros depending on what you are talking about and who is involved.

Again, this is all a gross over-simplification of these basic ABA concepts. There are other considerations that have to be taken into account, such as setting events, otherwise known as Motivating Operations (MOs). MOs increase the likelihood of a specific antecedent triggering a specific behavior.

In our previous example regarding the student becoming verbally aggressive and tearing up a worksheet upon the task demand being presented, it could be the case that the student normally complied with task demands but, that particular day, the student had a stomach ache and didn’t have the concentration and stamina to engage in the task when it was presented. As such, the antecedent was still the presentation of a task demand, but that antecedent occurred in the presence of the MO of a stomach ache, and the consequence was still to escape/avoid the task demand.

Similarly, in our example previously regarding education agency personnel engaging in hyperbolic excuse-making and changing the subject in response to a parent request for something, it could be the case that said personnel would have normally agreed to honor the parent’s request, but that morning there had been an agency budget meeting in which personnel were told they would be subject to disciplinary action from the agency if they committed the agency to services for students that cost more than a certain amount, which is illegal but nonetheless happens all the time. As such, the antecedent was still the parent request, but it occurred in the presence of the MO of a threat of disciplinary action against agency personnel for committing the agency to costs it didn’t want to have to bear, and the consequence was still to escape/avoid honoring the parent’s request.

Sometimes you don’t know what all the MOs are because the education agency personnel won’t make them known to you. In many instances, the only way you know something is wrong is because the presentation of an antecedent results in a behavior that produces a consequence that doesn’t fit what should be happening. In that case, you know something is wrong because the behavior doesn’t fit the situation, at which point you have to ask yourself, “What is the function of this behavior?” It’s pretty obvious that any “no” response you receive is an escape/avoidance behavior; it’s just sometimes hard to know whether what is being avoided is cost, accountability, or both.

For example, data collection practices in special education throughout the country are generally pretty unscientific and shoddy in spite of a federal mandate that special education be delivered according to the peer-reviewed research, which is all scientific, according to measurable annual goals. As black-and-white as the process is supposed to be, it often isn’t because school personnel 1) have no idea how to do it correctly, and/or 2) are attempting to avoid accountability.

In most cases, it’s been my observation that the initial inappropriate behaviors are a consequence of incompetence, which creates a need to pursue accountability, at which point they engage in cover-ups to try to avoid getting into trouble for the errors of their ineptitude. You have to assume as a parent going in that not everybody on your IEP team knows everything they should and that they may respond unethically when they get called out on their errors. In other situations, public education agency personnel are just grifting the system for a government paycheck at taxpayer expense from the outset and see students as a means to their own financial ends, engaging in cover-ups when their self-serving behaviors become exposed.

As a parent going into the IEP process, you have to be a shrewd negotiator. If you don’t understand the functions of the behaviors of the other IEP team members, you are at risk of being robbed blind by unethical public servants and/or otherwise getting a poorly developed IEP from inept public servants.

It’s not on you to know all of the science and law that applies to your child’s situation, but if you can develop your skills at reading the behaviors of the other IEP team members, you can often figure out whether they are acting according to your child’s actual needs or not. At that point, how you respond becomes the next hurdle to clear.

Every situation requires its own analysis and there is no way I can give you a one-size-fits-all solution, here. What I can tell you to do is pay attention, try to get a sense of the function of someone’s inappropriate behavior as best as possible, and offer reinforcers in order to achieve the behaviors you want to see.

For example, send a thank-you card to the school psychologist who actually threw down on an excellent report and you will positively reinforce legally compliant behavior. Or, withdraw a compliance complaint if the agency remedies the problem that compelled you to file it and you will negatively reinforce legally compliant behavior. They can earn a food pellet or stop their feet from getting zapped, metaphorically speaking, but, either way, they’re going to have to pull the lever. If you can keep these concepts straight, you will be in a much better position to effectively participate in the IEP process.

Example of a Request for a Better IEP Offer During the COVID-19 School Closures

Photo Credit: Mike Cohen

I know that everyone in special education is scrambling to try and make things work during these unprecedented times, but a lot of parents and advocates are struggling to find the language necessary to move things in the right direction and keep entire IEP teams from coming apart at the seams. Our kids who require expert behavioral interventions appear to be losing the most ground.

I want to speak to the families and advocates working with students who have behavioral needs by sharing the language of a communication that I recently had to submit on behalf of one of our families. It’s altered, of course, to protect the identity of the student, but I think a lot of parents and advocates may be able to recycle this language to fit their own situations.

Because so many families are in this same boat without an oar, we all need to share resources with each other so that we can be effective IEP team members. It shouldn’t be on us to keep school district people from spinning out, but humans are humans regardless of who employs them and, particularly if you’re a parent dealing with this on behalf of your kid, it in the best interests of your child to be the anchor that keeps the rest of the IEP team from drifting off course.

Just to put things into perspective, this student is in a Special Day Class (SDC) with embedded mental health and behavioral supports, including a Positive Behavioral Intervention Plan (PBIP) in his IEP that identifies his target behaviors as: Refusing to follow staff directions by either not responding, putting his head down, making statements such as “this is stupid,” “why do I have to do this?” or engaging in a different activity. Not surprisingly, this is what he is now doing at home during his school closure instead of participating in the online instruction.

Below is a copy of the email exchange that includes the language you can hopefully repurpose if you are having to argue similar points on behalf of your own children or clients. The first bit is an email that the parent and I received from the student’s special education teacher/case manager. The second bit is the reply I sent, which has now been forwarded to the district’s main office and we’re awaiting Prior Written Notice (PWN).

For more information about PWN, please see the ad-free early release of our informative Quick Fix video on Patreon by clicking here. This video will be released on YouTube for free, but with ads, in a couple of weeks and run for 30 days on YouTube before retiring to our Quick Fix Video Archive on Patreon, but for the $2.99 monthly pledge to our Quick Fix Video Archive on Patreon, you have immediate and indefinite ad-free access to that information plus all of our other Quick Fix Videos.

Because we’ve already published content on PWN, I’m not going to belabor it, here. I’m just going to get right into these emails and the language I hope at least some of you are able to repurpose and tweak to your own situations.


So, here is the email that I and the parent received:

Good morning,

I hope ALL is well and you guys are staying safe and well.

I was hoping you could help me with [Student’s] participation in our weekly Google Meets. He declined the meeting again for tomorrow  

I really need to speak with him at least once a week.

Thank you VERY much for your help.

Be Well,
[Case Manager]


Now, here is what I wrote in response:

[Case Manager],

We would appreciate the District’s help with this, as well.  Behavior modification is supposed to be embedded in [Student’s] specialized instruction as part of his placement, but that component is not being implemented in the home and no one who lives there is specifically trained, credentialed, or certified in the necessary expert disciplines.  The District is responsible for FAPE, even now.  The fact that [Student] is not receiving the behavioral interventions necessary to afford him equal access to education as that given to his peers without disabilities is directly reflected by his refusal behaviors in the absence of his social/emotional and behavioral supports from his SDC.

The parent is not in any position to implement an expert level of positive behavioral interventions to facilitate [Student’s] participation on her own.  She is relying on the public agency funded by the taxpayers to deliver these interventions under a federal mandate to provide him with a FAPE, that being the District, to come up with these solutions.  The parent requests an offer of appropriate behavioral interventions as part of a prospective offer of FAPE that addresses these immediate concerns or an offer of compensatory services that will be provided to remediate this behavioral and academic regression once school starts back in the Fall and the campuses are re-opened.

We understand that these are difficult times, but regardless of the difficulties, [Student] still has a legal right to a FAPE and he isn’t getting it.  You asking his mother for help to facilitate his compliance with online learning given his unique circumstances inclines us to worry that the District doesn’t know what to do and is grasping at straws.  Any IEP team member that actually understands the complexity of [Student’s] needs would already know that [Student] requires supports beyond what an average lay person would know to provide.

While [Student’s] mother absolutely wants to be part of the solution, she cannot be expected to deliver any kind of home instruction on par with what [Student] was previously receiving in the SDC, which was a step down in restrictiveness from his previous placement, and in which he had been participating for only a few months before the campuses all shut down.  There is an overtly apparent need for an increased level of support to [Student] in the immediate present to avert significant behavioral and academic regression during the shut-down.  

The lack of an appropriate response from the District right now will create a significant compensatory education claim that [Student’s] family will have to pursue in order to make him as whole as possible.  We’re not looking for a lawsuit, but if that is the only procedural mechanism the family has left to protect [Student], I will refer them to a qualified attorney.  It is the District’s burden to offer and render a FAPE.  We remain ready to collaborate with the rest of the IEP team to come up with an appropriate solution, here, and avoid the need to involve attorneys.  We would much rather sort this out than have to litigate.  We want to see [Student] appropriately served as quickly as possible.

[Student’s] family will participate in IEP implementation during the shut-down to the degree they are able, with the full understanding that they do not have the training, experience, or professional expertise needed to competently support [Student] behaviorally and academically at home on their own.  If his mother tells you that something that needs to be done is something they cannot do, they will expect the District to propose viable solutions to each such task.  

[Student] continues to require the expert services from which he was previously benefitting in the SDC and the effects of the absence of those expert services is apparent to all of us.  We understand that these difficult times call for out-of-the-box thinking.  So long as there is a viable plan for how to deal with this situation in place, whether it’s through the immediate increase and/or modification of how current IEP services are provided, a plan for compensatory services upon the campus reopening, or a hybrid combination of these two options, the family can trust that everything will come out okay in the end, but we can’t leave things so open-ended.  That lack of predictability is part of what is causing [Student] to experience increased school-related anxiety and avoidance behaviors.  

The District has a legal obligation to make a firm offer of FAPE based on [Student’s] present levels of performance in the immediate moment, as well as plan ahead for the next 12 months via the IEP process.  We’re not asking for anything other than what the regulations already promise and we’re willing to be creative about how we achieve that as an IEP team given the unique circumstances.  We await the District’s PWN in response to the request made herein.

Kindest regards,
Anne M. Zachry, M.A. Ed. Psych.


So, there you have it. What I see in all of this is a case manager who hasn’t been given the tools and authority to do what needs to be done. I’m not frustrated with the case manager. I feel bad for him because he’s being expected to somehow pull this off without the support of his employer.

I wish I had the PWN to include, here, because I think it would be equally informative. That may become a future post topic. In the meantime, if you think you can recycle this language to create your own request letter to address similar issues with your own children or clients, please feel free. It isn’t the work product of an attorney and I’m not putting this out there as formal legal advice. It’s just a tool that might be useful to some people, but if it helps even one family, it’s worth sharing.

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports in Special Education

In memory of Cedric Napoleon

I wasn’t going to write on this topic quite yet, but I’m working on a case right now that has me upset over public agency mismanagement and misconduct that has resulted in the physical abuse of our nonverbal student with severe special needs and God only knows how many other students within this public education agency. It reminded me of a lot of things, including our organization’s founding and the protective purpose KPS4Parents has always served as student and family advocates.

I maintain my list of topics to write about as draft posts on the backend of our site, sometimes just as a title, sometimes with a brief description, as the ideas come to me and, when I go to write, I have them more or less organized in my head in the order I want to write them. But, sometimes, like now, something happens that makes one of the topics leap up to the top of the list.

I am currently providing paralegal support to an attorney on a case in which our student has gone for years without behavioral interventions in her IEPs after previous years of successfully benefitting from such IEP interventions. She has regressed to the point where she was behaviorally 10 years ago, before receiving any appropriate behavioral interventions at all.

The educational neglect in this case rises to the level of physical abuse. The school district’s bumbling ineptitude at the expense of our student’s welfare has been nothing short of galling. Our student is now sitting safely at home waiting for her case to be either adjudicated or settled but without the benefit of any instruction or related services until it’s resolved.

Which takes me back to the founding of KPS4Parents and the event that was the last straw that compelled our founder, Nyanza Cook, to start KPS4Parents. In 2002, I was a lay advocate in private practice helping families of students with special needs, and Nyanza hired me to help her with her step-son’s case, which is a story unto itself for another day. It’s how we met and these were the early days. It was the context we were in at the time.

Nyanza hails from Killeen, Texas near Fort Hood, the largest U.S. Army base in the continental United States. While diversity has been tolerated, if not embraced, within the U.S. military in many instances, outside of the military base in the rural areas of Texas, diversity is not so much appreciated. Killeen Independent School District (KISD) has historically operated separate schools for students with “behavioral problems,” most of whom have been African-American or Latino. The quality of special education in KISD has been historically abysmal, particularly for students of color, which is how it’s misconduct led to our organization’s founding.

In 2002, a young man named Cedric Napoleon was attending a Special Day Class (SDC) at one of KISD’s special schools for students with “behavioral problems.” Cedric was a foster child living with his foster mother, Toni Price. He had experienced severe trauma in early childhood, including deprivation of food for days that led to a food hoarding behavior and other behavioral challenges. He was in special education under the Emotional Disturbance (ED) category and his SDC was supposed to be configured specifically for students with ED issues.

Also in the classroom at the time was Nyanza’s nephew. On one fateful day in March 2002, Cedric was suffocated to death by his classroom teacher during a prone restraint. He was not being violent towards others, trying to run out of the classroom, or hurting himself when she restrained him. He was being non-compliant and she took it as an affront to her authority. She pinned him face down on the floor out of hostile rage and when he said, “I can’t breathe,” she replied, “If you can speak, you can breathe.” He expired shortly thereafter as Nyanza’s nephew and his classmates watched on in horror.

That night, Nyanza got a hysterical phone call from family members gathered at her parents’ house in Killeen. They knew she was talking about starting a special education advocacy organization and had been advocating for her step-son in California. They put her nephew on the phone with her and all he could say in a dazed voice was, “They killed him, Auntie. They killed him.” He was terrified to return to school after that, and never did. His life has been one of despair and tragedy ever since.

The day Nyanza’s nephew witnessed Cedric’s murder in his classroom by his teacher, he was already there because he had his own ED issues. To add the trauma of witnessing Cedric’s murder to his own pre-existing special education needs, in the place that was supposed to help him overcome his pre-existing special education needs and at the hands of the person who was supposed to help him, was just too much.

More than one life was destroyed that day. Cedric’s classmates witnessed his murder in that ED SDC and were affected for life in ways that could only lead to more suffering for them. The District’s students most vulnerable to trauma were severely traumatized by one of the most grotesque abuses of their trust possible. They witnessed their teacher kill a classmate for daring to defy her authority.

Nyanza called me that night as soon as she got off the phone with her family and told me what they had told her. She and I agreed that when teachers were murdering our babies in plain sight of our other babies (we have an it-takes-a-village mentality, which makes all babies our babies), we couldn’t stand idly by. The death of Cedric Napoleon was the final straw that compelled Nyanza to go through with starting our organization, she asked for my help, I said “Yes!” without hesitation, and we had our paperwork in order by June of 2003.

In Cedric’s case, to make matters worse, once his life had ended, so had his foster mother’s legal authority to act on his behalf as a parent. She could not pursue justice for him because she lacked the legal authority and the foster care system did little to nothing about it. Cedric’s killer was never tried for murder. She was never subject to any disciplinary action by the public education system in Texas.

On May 19, 2009, Toni Price finally got her chance to do something about what had happened to Cedric. The Education and Labor Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives was being presented with a report of the findings of an investigation the Committee had previously ordered to have done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) regarding the use of seclusion and restraints in public schools. There had been a fairly recent similar study conducted of private schools that produced shocking and horrifying disclosures as bad as Cedric’s or worse, and the Committee had wanted to know if these problems were also pervasive in our nation’s public schools.

The GAO report started circulating among those in my professional circle online shortly after the hearings and ultimately found its way to me. I remember reading through it and getting to the section describing what happened to Cedric and going, “Wait a minute. I’ve heard this story before … OMG! This is the kid from Nyanza’s nephew’s class!” I immediately forwarded the report to Nyanza and either called or texted her to follow up. At some point we ended up on the phone and she was flabbergasted to see Cedric’s story spelled out in the report. It was the same student she had told me about back in 2002.

In the course of conducting its investigation, out of all of the cases of problems with seclusions and restraints that GAO examined, Cedric’s stood out as particularly horrifying, in no small part due to the fact that his killer had never faced any serious consequences for killing him at the time of the investigation. The investigators searched for this teacher when their investigation revealed that she had faced no consequences and, shortly before the date of their presentation to the Committee, found that she had relocated to Virginia and was running an SDC on a public school campus that was only a 45-minute drive away from where the Committee was convening to hear the presentation of their report.

There was no effort to conceal the outrage that several Committee members expressed over the fact that this woman had not only killed an ED student in the ED SDC where she was supposed to be helping him get better, but that she faced no consequences and was able to get credentialed in at least one other state because the fact that she had killed a student didn’t follow her on her record. They openly referred to Cedric’s death as a murder.

The Committee’s disgust is exposed during the hearing (click here for video of the full 2-hour hearing), and I share that disgust. It is disgusting; disgust is the only healthy response to what this woman did. Rep. Rob Andrews (1:22:22 – 1:28:16 of the hearing video), Rep. Lynn Woolsey (1:53:02 – 1:54:18 of the hearing video), and Rep. George Miller, Committee Chair (1:55:21 – 1:57:44 of the hearing video) had particularly candid things to say and there was bipartisan heartsickness over the whole thing.

The only reason Cedric’s killer was found was because of the GAO’s investigation. Had it not conducted it, a known killer would have been allowed to remain as a fox in a henhouse, circulating among the same types of individuals upon whom she had preyed before. Their parents had no idea they were sending their vulnerable children off to a child killer each school day. Even now, almost 11 years later, the thought still makes me shudder with horror.

The Committee’s take on the situation was influenced in no small part by the testimony of various witnesses produced by the investigators in support of its findings. Among those asked to testify was Toni Price, Cedric’s foster mother. Her testimony was compelling; even now, it still makes me cry.

Toni argued for a national, if not global, directory of teachers found guilty of child abuse for education agencies to use for screening teaching applicants, and she did so from the most informed position possible. She spoke as the primary caregiver of a child with mental health needs killed by the person entrusted to address them every day at school, but with no legal recourse to do anything about it, leaving advocating for that child and protecting others like him to no one. Only the fluke of a Congressional investigation at the right time on the right topic exposed what happened, and Toni took the opportunity to say what needed to be said.

Which brings me back to the topic of this post and podcast, which is the use of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) in special education. Subsequent to the May 2009 hearing, GAO began gathering additional information and the U.S. Department of Education began promulgating guidance and technical information regarding PBIS. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Education produced the Restraint and Seclusion Resource Document.

In February 2019, after 10 years of collecting data on the use of seclusion and restraints in our public schools, GAO produced another report and another hearing was held during which the last 10 years’ worth of data collected and analyzed were presented to the Committee. Witnesses gave testimony, provided additional evidence, and answered questions. You now can look up the CRDC data for your own school district on the CRDC site.

Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Department of Education announced an initiative to address the inappropriate use of seclusions and restraints in our public schools. Just this last December, four members of the U.S. House of Representatives proposed a bill, HR 5325, referred to as the “Ending Punitive, Unfair, School-based Harm that is Overt and Unresponsive to Trauma Act of 2019” or the “Ending PUSHOUT Act of 2019,” which seems like way too poor of a word choice for a name just to create an acronym, but the body of the bill still nonetheless prohibits seclusions and restraints and includes other regulations pertaining to behavioral interventions.

HR 5325 is still a bill pending before the Education and Labor Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. It was introduced just last month, so obviously nothing has happened with it, yet. Congress has been a little busy lately and the last time the Committee tried to pass legislation to address seclusion and restraints in 2009, it passed in the House only to never see the light of day in the Senate. That’s likely to happen again, now, with our current configuration of Congress, but the effort still needs to be made.

What GAO reported in the most recent hearing was that there wasn’t enough data in, yet, regarding the efficacy of Education’s efforts to promulgate PBIS technical information and guidance among the public schools or the degree to which the schools that availed themselves of it found it beneficial. In controlled research situations in which implementation fidelity was maintained, PBIS was proven to work, but how well public schools actually implement it with success in the absence of researcher oversight and fidelity checking remains to be seen.

What seems to be the case, and the whole reason this issue is before the House Education and Labor Committee, again, is that there is an obvious need for federal oversight and regulation, here. There is a lack of consistency from state to state as to how behavioral interventions are to be implemented in schools. Some states have regulations regarding seclusions and restraints in schools and others do not. Even those states that have laws in place don’t provide for adequate enforcement of those laws.

The lack of built-in accountability has made it possible for horrible situations to happen. And, they continue to happen. The only way the public school system is held accountable in situations like these is when individual families take legal action. Hence, the case I’m now working on that has made these issues spring to life for me, once again, much to my deep disappointment.

Educator and support staff training, or a gross lack thereof, more specifically, is often at the heart of these cases. But, so is the lack of teacher accountability and the degree to which educators tend to cover up each other’s tracks, even if it means a child dies in the process.

The fear of talking usually goes to fear of losing their jobs, fear of reprisals from their co-workers, fear of being held accountable for the actions of others, fear of getting in trouble for the same thing for which someone else is getting in trouble because they’ve done it, too, and has to come with a tremendous amount of internal conflict. Only sociopaths could smoothly walk that rocky landscape without being troubled by the experience.

The willingness of school administrators to let something as horrible as student traumatization, physical injury, and/or death by the hands of teaching staff and aides in the learning environment get swept under the rug and hope nobody notices, if not actively seek to conceal it, is repugnant. There is a lack of professional integrity in the public education system that can reach sickening proportions, and these cases are examples.

So, I really don’t have an upbeat ending for this post and podcast. I’m pretty not okay with what I’m still seeing going on with respect to seclusion and restraints in public schools in California, which is supposed to be the most progressive state in the country. It’s particularly bad in rural communities far away from specialists and adequate facilities, particularly when those communities are mostly made up of low-income households.

In some cases, like the one I’m working on now, the student has experienced nothing short of absolute barbarism. It shouldn’t take people like me helping to hold the public education system accountable after the fact. The answer is prevention. In the absence of any guidance in the student’s IEPs as to how to address her behaviors, she was repeatedly secluded and restrained by teachers and aides who didn’t know what else to do.

This was all just up until a few weeks ago, which is why she’s now safely at home but without any instruction or related services until her attorney, in collaboration with me as his paralegal and the experts we’re bringing onto the team, can get this mess cleaned up. It just sickens my heart that after all the years that I’ve been doing this work – 29 years this coming June, mind you – this is where things are still at. In the most progressive state in the Union, we’re still secluding and restraining non-verbal students who are struggling to communicate their wants and needs. It puts bile in the back of my throat.


 

Podcast: Writing IEP Goals for Behavioral Issues

On April 15, 2009, we originally published “Writing IEP Goals for Behavioral Issues”. Throughout this school year, KPS4Parents is recording many of our past text-only articles as podcasts so that busy parents, educators, and interested taxpayers can download them and listen to them at their convenience.

As always, feel free to comment on our content. We appreciate the input of our readers and listeners to bring you the information you seek. You can either comment below or email us at info@kps4parents.org.

Click here to download the podcast “Writing IEP Goals for Behavioral Issues.”

Podcast: Behaviors that Interfere with Learning

On January 19, 2009, we originally published “Behaviors that Interfere with Learning”. Throughout this school year, KPS4Parents is recording many of our past text-only articles as podcasts so that busy parents, educators, and interested taxpayers can download them and listen to them at their convenience.

As always, feel free to comment on our content. We appreciate the input of our readers and listeners to bring you the information you seek. You can either comment below or email us at info@kps4parents.org.

Click here to download the podcast “Behaviors that Interfere with Learning”.

Services that Address IEP Behavior Goals

Once a special education student with behavioral issues receives an appropriate assessment of his/her behavior, and appropriate IEP goals are written to address the student’s behavioral needs, the IEP team has to determine what services and supports are necessary to see those goals achieved.  The types of services and supports a child requires in order to achieve his/her IEP goals can influence placement decisions, which is why placement is the last decision that should be made by the IEP team.

It is necessary to first know what services and supports will be required in order to determine what the Least Restrictive Environment (“LRE”) is for each particular special education student and, as we’ve stated before, the LRE is relative to the unique needs of each individual child.  What is the LRE for one student is not necessarily the LRE for another.  Placement must be in the least restrictive environment necessary in order for the services and supports to be provided such that the goals can be achieved, which varies from student to student.  That means that the selection of services, including the frequency, duration, and times of day they are provided, is a very critical step in the IEP process and it comes into play fairly late in the game.

To recap the process (as described in our prior postings in the “Techically Speaking” category), the IEP process begins with assessment.  The data yielded by the assessment is supposed to inform the IEP team of the student’s Present Levels of Performance (sometimes referred to as “PLOPs”).  Based on what is understood about the student’s Present Levels, the IEP team then must write measurable annual goals that describe in objective, empirical terms what outcomes the IEP is attempting to achieve – what specifically it is trying to teach the student to do.  Once that is known, the next step is the selection of services and supports.

There are a number of tools to address behavioral goals that can be used.  One of the most powerful tools is a Behavior Support Plan (“BSP”) or Positive Behavior Support Plan (“PBSP”).  Once a functional analysis of a student’s behavior has been conducted, the next step is supposed to be the creation of a BSP/PBSP unless?the analysis reveals that the behaviors do not significantly impact the child’s participation in his/her education.

A properly written BSP/PBSP is a thing of gold, but it’s no good to anyone if not everyone implements it the way it is written.  Behavior is a touchy thing.  When you have a child who realizes that the same behavior is met with different outcomes depending on who that child is with, what you often produce is a manipulative child who learns how to push peoples’ buttons.  When behavior is met with the same outcome regardless of who the child is with, the child gets a consistent message about certain behaviors.  For that reason, it is imperative that anyone working with a special education student who exhibits problematic behaviors follow the BSP/PBSP to the letter as best as he/she possibly can.

A BSP/PBSP starts out by describing the problem behavior so people know what they’re looking for. Identifying the function that the behavior serves (i.e. to avoid math problems, to avoid writing, to gain access to more preferred items or activities, etc.) allows people know what need the child is trying to meet and, therefore, the types of responses they should have to the behaviors.  The BSP/PBSP should then describe what responses to give to each type of problematic situation if the behavior manifests, but, more importantly, it should describe what replacement behavior will be taught to the child so that he/she has a more appropriate way of seeing his/her needs met without engaging in the problematic behavior.

It’s not enough to tell a kid to stop doing something.  You have to tell them what is appropriate for them to do instead.  If you’re trying to drive a nail with a banana peel, you’re just going to make a mess.  But, if all somebody does is tell you to stop slinging that useless banana peel at the nail and fails to give you a hammer and show you how to use it, you’re still going to be stuck with a nail that hasn’t been driven.  What you were attempting to accomplish remains unachieved.

Children need to be taught things.  They can’t be expected to somehow magically know things or figure things out as well as more experienced adults.  Children with certain types of disabilities have a harder time picking up what seems obvious to most people, requiring explicit instruction on more basic concepts.  A BSP/PBSP describes what fundamental concepts are being taught, or refers to the behavioral goals which describe what concepts are being targeted, so that the child acquires the reasoning skills necessary to handle situations more successfully.

I’m a fan of Diana Browning Wright’s work. She’s done trainings in California and I have students whom I represent whose PBSPs are written up on Diana’s forms.  They’re very well organized and make total sense.

Another tool that some schools try to use is a “Behavior Contract.”  I’m not a huge fan of these at all.  A “Behavior Contract” is something usually used in general education in which a student makes a written commitment to follow school rules.  It utterly fails to identify what need the student was attempting to meet by engaging in the inappropriate behavior and only speaks to what the child will do; there is nothing that describes what the adult school site personnel will do to assist the student in dealing with whatever is provoking his/her inappropriate behaviors so that they don’t present problems for the student anymore.

Instead, the child is stripped of whatever coping strategies he/she had, even if they were poor ones, and left with nothing he/she can do at all.  This creates a great sense of powerlessness, which can turn on its heel in an instant and lead to more escalated behaviors meant to regain whatever power the child feels he/she has lost.

I’ve seen it happen too many times.  What was meant to stop a problem behavior only served to reinforce it and is particularly horrible to deal with among children with issues involving anxiety, paranoia, and/or Oppositional Defiant Disorder.  Their handicapping conditions magnify, sometimes exponentially, their reactions to having their actual needs ignored and left with no way to see them met, while everyone else is focusing on what they inappropriately did in an effort to see those needs met.

A good BSP/PBSP should also include a description of what consequences and reinforcers should be used to encourage the use of the appropriate replacement behavior and discourage the use of the inappropriate behavior.  By consequences, I do not mean punishment. A consequence is anything that results from an occurrence or event.

In the realm of positive behavioral intervention, a consequence is any outcome that discourages a behavior from reoccurring.  This is often the intent of punishment, but punishment is an artificial consequence that the child may associate with something other than his/her own inappropriate behavior, such as the person who is punishing him/her.

Consequences should fit the behavior and they work best if they are natural, inadvertent outcomes of doing the wrong thing.? In my example above, the natural consequence of trying to drive a nail with a banana skin is a gooey mess and a nail that still hasn’t been driven.  That by itself is enough to discourage me from ever trying to drive a nail with a banana skin again.  It clearly didn’t work.

But, associating consequences with one’s own behavior is actually more subtle and difficult than it sounds.  For children with relatively inexperienced, growing (and, thus, continually changing) minds, it’s even harder.  For children with certain types of special needs, it can often be agonizingly difficult.  The connections have to be taught.  So, the consequences to inappropriate behaviors and reinforcers of appropriate behaviors should be delivered as soon after the behaviors have manifested as possible, particularly when first starting out with a new behavior program.  Over time, the reinforcers can be faded.  The idea is that the use of the appropriate behavior will become intrinsically rewarding because it yields success without drama and the need to artificially reinforce will disappear.

The use of appropriate data collection tools is critical. Data collection should be naturally built into the behavior goals and BSP/PBSP. It’s the only way to track progress and measure the degree to which the replacement behavior is taking over for the problematic behavior. Therefore, data sheets have to be created right away at the beginning so that data collection can begin as soon as the school site personnel start implementing the goals.

Parent training is also a really valuable piece to a successful behavioral intervention program.  Just as it is imperative that the child be met with the same response to his/her behavior by all of the staff working with the child, it is equally important that he/she is met with the same response at home.

I’ve seen some of the best school-based behavior strategies in the world completely unravel because no one thought to explain to the parents how the behaviors were being responded to at school.  The child would go home to a completely different set of expectations and responses to problematic behaviors and an entire school day’s worth of intervention might as well have never happened.  The next day, the school site staff would be starting all over again.

By training the parents on the behavioral strategies being used at school, particularly if they can collect at least some data on what they are doing, makes them more involved, gives them greater understanding of what the school site team is trying to do, makes them partners in the process rather than outside observers, makes them more comfortable about how their child’s behavior is being handled by the school site staff, and creates much needed consistency that will help make the intervention successful.

Do you have any other suggestions regarding behavioral supports and services that can be made part of a student’s IEP? Post your comment with your suggestions below.

Writing IEP Goals for Behavioral Issues

Update (4/11/13):  The link below to our former Ning community no longer works. We have moved our IEP goal-writing forum to https://kps4parents.org/main/community-outreach/iep-goal-forum/.


Writing IEP goals for behavioral issues can pose a particular challenge. Unlike academic goals, which should be tied to State standards for academic performance and more easily lend themselves to measurable language, behavioral goals aren’t tied to a pre-described set of criteria of what students should learn; at best, they relate to rules about what students should not do at school.

Behavior has been poorly dealt with in our school over the decades since mandatory schooling was first implemented back during the Industrial Revolution. Mandatory schooling itself was used as a behavioral intervention to address a huge juvenile delinquency problem that arose after child labor laws were passed that prevented parents from putting their children (as young as 6) to work in the factories. This left large numbers of unsupervised children roaming the squalid, poverty-stricken streets of the inner city factory workers’ neighborhoods. Suffice it to say that they often came up with some pretty inappropriate ways of keeping themselves occupied.

Child advocates at the time pushed for mandatory schooling to take these trouble young people and convert them into quality citizens of a growing young nation. As seems to be the case with every age, innovations in business and industry were applied to the concept of large-scale public education and the current system was designed to emulate the assembly line. Teachers were regarded similarly as workers on an assembly line, passing students from one grade to the next (except those that failed QC). More and more so, teachers were increasingly women looking for less dangerous work than what was available to them in the factories. Being that the women at the time had fewer rights than men and were often not knowledgeable in the ways of self-advocacy and the assertion of their rights, they were often more easily exploited as workers than male teachers. So, just as the workers on the assembly lines of the factories began to engage in collective bargaining and organized labor unions, teachers began to do the same. At the time, these unions served to protect workers and teachers alike from exploitation. Today, it’s a different political climate.

Nonetheless, taking the lead from the business world, the assembly-line nature of public education began pushing children through the system, many of whom who were already causing problems because of their behaviors. I mean, it was their behaviors that led to mandatory schooling in the first place. The response to their behaviors by the adults responsible for educating them was fairly typical for the times: spare the rod and spoil the child. It was highly punitive. Children were punished for inappropriate behaviors but there was no effort to systematically teach them the appropriate behaviors they should have engage in, instead. In other words, the interventions at the time focused on the structures of the behaviors – that is, what the child had actually done – as opposed to the functions of the behaviors – that is, why the child had done it. This left many, many children with unresolved issues and no means to see them addressed, causing the perpetuation of troubling conditions.

In defense of the educators at the time, these children’s parents were often even less capable in rendering proper guidance to their children. Factory workers often worked 14 to 16 hour days before going home to horrible living conditions in a crammed up tenement with their ten kids and were in no position to offer effective parenting and guidance at the end of the day to that many children. They were dependent upon the public school personnel to help them during the daytime with their children’s needs.

Fast forward to today and you still have an assembly-line type system in the general education setting. In fact, unless something is “wrong” with you such that you require special education, you aren’t entitled to an education tailored to the way you actually learn. Behaviors are still largely dealt with in a reactionary fashion with punitive responses to inappropriate behaviors after they have already occurred, though there is a burgeoning movement to finally implement positive behavioral interventions on a school-wide basis rather than on a child-by-child basis. Even still, all schools maintain disciplinary records for each student, which speaks to the culture of public school administration and its perception of children who behave inappropriately at school. If there still weren’t such a punitive mindset, they would be called behavioral records or something else non-judgmental.

Just because a kid does something that’s inappropriate doesn’t automatically mean that the kid wanted to do something bad or wrong; very often it’s the situation that the child just doesn’t know what else to do, is engaging in trial and error to try to meet a want or need without thinking things through (which may not even be possible depending on the stage of childhood development the kid happens to be in at the time), or is crying out for help in whatever ways will be heard. Behavior is largely a function of communication; the trick is being able to understand the message.

So what does all of this have to do with writing behavioral goals? Well, a lot. It’s difficult to write behavioral goals for many people because they are still caught up in the antiquated punishment model of behavioral intervention, which evidence shows may curtail a specific behavioral incident in the short-term, but does nothing in the long-term to prevent problem behaviors from developing again or growing worse and more sophisticated over time. Because so many people in public education have been trained to look at behaviors as challenges to their authority rather than signs of things that need to be addressed, it’s hard for them to conceptualize the proper formatting of behavior goals. Parents usually have no formal training in this area either and get caught up in the momentum of the punitive mindset, not necessarily sure that the schools’ approach is appropriate but not knowing what else to suggest.

The thing with behavior goals is that they have to describe what a student is supposed to do in order to determine that the goal has been met. But, most people still think in terms of what the student should not be doing and will write things like “By 12/10/09, [Student] will decrease vocal outbursts in the classroom by 90% as measured by observation,” which is a poorly written goal on an uncountable number of levels. What the goal should do is describe and target the appropriate replacement behavior. So, it could read something like, “By 12/10/09, [Student] will use his break card to request time away from noisy distractions, take his work to a pre-designated quiet area, and complete his work with no more than one verbal prompt per occasion in 4 of 5 consecutive occasions within a 2-week period.”

Now, here in this example, it’s implied that the reason the child was engaging in noisy outbursts because he was becoming overwhelmed by noisy distractions presented by others. This is significant! Most behaviors are engaged in to either get something or get away from something, regardless of whether those behaviors are good or bad. Behaviors serve specific functions to the individuals who engage in them. Purists in the field of behavioral sciences tend not to really classify behaviors as good or bad, but more in terms of appropriate or inappropriate to the circumstance, adaptive or maladaptive, or successful and unsuccessful. Reinforcers are those things that occur once a behavior has been engaged in that increase the likelihood of the behavior being engaged in again. Consequences are those things that occur once a behavior has been engaged in that are likely to decrease the likelihood of the behavior being engaged in again. Consequences are not automatically presumed to be punishment.

Think about it. If you’re at a restaurant and want fettuccine alfredo, you don’t say, “Give me a t-bone steak, please.” You ask for the fettuccine alfredo. If you were to ask for a t-bone steak, and the waiter brought you a t-bone steak instead of fettuccine alfredo, the consequence of receiving a t-bone steak would decrease the likelihood of you asking for a t-bone steak the next time you wanted fettuccine alfredo. Getting the t-bone wasn’t punishment. It was just the natural consequence of you asking for something other than what you really wanted.

But, what if you don’t know the name of the dish you want? You can describe it to the waiter (“Yes, I’ll have those flat noodles with the creamy sauce and that spice that’s usually only used in snickerdoodles and spice cakes,”) and hope he understands, or you can just order something else that really wasn’t what you wanted just to avoid the embarrassment of not knowing the name of your favorite dish in front of your dinner companions and the waiter. At that point, though, your behavioral priority became avoiding embarrassment rather than getting the food that you wanted. When cast in that light, inappropriate behaviors start to make more sense.

With our example goal here, the only way we could have known why the child was engaging in the inappropriate behavior of verbal outbursts in the classroom was to have conducted an appropriate assessment of the child’s behavior. This assessment, in this example, would have revealed that the child – who has ADHD and an auditory processing disorder – was getting auditory overload whenever the noise level in the classroom increased during busy activities and, being highly distractible to boot, was incredibly challenged to remain on task. The verbal outbursts were the result of his frustration at not being able to concentrate and being so caught up in the moment of being overwhelmed and lacking in coping skills that it didn’t occur to him to ask his teacher to let him do his work some place more quiet. We’re talking about a child with compromised learning skills, here, not a 45-year-old adult with years of experience at effectively solving problems.

The goal describes the desired outcome, but what probably also needs to be in this child’s IEP is a positive behavior support plan that spells out what his issues are and how to deal with them. The only purpose the goal serves is to measure whether or not he acquired the replacement behavior over the course of the goal’s annual period. In our example goal above, the use of the break card has to be explained somewhere.

Sometimes IEP teams unnecessarily knock themselves out trying to write a succinct enough goal that captures all of the relevant elements without it becoming the world’s longest run-on sentence when something like a particular strategy must be employed. My favorite solution to problems like this is to develop a separate protocol that gets attached to an IEP as another page of the document and then have the goal refer to it.

For example, our example goal being used here refers to a break card but doesn’t make clear what that is or how it should be used. The goal could be re-written to read: “By 12/10/09, [Student] will use his break card according to the protocol found on page 12 of this IEP to request time away from noisy distractions, take his work to a pre-designated quiet area, and complete his work with no more than one verbal prompt per occasion in 4 of 5 consecutive occasions within a 2-week period.” Then page 12 of the IEP could be a one-page description of the protocol. In the alternate, if a positive behavior support plan is also attached to the IEP and the break card system is described in it, then the goal could reference the positive behavior support plan.

The important thing is that the goal has to be customized to fit the unique circumstances of the child involved. We get a lot of hits on our web site from people looking for pre-written goals, but I’m telling you that this is totally the wrong way to go about it. You’re not going to find canned goals that fit a particular circumstance involving a particular child, particularly when it comes to behavior. The goal has to target the specific area of need as identified in the present levels of performance and describe in measurable terms exactly what the student has to do in order to demonstrate mastery of the targeted skill. The goals of any child’s IEP have to be tailored to his unique needs and you don’t get a customized outcome with “off-the-shelf” goals. Rather than looking for pre-written goals that will fit a specific child, look for examples of goals and learn to understand the process and the logic behind how goals are written.

With behavior goals, target the acquisition of the desired behavior rather than dwell on reducing the undesired behavior. Gather baseline data on how often the child engages in the desired behavior at the time the goal is written and the degree to which he is expected to engage in it at the conclusion of the goal, which should be an increase over how often he engages in it at the beginning.

For example, if the baseline is that the student does not currently use a break card system to appropriately remove himself from a noisy and distracting environment to a quiet place where he can complete his work, then our example goal above represents a marked improvement. If the child begins using his break card system to escape the noisy, distracting environments and completing his work in a quiet area, then he’s not standing in the midst of the chaos yelling his head off.

By engaging in the appropriate replacement behavior, he inadvertently ceases to engage in the inappropriate behavior. Once he realizes that he is being met with a more beneficial outcome by using the break card system than he was by yelling out in class, he’ll have no reason to go back to yelling out in class. Over time, the skill can be refined to the point that the student is able to afford himself the trust of his teacher to excuse himself at his own discretion, without the need for overt signals to the teacher like break cards, to a quiet area to do his work and no one will think anything of it. A behavior goal in this area of need will eventually no longer be necessary.

I’ve seen kids overcome behavioral challenges in a year or less with good behavioral supports. I’ve also seen kids fall deeper and deeper into a hopeless pit of despair in the absence of good behavioral supports. And the degree of disability has little to do with it. It’s all about the quality of the behavioral interventions, including the goals. As long as the goals target the desired behaviors, are written in a measurable way that relates directly to relevant and accurate present levels of performance, and work in tandem with any behavioral protocols and/or a positive behavioral support plan in the IEP, you should be met with success.


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