Strategies to increase parent participation in IEP conferences.

Abstract

Parental involvement in the education of hand­ icapped children has been mandated with the passage of P.L. 94-142, The Education for All Handicapped Children Act. Recent research, however, has indicated that often parents are not active decision-makers in the development of the individualized education program or IEP (Gilliam, 1979; Goldstein, Strickland, Turnbull, & Curry, 1980). The purpose of the study presented here was to determine the effectiveness of two interven­ tion strategies on parental contributions to the IEP conference. The involvement strategies were: (a) sending parents questions prior to the IEP conference with a follow-up telephone call; and (b) having the school counselor present as a parent advocate at the conference. METHOD Forty-five parents of learning disabled children were chosen from five elementary schools in one local education agency to be observed at IEP conferences. The parents selected from each school were divided randomly into three groups. The first group of 15 parents were sent ques­ tions before the conference concerning their goals for their child, the student's educational potential, and the development of an IEP. The second group of parents had the school guid­ ance counselor present at each conference in the role of parent advocate. No intervention strategies were used with the 15 parents in the control group.