IEPs are a Public School Thing: Let’s Not Forget That!
The Governor of Florida and other education reformers seem to have forgotten where Individual Educational Plans (IEPs) started. In this post, I’d like to remind them.
The other night I watched the movie Danny Collins. It’s a loosely based true story about a burned out rock star who learns that years earlier he received a letter of encouragement from John Lennon. This has a profound influence on him. The movie stars Al Pacino and Annette Bening. I thought it was a good movie—and perhaps a nice story for Father’s Day. But one part of the movie disturbed me.
Collins, trying to win favor with his estranged son and daughter-in-law, enrolls their hyperactive daughter, his granddaughter, in an exclusive New York City private school for students with disabilities. While visiting the school, which is beautiful and shows a ballet class in the background, the principal, or headmaster, says to the parents and Pacino’s Danny Collins character, that they do IEPs because they care about the individual. He brags about not doing everything in a “one-size-fits-all” fashion.
With his comments there’s subtle implication that public schools don’t do IEPs, and that students don’t get the attention they deserve in those schools. But IEPs never IEPs are a Public School Thing: Let’s Not Forget That!:
