The Basics

What is a PPT meeting? A PPT meeting is a Planning and Placement Team  meeting. Some people will call it a Special Education meeting or an IEP meeting.

What is an IEP? An IEP is a Individualized Education Plan that is created for students who qualify for special education supports and services.

When would I have a PPT meeting or get an IEP? If there is a concern that a child might have a suspected disability then anyone (a parent, a teacher, a specialist) can call a PPT meeting in order to discuss evaluations to identify if there is a disability. After evaluations the team then meets to discuss if the disability is impacting education (think academic progress, social progress and emotional progress)  and if it is, they would determine what services are necessary to help the child make meaningful progress.

Disabilities

There are 13 categories of disability that children can fall under per the IDEA – Individuals with Disabilities EducationAct:

*Definitions below are directly from Sec. 300.8 of the IDEA as found on their website

  • Autism
    • “Autism means a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. Other characteristics often associated with autism are engagement in repetitive activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences.”
  • Deaf-Blindness
    • “Deaf-blindness means concomitant hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for children with deafness or children with blindness.”
  • Deafness
    • “Deafness means a hearing impairment that is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.”
  • Emotional Disturbance (or Emotional Disability pending your state)
    • “Emotional disturbance means a condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s educational performance:
      • (A) An inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors.
        (B) An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers.
        (C) Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.
        (D) A general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression.
        (E) A tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.”
  • Hearing Impairment
    • “Hearing impairment means an impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance but that is not included under the definition of deafness in this section.”
  • Intellectual Disability
    • “Intellectual disability means significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The term “intellectual disability” was formerly termed “mental retardation.”
  • Multiple Disabilities
    • “Multiple disabilities means concomitant impairments (such as intellectual disability-blindness or intellectual disability-orthopedic impairment), the combination of which causes such severe educational needs that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments. Multiple disabilities does not include deaf-blindness.”
  • Orthopedic Impairment
    • “Orthopedic impairment means a severe orthopedic impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The term includes impairments caused by a congenital anomaly, impairments caused by disease (e.g., poliomyelitis, bone tuberculosis), and impairments from other causes (e.g., cerebral palsy, amputations, and fractures or burns that cause contractures).”
  • Other Health Impairment
    • “Other health impairment means having limited strength, vitality, or alertness, including a heightened alertness to environmental stimuli, that results in limited alertness with respect to the educational environment”
  • Specific Learning Disability
    • “General. Specific learning disability means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia.”
  • Speech and Language Impairment
    • “Speech or language impairment means a communication disorder, such as stuttering, impaired articulation, a language impairment, or a voice impairment, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.”
  • Traumatic Brain Injury
    • “Traumatic brain injury means an acquired injury to the brain caused by an external physical force, resulting in total or partial functional disability or psychosocial impairment, or both, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. Traumatic brain injury applies to open or closed head injuries resulting in impairments in one or more areas, such as cognition; language; memory; attention; reasoning; abstract thinking; judgment; problem-solving; sensory, perceptual, and motor abilities; psychosocial behavior; physical functions; information processing; and speech. Traumatic brain injury does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital or degenerative, or to brain injuries induced by birth trauma.”
  • Visual Impairment
    • “Visual impairment including blindness means an impairment in vision that, even with correction, adversely affects a child’s educational performance. The term includes both partial sight and blindness.”

What is the process?

When a child is referred to the PPT – the team will discuss all areas in which they believe a child should be evaluated. Evaluations can include, but are not limited to an academic achievement (reading, writing and math), cognitive (psychological), developmental history, fine and gross motor (OT and PT), speech and language (expressive, receptive, social pragmatics) and assistive technology. Under these categories there are many more evaluations that can be recommended…. but to give you an idea.

When the team decides to move forward with evaluations an invisible clock starts tickets – Sec 300.301 of IDEA states that for initial evaluations a school district must completed them within 60 days of receiving parental consent OR within a state established time frame that does not exceed the federal time frame. If your school does not adhere to the timeline then they would be out of compliance.

PRO TIP(s): at the meeting, ask when you can expect to receive the results of the evaluations. DO NOT DELAY on signing the consent if you have the intention of moving forward with evaluations. During the time that the consent form is in YOUR possession, the invisible clock STOPS and does not start again until you submit. Some districts even have a caveat that if they do not receive it back within 10 school days it will be taken as a refusal for consent and they will not evaluate your child. 

Evaluations are Done – BACK To PPT

When your evaluations are complete you will go back to a PPT meeting to discuss the evaluation results. Good Practice by the evaluators would be to send the reports ahead of the meeting and review them with you in a one to one setting. A week before your meeting ask for a copy of all reports (if they didn’t give it to you) and time to meet with each evaluator so that you can thoroughly understand the results.

At the PPT the team will summarize the findings together and determine if your child meets criteria to have special education services. Depending on your state, there are checklists that the team members can use as a guidance for some of the disability categories (but not all!). If your team is going through a checklist – be sure to ask for a copy so that you can follow along. Do not be shy to speak up!

My Child Qualified – Now what?

If your child qualified for special education support and services the team will then review what services that they recommend to target the areas of weakness identified in the evaluation process. They should review how often they are going to meet for each services and the duration of that meeting. Each service will have goals and objectives tied to them. Goals and objectives should be written as SMART goals (blog post on my website about how to write SMART Goals).

Once the meeting is complete, you will need to sign a consent form to allow the team to provide services – this again is time sensitive and you do not want to sit on the consent form. Again, not signing and returning to some districts can be a sign of refusal of the services.

AFTER YOUR MEETING

When your meeting is complete you should receive an IEP (individualized education plan) and Prior Written Notice (PWN). The Prior Written Notice is prior to the start of the services. If you do not get these documents after 5 school days, email the school and ask for it every. single. day. until it is received. Be sure to check for accuracy.

This information and more are available in my book The Special Education Process – A Parent’s Guide by a Parent available on Amazon and offers more tips and tricks on how to best advocate for your child.