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Tool 43: Forty Accommodations Worth Asking for, Sorted by What They Fix

THE RULE

The IEP must state the supplementary aids and services the district will provide (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(4)). Those are the aids, services, and supports given in regular classes, other education-related settings, and extracurricular and nonacademic settings, so a child with a disability can be educated with children who are not disabled to the maximum extent appropriate (34 C.F.R. § 300.42). Accommodations live here. So does the requirement that they follow your child into the parts of the day that are not academic - clubs, sports, recess, lunch, field trips (34 C.F.R. § 300.117).

An accommodation is enforceable only when it is written down with enough specificity to be checked. The IEP must state the projected start date and the anticipated frequency, location, and duration of the services and modifications it lists (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(7); Tool 24). Where an accommodation is written into the IEP as a supplementary aid, service, or program modification, those fields apply to it. Some items carry their own timing on their face - “text read aloud on all reading assessments” already says when. Many do not. “Movement breaks” says nothing until it says how long, how often, and where.

Then someone has to be told. Each teacher and provider responsible for carrying out the IEP must be informed of the specific accommodations, modifications, and supports the document requires (34 C.F.R. § 300.323(d)(2)(ii)). An accommodation the eighth-period teacher has never heard of is a sentence in a binder.

State testing has its own rule. Accommodations on state and districtwide assessments must be listed in the IEP (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(6)(i)), and state or district guidelines may identify only accommodations that do not invalidate the score (34 C.F.R. § 300.160(b)). Classroom accommodations and test accommodations are not automatically the same list. Tool 44 covers that paperwork and its separate deadline.

One rule governs the whole catalog below. Nothing here belongs to a diagnosis. Every one belongs to a barrier. The evaluation must be comprehensive enough to identify all of your child’s needs, whether or not those needs are commonly linked to his disability category (34 C.F.R. § 300.304(c)(6)). Do not ask for an accommodation because a website says children with your child’s label get it. Ask because you can name the barrier it removes.

WHY IT MATTERS

Most parents arrive at the meeting able to describe the problem and unable to name the fix. “He shuts down on tests.” “She can read the words but not the paragraph.” “Homework takes four hours.” All true. None of them is a line the district can write into a document.

The team then fills the gap with whatever the software offers first: extended time, preferential seating, chunked assignments. Those are fine. They are also the same three lines on many other IEPs in the building, and they were not chosen for your child.

A catalog changes that conversation. When you can say “the barrier is that he cannot hold the directions in his head long enough to start, so I am asking for directions given one step at a time, in writing, and a check for understanding before he begins,” you have handed the team a line it can write. You have also told the truth about your child, which is the whole job.