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Tool 69: The Work-Sample Folder: a Kitchen-Table Data System in Ten Minutes a Week

THE RULE

No law requires you to keep your child’s schoolwork. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) does something almost as good: it requires the district to look at what you keep.

When the district evaluates your child, it must use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to gather relevant information about the child, “including information provided by the parent” (34 C.F.R. § 300.304(b)(1)). When the team reviews existing evaluation data as part of an evaluation or reevaluation, the first item on the list is “[e]valuations and information provided by the parents of the child,” followed by “[c]urrent classroom-based, local, or State assessments, and classroom-based observations” (34 C.F.R. § 300.305(a)(1)(i)-(ii)).

When eligibility is decided, the group must draw upon information from a variety of sources, including parent input, and must ensure that the information from all of those sources is “documented and carefully considered” (34 C.F.R. § 300.306(c)(1)(i)-(ii)). When the IEP is written, the team must consider “[t]he concerns of the parents for enhancing the education of their child” (34 C.F.R. § 300.324(a)(1)(ii)) - and you are a required member of that team (34 C.F.R. § 300.321(a)(1)).

Two more doorways matter here. The IEP must state your child’s present levels of academic achievement and functional performance (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(1)) - and a dated page of your child’s actual work is direct evidence of present performance. And the team must revise the IEP as appropriate to address any lack of expected progress toward the annual goals (34 C.F.R. § 300.324(b)(1)(ii)(A)).

One doorway sits far down the road. If a dispute ever reaches a due process hearing, a party may bar evidence that was not disclosed to it at least 5 business days before the hearing (34 C.F.R. § 300.512(a)(3)). Disclosed on time, a dated folder of work samples is evidence that cannot be shut out on that ground.

WHY IT MATTERS

Look around the table at an IEP meeting and count the data. The evaluation was written by district staff. The progress report was written by district staff. The grades, the benchmark scores, the behavior sheets, the classroom observations - all district-generated.

Unless you have paid for a private evaluation, the work you kept at home is usually the only record in the room the district did not create. That is what makes it worth 10 minutes a week.

But an undated worksheet proves nothing. It is a piece of paper with handwriting on it. What turns paper into data is 3 things you add at the kitchen table: the date, the goal it belongs to, and the conditions.

The conditions are the part everyone forgets, and they decide what the sample is worth. A math page finished in 12 minutes alone is a different fact than the same page finished in 70 minutes with a parent sitting beside the child. Most IEP goals measure what a child can do independently. A sample with no conditions written on it can be read back at you - “well, he did that one at home, with help” - and there is no way to answer, because you did not write it down in October and you cannot remember now.

Two Septembers of dated writing samples, side by side, say something no adjective can say. So do a January sample and a February sample taken across a school break, when you are building the record for extended school year (Tools 71 and 72; Letter 22 in Appendix A).