The Most Simple Tool for Special Education Advocacy Available

As a self-advocacy system, parents learn how to play the IEP Game like a professional by learning how to use documentation as a legal process in advocacy and how to identify and justify the appropriate interventions and educational placements for a child.

Users begin with the deficit category and choose the cards that apply to their child. Then, one-by-one, users choose a deficit card and the appropriate Evidence, Experts, Needs and Rights. Parents transfer the relevant information from cards onto a fill-in form and later draft a letter to the school or Regional Center. Click here for an example of documentation in the process of self-advocacy using the IEP Game.

The letter provided in the example documentation is written with a business tone and meant to communicate information. The business tone is necessary because there is a certain amount of information about the child's deficits, evidence, and need for intervention that a parent needs to communicate in order to have a record that these concerns have been shared, should problems with service delievery or a child's progress arise later in time. Keeping in step with suggestions by attorneys Pam and Pete Wright, there have been some words used to communicate appreciation and grattitude in order to keep the letter from sounding harsh or invoking defensiveness on the part of the school district personnel reader.