Last Updated on October 7, 2023 by Editorial Team
For an aspirant with special education, practices like IEP goals and special benefits may be assertive. While eligible aspirants can make use of these provisions, there may be a need for a guiding person or academy to make sure that the accommodations are provided with maximized effectiveness.
This is where the crucial role of LEA comes in. LEA (Local Education Agency) representative is an important stake in the IEP process who focuses on student’s progress and advises other team members (IEP team, parents, and staff) about the needed strategies to be implemented. In this post, we will be exploring in detail what LEA is and what are the responsibilities of the representatives. These insights may assist you in comprehending regulations and availing them effortlessly for your special child.
What is LEA in special education?
A state’s public board of education or other public authority oversees the administration of public elementary and secondary schools in a city, township, school district, or other municipal subdivision. LEAs include school districts and county offices of education. Charter schools are increasingly being treated as LEAs under the Local Control Funding Formula. These regulations need someone to take care of these functions, this is where the LEA representative gets their role.
In a nutshell, The LEA representative is the person who is there to represent the school district. This person should be aware of the district’s resources and have the authority to allocate those resources. They are recognized as an administrative entity for the purpose of providing special education and related services inside the State’s public elementary and secondary schools.
Roles of LEA representative- How do they assist special children?
According to 34 CFR 300.321(a)(4) of the IDEA, LEA representative is someone who:
- Has relevant skills and qualities to supervise and advise the specialized needs of disabled children
- Has a gripping knowledge of the general and special curriculum
- Knows about various resources and assistance that can be availed from the public agency.
These responsibilities can assist us in clearly discerning the importance of LEA representatives on the following grounds:
- Making out the objectives. The LEA representative plays an important role in assisting the IEP stakes and listing out a predetermined outcome. This can be later fabricated into a set of IEP goals in areas like phonics, math, preschooling, or social skills.
- Ensuring the opinions of parents and staff are valued. The teaching staff and the parents are the stakeholders that mostly interact with students directly. Accordingly, their role and opinions are crucial for making an IEP decision. The LEA representatives make sure that the IEP team considers all opinions.
- Setting up grade-level standards and functional expectations. By ensuring proper evaluation of student’s strengths and needs, the LEA representative assures appropriate standards for the objectives.
- Check if FBA is needed. LEA representatives observe the student’s behavior and suggest to the IEP team if they need to conduct a Functional Behavior assessment(FBA). Not only about the behavior, but they identify and make suggestions about all other disability and disability-related needs.
- Supporting and bridging the gaps for special children in school. Finally, LEA looks to see if IEP and other interventions are properly implemented in schools. With this, they ensure that the special instructions, services, and accommodations support the goals of the student.
How is the IEP related to LEA?
An IEP is a legal document that acts as a partnership between a student’s parents and educators to address a student’s needs, establish what special education services the child requires, and figure out and ensure additional efforts to know how they can meet those needs. It is a program that ensures that a student’s educational needs are met.
It assesses a student’s development and keeps track of whether they are receiving a free, suitable public education. Students will be able to progress and develop only by participating in standards-based early grade-level curriculum and learning, as well as other classroom activities and surroundings.
IEPs and LEAs work together in the following areas:
- By assuring that all members of the IEP team arrive prepared to contribute information about the student (e.g., data, observations, and analysis), but that the IEP’s conclusion has not been pre-determined. It is advised that an IEP agenda be provided in advance and that norms be established at the start of a meeting.
- Make sure that the student’s academic and functional performance is described with respect to grade-level peers’ expectations.
- Even if guardians aren’t available for the meeting, the LEA representative can verify that parents were given the opportunity to contribute input prior to the meeting via a Student Profile or other parent input forms.
- The IEP team initially determines “how” the student’s compromises affect access, participation, and progress in general education classes, activities, and settings. The IEP team next conducts a root cause analysis to figure out “why” the student is failing to reach early childhood/grade level academic goals and functional expectations.
- Help to encourage the IEP team to look into the areas and environments where the student is succeeding in order to find methods to build on the student’s strengths.
- There are a variety of reasons why an IEP team member may believe that a student needs specific additional help or service. A dialogue about the underlying interest, which is most often related to assisting a student’s disability-related need, can be facilitated by the LEA representative.
Summing up,
Schools may now have a more dynamic and diverse engagement with their environment than they did before the wave of school reform decentralization. The interaction between school administrators and the local educational authority (LEA) is a good example of this shift.
LEAs aim to exert more pedagogical control over schools, while school principals become financially and educationally reliant on the LEA. All of this can improve confidence in special children and mentors in bridging gaps and providing reliable support.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,