Thank you for your Oct. 5 article describing RBHS’ status regarding requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. After discussing the results for various racial groups, your article contained a graph at page 9, purportedly showing RBHS students’ three-year trend on Prairie State Achievement Exams. After displaying and discussing results for “All Students, Hispanic/Latin Students, African-American Students and Low Income Students, your graph contains is a section referencing “IEP”.
Unfortunately, neither the article nor the graph explained the “IEP”. Apparently the “IED” is important enough to include in the graph. So who or what is an “IEP” and how does it relate to RBHS?
Mike Maher
Riverside
Ed. Note: That’s a good point. One of the things about education reporting and education generally is that there’s a whole jargon that we’re used to, which is not familiar to many people. That indeed should have been clarified. For the record, IEP stands for Individualized Education Program. IEPs are drawn up for all students in a school’s special education program – that covers a whole spectrum of students, from students with dyslexia to students with profound developmental disabilities. That subgroup of students is typically the area where most schools fail to meet AYP – that’s adequate yearly progress. Sorry for the confusion.
