Strategies to increase parent participation in IEP conferences.

Parental involvement in the education of handicapped children has been mandated with the passage of P.L. 94-142, The Education for All Handicapped Children Act. Recent research, however, has indicated that often parents are not active decision-makers in the development of the individualized education program or IEP (Gilliam, 1979; Goldstein, Strickland, Turnbull, & Curry, 1980). The purpose of the study presented here was to determine the effectiveness of two intervention strategies on parental contributions to the IEP conference. The involvement strategies were: (a) sending parents questions prior to the IEP conference with a follow-up telephone call; and (b) having the school counselor present as a parent advocate at the conference.