The Power of a Paper Trail: How to Organize Your Child's School Paperwork to Help Track Progress by Pepi Silverman

The process of education involves a great deal of paper. Whether it’s worksheets or report cards, the papers containing the information about a student’s progress tell a meaningful story. For parents that have concerns about their child’s progress, using all that paper to create a “paper trail” helps to validate those issues. To maintain a paper trail that would be meaningful in planning for educational services, consider the following: 

• Organize everything into chronological order.
• Generate follow-up letters to document all conversations with the school. 
• Compare IEP goals and progress reports from one year to another. 
• Reference student progress over time.

By keeping data in an organized manner, parents can reference performance information to ensure progress is achieved.