Here is a truth about the school year that takes most families a while to see: spring is decided in the fall. That accommodation conversation in the spring, the one where the school says there is no data to support the change you are asking for? The progress monitoring behind that data is happening right now, in September, or it is not happening at all.
Fall is not the calm before the real work. Fall is the real work. It just does not feel urgent yet, which is exactly why families miss it. So this month, you are going to start the simplest possible record, and it will quietly become your strongest card in March.
Start a simple record this week
It does not need to be fancy. A note on your phone, a folder, a cheap notebook, whatever you will actually use. The tool that works is the one you will keep, so pick the low-effort version on purpose. This month, you are creating a baseline, which is just an honest snapshot of where your child is right now, at the start of the year.
What to write down
- What my child is like right now, at the start of the year.
A few plain sentences. How school feels for them today, what a good day and a hard day look like. - What I am hoping this year’s supports will actually change.
Name the outcome you are watching for, so you can tell later whether it moved. - What is working already,
so you can protect it if someone tries to take it away between plan versions. - The one or two things I am watching this fall.
Not everything. The one or two that matter most.
Your own progress monitoring, in a notebook
This is progress monitoring you control. Schools do their own, and it is often thin or late. Yours does not have to be. Once a baseline exists, you add a line or two whenever something notable happens, and you skip the rest. You do not need to log every day. You do not need to track everything. Trying to document all of it is how families quit by October. A short, honest record you actually keep beats a detailed one you abandon.
Why a baseline is quietly powerful
In the spring, when someone says “we are not seeing a problem,” you can say “here is where we started in September, and here is where we are now.” You turned your memory into evidence, months before you needed it. A baseline also protects you from the slow rewrite of history, where everyone half-remembers the year going fine. You have the receipts, dated, in your own words. When something notable does happen, a short recap email to the school turns your private note into a shared record too.
What progress monitoring looks like for IEP and 504 families
For IEP families, your personal record sits right alongside the school’s progress monitoring, and it often catches what theirs misses, like the accommodation that looks fine on a report but is not actually happening. For 504 families, who frequently get no formal progress monitoring at all, your own record might be the only record that exists. Either way, you are not doing the school’s job for them. You are making sure your child’s real story this year is written down by someone who was there for all of it.
The two-minute monthly check-in
Give the habit a home so it does not depend on memory. Once a month, take two minutes and answer one question: is what we hoped for actually happening? If yes, note it. If not, that hesitation is information, and September is a far better time to act on it than March. This small monthly rhythm is the difference between catching a drift early and discovering it late.
A tool for tracking what matters
If you want help deciding what is actually worth writing down, and how to connect it to your child’s goals, the SMART Goals and Progress Monitoring Guide in the SOAR shop shows you how to track progress in a way the school takes seriously, without drowning in paperwork. You can find it in the SOAR resource shop here.
The parent who started writing in September is the parent who is not scrambling in March. A few lines this month, and your spring self will thank you.
From Chaos to Collaboration℠ always,
Latina Nickelson, M.Ed.
A baseline is the start. If you want the whole year mapped on purpose so nothing rides on hope, learn how the back-to-school Collaboration Cycle walks alongside your family from fall to spring. See the SOAR shop and services here.