Working with an ABA provider: a guide for schools

A plan that works at home and falls apart at school is only half a plan. That is not a criticism of anyone. It is what happens when two settings run different rules for the same child and nobody has compared them side by side.

This is written for teachers, aides, school psychologists and administrators who are working alongside an outside ABA provider, ours or anyone else's.

Ask for the plan in two pages

You are entitled to understand what the provider is doing. You are not obliged to read forty pages of it.

Ask for a summary that names the two or three goals currently being worked on, what the child does instead when the target behaviour is not available, and what the adults around them are meant to do differently. If a provider cannot produce that, the plan is probably not usable in a classroom either.

Three questions that separate a useful provider from a busy one

"What would this look like in a room with twenty-eight other children?" A recommendation that needs a second adult who does not exist is not a recommendation. A good provider will change it rather than repeat it.

"What are you measuring, and can I see it?" Progress described in adjectives is not progress. Ask for the graph. It takes ten seconds to read and it settles most disagreements.

"What do you want from us, specifically?" Vague partnership is where collaboration goes to die. The answer should be a small number of concrete things a teacher can actually do.

What tends to go wrong, and how to catch it early

The same hard moment happens at the same time every day and nobody has written it down. Two weeks of one-line notes, with the time and what happened right before, will usually show a pattern nobody had seen.

The plan assumes a level of adult attention the room does not have. Say so early. It is far easier to redesign a plan in week two than to explain in week ten why it was never run.

Nobody agreed who is telling the parent. Decide this before you need it.

About observation visits

An outside provider observing in your classroom needs your agreement and written parent consent, and some districts have their own process on top of that. It is worth asking what yours is before you need it rather than during a difficult month.

A good observation changes nothing on the first visit. Anyone who arrives and immediately starts intervening is telling you about their approach, not about the child.

Where IEP goals and ABA goals meet

They are written by different teams under different rules, and they should still point the same way. It is worth putting the two lists next to each other once a term and asking whether anything contradicts.

Watch for a goal that only exists to make a child easier for adults to manage. That is worth challenging wherever it appears, including in our plans.

If you want a second opinion

We consult with schools across Riverside County and the Coachella Valley, sometimes at a district's invitation and sometimes at a family's. Either is normal, and we will tell you plainly which one we are doing.

If you want someone to look at a situation and say what they see, call us. We will also tell you when the honest answer is that the problem is not one ABA solves.