Author: Jamie Bessette
After your child goes through an evaluation to determine whether or not they meet the criteria as a child with a special need and that your child is in need of specially designed instruction (SDI) you will be part of a team that will draft a plan that will last a year (technically 364 days) called an Individual Education Plan or IEP. Some school districts have Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) for their students, these are different from an IEP.
An IEP is a legally binding, detailed plan that will describe the areas your child needs to work on and how the teacher will measure it over the course of the year. There are a number of parts of the IEP that as a parent you will want to make sure you thoroughly understand. For everyone else these are the main components that you'll want to understand.
The PLEP:
First, you need to understand the present level of academic and functional performance. This is known by many names- PLOP (present level of performance), PLEP (present level of educational performance and PLAFP (present level of academic and functional performance). They are all referring to the same part of the IEP. I, for the remainder of this blog, will be calling it a PLEP.
In a PLEP there should be a statement for each area that your child qualifies in stating where their deficits are and their current levels. You should be able to read your child's special education evaluation to find what areas they qualify for services. (If you can't find this information within the evaluation call the school psychologist who completed the evaluation and ask them personally.) These statements need to be specific, they should cite measurable information based on the skills of your child. This specific information is known as a Baseline. If you can't get that from what they've written then it's not specific enough. A teacher is supposed to use this information to write a measurable goal.
For example, if you read something that says "Jamie is reading at the third grade level" and it is not followed up with any more information that is not specific enough. You should see something that says something like "Jamie is reading at the third grade level with 98% accuracy while reading 110 words per minute. She is able to answer 80% of comprehension questions at the 3rd grade level correctly." If for some reason the teacher cannot provide this information, you need to ask that the meeting be stopped and that the teacher gather that information. Because in order to know where you need to go you need to know where you currently are so that there is a clear direction. Remember this needs to occur in each area they qualify in for SDI.
Take time to read through your child's IEP and highlight this information so that you are clear on where you are in the “educational map.” If you have questions make sure to contact your child's teacher to get your questions answered. You are the best advocate for your child so you need to have a full understanding of their education.
Goals and objectives:
First, goals. Goals should be directly related to the information that was written in the PLEP. Goals need to be written so that they are specific and measurable. Some school districts will put their Baseline information in their goal not just in their PLEP. Goals should be written directly from the needs identified in the most recent evaluation as well as the current PLEP.
A goal should be time driven, specific, short and measurable. It should focus on only one item, for example math calculation. Some teachers will combine all areas of reading together into one goal because the assessments they use measure all 3 areas (reading fluency, reading decoding and reading comprehension). This is okay as long along as all areas are at the same grade level. If fluency and decoding are at one level and comprehension is at another then there should be 2 goals.
When reviewing a goal there needs to be these components: a time by which it'll happen (By April of 2020), a condition under which it will happen (when given a set of 100 addition and subtraction basic fact problems with answers within 20), what will happen (Jamie will complete all 100 problems within 5 minutes), with what accuracy (with 95%accuracy) and how it will be measured (as measured by curriculum based assessments). For teachers that write the baseline information in the goal it would look like this: By April of 2020, when given a set of 100 addition and subtraction problems with answers within 20 Jamie will go from completing 40 problems with 80% accuracy to completing 100 problems with 95% accuracy within 5 minutes as measured by curriculum based assessments.
Now for the objectives, not all IEPs are required to have objectives. So if your child’s IEP does not have them don't freak out. Objectives are the mini goals that need to take place to achieve the main goal. These can be written as benchmarks or as completely separate skills. A benchmark breaks the goal down by each quarter of the school year and the amount of success they should be achieving. Objectives should follow the same format as writing a goal. They need to be time-bound, specific and measurable.
Accommodations:
The accommodations page is another component of the IEP that you will want to make sure you understand. The purpose of the accommodation page is to provide supports within the child school day that will help them access academics as well as functional, day to day processes that the child participates in, for example, recess and transitions.
Service page:
The next page to pay attention to is the service page. On this page it will list all the special education services, where they will be occurring (general education or special education) as well as who will be providing the service. Each service needs to be tied to a goal. A service is usually listed in minutes per week (MPW) or minutes and sessions per week. Either is an acceptable way to display the service. Here is an example:
Service: Reading Comprehension, Math Calculation or Articulation etc.
Who is providing: Special Education Teacher
Who is monitoring it: Special Education Teacher
Time/Frequency of service of service: 100 MPW or 20 minutes a day/ 5 times a week
Location: Special Education Setting
Notice:
The last page to pay attention to is the notice page. This page can go by a few different names (Prior Written Notice and Placement Page are the ones I’m most familiar with). The purpose of this page is to tell you when services are going to take place and if there are conversations from the meeting that need to be documented.
Please remember:
While each state can make laws that tighten the rules they may not loosen the rules. For example your state can say an IEP meeting needs to be held every 6 months, but it cannot say an IEP needs to be held every 15 months. This is because the federal government has set the law at 12 months. The components listed above are required by the federal government to be in every IEP, so make sure your child has them in it. If you ever have questions about what the law is you can google search Individuals with Disabilities Act and your states' department of education website. While there are many other pieces to an IEP these are the main ones to fully understand.
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