IEP Development

How the document gets built

An IEP is a written document with required parts, and the parts go in an order. What must be in an IEP lists them. Read it first if you have never seen a full plan, or if you are holding a draft and want to know what the form is supposed to contain. The rest of this collection follows the order the team writes in.

• Present levels describe what your child does now.
• Annual goals say what should be different by the next annual review, and how anyone would know.
• The services page says who delivers what and how often.
• Progress reports say whether any of it worked.

Read them in that order even when the district hands you the packet with the services page on top. Each part is supposed to trace back to the one before it. A goal with no baseline in present levels has nothing under it. This collection covers what belongs in the document. It does not tell you what your district will agree to write.

Present levels and the numbers behind them

Present levels is the section that says where your child is right now. It is the fastest part of the IEP to skim past and the most expensive one to get wrong. Every baseline inside every goal is supposed to come out of it. What present levels are in an IEP covers what a usable statement contains and what to ask when the wording is vague.

The data behind it comes from testing the district already did. If the evaluation never looked at written expression, present levels will not say anything usable about written expression, and no goal will either. The fix is upstream. What a special education evaluation should include is the article for that gap, and it sits in a different collection because the testing happens before the drafting.

Strengths belong in this section too. A team that can name what your child already does well writes better goals than a team working from a deficit list. Student strengths in the IEP gives examples by category and shows how one of them becomes a present levels line. Bring your own list to the meeting. Nobody at that table has watched your child do homework.

One caution. A strengths paragraph that reads like a greeting card is a sign nobody pulled the file, and what counts as a strength at school is the test to apply. Present levels is one required part out of several, and the required contents list shows what else has to be in there.

Goals and what makes them measurable

A goal nobody can measure is a goal nobody can miss. That is why the wording gets argued about. IEP goals breaks a goal into its four working parts and runs four filled-in examples with the numbers in place.

Goals are the hinge in the middle of the document. They come out of present levels and the services page is supposed to answer them. If you cannot point from a goal back to a line in present levels, ask which data produced the baseline and what date it was collected.

Writing goals from scratch is not your job. The team hands you a draft, and reading a draft against something is easier than reading it cold. The IEP goal bank groups examples by area with the numbers left blank so you can fill in your child's.

Then check the draft against it. A goal that says improve reading to grade level names a place, not a score. Working through 49 measurable goal examples is the fastest way to see the difference between a target and a wish.

A goal bank cannot tell you which goals your child needs. Pick from it and you have somebody else's plan. What a goal cannot do is the part of the goals article worth reading twice, because some needs are answered by a service or an accommodation with no goal attached at all, and that is a legitimate answer the team should have to say out loud.

The services page

This is where the IEP becomes real. A line that reads speech therapy as needed is not a service. How IEP services and supports are written into the plan covers frequency, duration, location, provider, and start date, which are the five fields a vague entry leaves blank.

One phrase on that page carries most of the weight. Special education means the instruction itself changes, and specially designed instruction is the article that defines it. Everything scheduled on the page is supposed to be there so your child can get at the annual goals. A goal everyone agrees on with nothing scheduled behind it is a sentence.

Setting gets written here too, and it is the seam between this collection and the next one. How much of the day your child spends away from classmates without disabilities is a placement decision under its own rule. Least restrictive environment is where that gets decided. This collection does not cover it.

The teachers who carry out the services page often never read the whole IEP. An IEP at a glance is the one-page summary written for them, and the article covers what belongs on it and how to ask. It is worth asking. A case manager who cannot fit the service lines onto one page usually has service lines too vague to fit.

Progress reports and changing the plan

A progress report should tell you whether the IEP is working. Plenty of them tell you your child attended. How the school tracks IEP progress covers what real progress data looks like and what to do when the number stops moving.

Read the report against the goal and not against the comment. If the goal set a criterion and the report says steady progress, the report has not answered the goal. Ask for the raw scores and the dates behind the progress reporting. You are allowed to.

The IEP is reviewed on a schedule, and there is a way to change it in between. When to ask for an IEP meeting or amendment covers both, and that article names the schedule so this page does not have to. Put the request in writing.

When the answer is no, the refusal has a paper form. Prior written notice is the letter the district owes you after it says no, and it lives in a different collection because it reaches far more than IEP drafting.

Two things help before you walk in. A printable IEP meeting prep checklist gives you the pages to pull and a place to write down what was said. And five signs a plan needs a second look is a faster read than this whole collection when you already suspect something is off.

An amendment changes the document. Whether anything changes in the classroom is a separate question, and the answer turns up in the next progress report rather than in the amended IEP itself. So ask one more thing on your way out. If the one-page staff summary still says what the old plan said, the teachers are working from the old plan.

Where an advocate fits

An advocate reads the draft against the evaluation and the progress data before the meeting, then asks for the wording to change where the two do not match. Most advocates on this directory charge $75 to $150 per hour. They are not attorneys. You can talk with an advocate about a draft before you sign anything.