Student strengths in the IEP

Quick answer

Your child's strengths are the specific things your child already does well at school, described so another adult could watch for them happening. Reads unfamiliar words by breaking them into parts. Remembers a route after one walk. Stays with a hard task while an adult sits nearby. Those are strengths. Bright, sweet, and hardworking are not, because no team can plan around an adjective. Below are 45 examples in seven categories, and then the part most lists skip, which is how one of them turns into a sentence the IEP can use.

What counts as a strength

A strength is something your child does now, not something a new program would have to teach. Two questions sort the real ones from the compliments. Could a substitute teacher see it happen inside a week, without being told what to look for. Could you say when, where, and how often.

Grade level does not decide it. A fourth grader reading two years below her class who decodes every spelling pattern she has been taught has a strength in decoding, and the team can teach the next pattern from there instead of starting the year over.

Strengths that only show up at home count as information rather than data, and the school will look for them before writing anything down.

Academic strengths

Academic strengths are the subject-area tasks a student can already do, in reading, writing, math, and everything else on the schedule. Eight that turn up on real present-levels pages.

• Reads grade-level text aloud accurately when the passage has been previewed
• Answers comprehension questions correctly when the text is read to her
• Retells a story in order after one reading
• Solves multi-step problems written as word problems about money
• Knows multiplication facts through 10 without counting
• Sorts data into a table and graphs it with no model in front of him
• Spells phonetically regular words correctly on the weekly list
• Types four times more than he writes by hand, at the same accuracy

Take these off report cards and work samples, not memory.

Learning and thinking strengths

Learning and thinking strengths describe how your child takes information in and holds onto it, apart from any one subject. These predict which teaching method will work.

• Learns a procedure faster by watching it than by hearing it
• Remembers routes, layouts, and where things are kept
• Notices patterns and spots errors other students walk past
• Takes apart and rebuilds mechanical things without instructions
• Uses a skill from one class in another without being told to
• Recalls detail on anything connected to a preferred subject

A child who remembers every hurricane since 2015 has a working memory. Say so before anyone writes that memory is impaired.

Communication strengths

Communication strengths cover how your child gets a message out and takes one in, by speech, device, gesture, or writing.

• Asks a familiar adult for help without being prompted
• Uses a speech-generating device to request across the whole school day
• Tells an adult what happened after a conflict at recess
• Follows two-step spoken directions the first time
• Says it another way when the listener did not understand
• Reads gestures and facial expressions accurately
• Writes a clearer message than he can say out loud

A child who talks easily in one setting and not another has a strength and a need in the same skill. Write both.

Social and emotional strengths

Social and emotional strengths are what your child does with other people, and with her own feelings when something goes wrong.

• Keeps the same two friendships across a school year
• Notices when a classmate is upset and tells an adult
• Works with a partner for a full period without an adult nearby
• Takes turns and follows the rules of a game
• Accepts an apology and returns to the activity
• Includes younger students at recess without being asked

Attach a setting and a frequency and these stop reading as filler.

Self-regulation and independence strengths

Self-regulation and independence strengths are the things your child manages without an adult standing there. This is the category schools most often leave blank.

• Uses a break card before behavior escalates, on most days
• Returns to class within five minutes of taking a break
• Accepts a correction from a preferred teacher without arguing
• Handles a schedule change when it is posted in advance
• Tells an adult when frustration is building
• Packs his own backpack from a written checklist
• Turns in work on time in the classes that use the online portal
• Moves through arrival, lunch, and dismissal without adult help

Blank is expensive. This is the category that decides how much adult support the IEP has to buy.

Physical, motor, and sensory strengths

Physical, motor, and sensory strengths cover the body parts of a school day, from handwriting to the cafeteria at 11:40.

• Runs, climbs, and rides a bike with peers
• Uses scissors and glue accurately for a full art project
• Holds a pencil correctly for writing tasks under ten minutes
• Carries a lunch tray across the cafeteria without spilling
• Sees and hears well with glasses and hearing aids in place

Teams misread that last line. Corrected hearing is a strength and a dependency at once, so the plan needs an answer for the morning the battery is dead.

Interest and motivation strengths

Interest and motivation strengths are what your child works at longer than the task asked for.

• Works longer on anything involving animals, engines, or drawing
• Volunteers for classroom jobs and finishes them
• Attends every band rehearsal and knows his part
• Asks questions about how machines are put together
• Stays with a hard math problem while the teacher stays nearby

Interests are the cheapest lever in the IEP. A fluency goal built on a passage about engines gets practiced, and the same goal on the water cycle does not. Ask for it to appear in the IEP annual goals, not only in present levels.

How a strength becomes a present-levels statement

A strength becomes usable when you attach four things to it. The skill, the condition it happens under, a number, and where the number came from. Everything else is a compliment in a state-mandated box. Present levels is the section it lands in, so read what present levels are for the rest of what that section carries.

Three home versions, rewritten.

• "She's great with little kids" becomes "Supervises two kindergarten reading buddies for 20 minutes each Friday, per the reading teacher's log since September"
• "He's a whiz on the computer" becomes "Types 24 words per minute at 90 percent accuracy and writes four times more on the device than by hand"
• "He never gives up" becomes "Works a two-step math problem for 6 minutes before asking for help, up from 2 minutes in September"

Now the sentences do work. The reading-buddy line argues for a fluency goal practiced out loud with younger students, the typing line argues for speech-to-text instead of a fourth year of handwriting drill, and the 6-minute line hands progress monitoring a baseline for the spring.

None of that makes your number true. A figure the teacher cannot reproduce weakens every other line on the list.

Academic weaknesses, with 8 examples

Academic weaknesses are the school tasks a student cannot do yet at grade level, and an IEP calls them needs. IDEA's phrase is academic, developmental, and functional needs. The swap is not politeness. A weakness is a verdict on a child and a need is a description of a task.

• "Poor reader" becomes "Reads 62 words per minute on grade-level text, against a class median of 118"
• "Bad at math" becomes "Adds and subtracts within 20, and does not yet regroup"
• "Can't write" becomes "Writes three-sentence paragraphs with correct capitals and end marks, and does not plan before drafting"
• "Terrible speller" becomes "Spells 8 of 20 words correctly on the weekly grade-level list"
• "Disorganized" becomes "Turns in 4 of 12 assignments in the two classes with no posted checklist"
• "Can't focus" becomes "Sustains an independent task for 4 minutes before needing a prompt"
• "Behavior problems" becomes "Leaves the room without permission about twice a week, most often during independent writing"
• "No social skills" becomes "Joins a group an adult has set up, and does not yet start one himself"

Every rewrite names the task and gives a number somebody can check again in March. Leave the cause out. Why it happens is the evaluation's job.

Strengths as a student

Strengths as a student are what your child can say about her own learning, and they belong in present levels in her words rather than in yours. IDEA puts the child on the IEP team whenever appropriate, at 34 C.F.R. § 300.321(a)(7). No minimum age appears in the regulation.

Ask these the week before the meeting, and write the answers down as spoken.

A student who reports that reading is fine as long as nobody is watching has named a strength, a need, and an accommodation at once.

Two limits. A child who cannot answer those questions still has strengths, and the team writes them from observation. And this is a school record rather than an interview answer, so a strengths list for a college application belongs on a different page.

What the law requires

The IEP team must consider the strengths of the child. The regulation lists it first, at 34 C.F.R. § 300.324(a)(1), ahead of parent concerns, evaluation results, and the child's academic, developmental, and functional needs. Congress wrote the same four into the statute at 20 U.S.C. § 1414(d)(3)(A)(i).

Strengths then have somewhere to live. Every IEP opens with a statement of the child's present levels of academic achievement and functional performance, at 34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(1). See what must be in an IEP for the rest of the contents.

Consider is the whole duty. Nothing in § 300.324 requires a strengths heading on the form, a minimum number of strengths, or that the team adopt the ones you brought. A team that reads your list and writes its own sentence has complied. What it cannot do is skip the step.

IDEA sets the contents of an IEP and not its form, so the box your strengths land in has a different name in every state.

Getting your list into the IEP

Send it in writing, because a strength said out loud at the table lives or dies with whoever is typing. Email the case manager three to five school days out, and ask for the list to be pasted into present levels rather than attached at the back.

Cut the list to five before you send it, because twenty strengths get skimmed and five get read.

Sending it does not put it in the IEP. Read the draft that comes back, because a list discussed and never typed is a list that did not happen.

Where an advocate fits

The strengths argument is small and it settles bigger ones. A team working from a thin present-levels section can propose a smaller goal and fewer service minutes, and the parent with nothing written down argues from memory against a file. An advocate reads the evaluation against the draft IEP and puts your five items into the district's own wording. Advocates are not attorneys. They cannot file a lawsuit or represent you at a due process hearing. Most advocates on our directory charge $75 to $150 per hour, and you can search by state to see who works near you.

What a strengths list cannot do

Four limits.

• A strength can be used against you. Teams read a strong present-levels paragraph as evidence the child needs less, so ask for the data behind any cut to minutes.
• Strengths do not change eligibility. A student can be strong in five categories here and still qualify, which is the subject of gifted students with a disability.
• A list with no numbers is decoration. It gets pasted in and read by nobody, including the teacher who inherits the file in September.
• No list obligates anyone to a particular goal, service, or placement. The duty at § 300.324(a)(1) is to consider.

The team has to consider what you bring. It does not have to be impressed by it.