This article is being published in our
newsletter with permission from Barbara Day, Special Education Guide
on about.com. You can visit Barbara Day on her website at
http://www.specialed.about.com/
What Should Be in an IEP?
The IEP, or Individual Education Plan, is a written statement for
each student, ages three to twenty-one. Whenever it is developed
and/or revised, it must contain the following:
- The student's present levels of educational performance,
including
- How the disability of a student (ages 6 through 21) affects
his or her involvement and progress in the general curriculum,
or
- How the disability of a preschooler (ages 3 through 5)
affects his or her participation in appropriate activities
- Measurable annual goals, including "benchmarks" or short-term
objectives, related to
- Meeting needs resulting from the disability, in order to
enable the student to be involved in and progress in the
general curriculum
- Meeting each of the student's other disability-related
needs
- The special education and related services and supplementary
aids and services that will be provided to the student or on the
student's behalf, and the program modifications or supports for
school personnel that will be provided so that the student
- Can advance appropriately toward attaining the annual
goals
- Be involved and progress in the general curriculum and
participate in extracurricular and other nonacademic
activities
- Be educated and participate with other students with
disabilities and with students who do not have disabilities in
general education
- The extent, if any, to which the student will not participate
with students who do not have disabilities in general education
classes and in extracurricular and other nonacademic activities of
the general curriculum.
- Any individual modifications in the administration of state or
district-wide assessments of student achievement, so that the
student can participate in those assessments; moreover, if the IEP
determines that the student will not participate in a particular
state or district-wide assessment or any part of an assessment,
why that assessment is not appropriate for the student and how the
student will be assessed.
- The projected date for beginning the services and program
modifications and the anticipated frequency, location, and
duration of each
- Transition plans, including
- Beginning at age fourteen and each year thereafter, a
statement of the student's needs that are related to transition
services, including those that focus on the student's courses
of study (e.g., the student's participation in
advanced-placement courses or a vocational education program)
- Beginning at age sixteen (or sooner, if the IEP team
decides it is appropriate), a statement of needed transition
services, including when appropriate a statement of the
interagency responsibilities or any other needed linkages
- Beginning at least one year before the student reaches the
age of majority under state law (usually, at age eighteen), a
statement that the student has been informed of those rights
under IEAS that will transfer to the student from the parents
when the student becomes of age
- How the student's progress toward annual goals will be
measured and how the student's parents will be informed - at least
as often as parents of students who do not have disabilities are
informed - of the student's progress toward annual goals and the
extent to which the progress is sufficient to enable the student
to achieve the goals by the end of the school year
Source: Exceptional Lives: Special Education in Today's Schools,
1999, Merril Source:
The following pages may be helpful for parents who want to
learn all they can about Special Education and how to be an effective
leader of an IEP team:
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