How to Write an IEP

Defining the IEP and its Role

An Individualized Education Program (IEP) is a special education program that aims to meet the needs of a single student with disabilities that affect their ability to access education. This program is mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Simply put, an IEP is a mechanism by which children with special learning needs can receive the extra attention they need to learn better at school. It is required by law to be collaboratively developed by a student’s school district staff (i.e., teachers, relevant administrative and service personnel), parents/guardians, and, in some cases, even the students themselves.

IDEA mandates that children in public schools who receive special education must have an IEP and that the IEP must be for one student only, i.e. truly individualized. This ensures that the student receives the attention and depth of support that they need to do well at school.

The IEP as a Blueprint for a Child’s Education

An IEP is a powerful tool because it is thorough yet flexible, allowing it to change as a student grows and progresses on their educational journey. This ensures continued progress and development for the student, which not only supports their academic growth but also helps them become confident and independent later in life. More importantly, an IEP is also a legal document.

As a result, an IEP effectively becomes a blueprint for how a child with learning disabilities should be educated: it is a detailed plan with clear, concrete goals and a timeline for their achievement, covering the course of a student’s educational journey.

However, for this to be true, IEP goals must not be general or generic in any way. They have to be formulated with close collaboration and consultation between parents, teachers, special education teachers, and other professionals, all of whom form the child’s IEP team.

The Significance of Clarity and Understanding for All Team Members

Developing an IEP is a collaborative effort that requires careful, considered input from many people, including a team of school administrators, teachers, mental health and special services professionals, and the student’s parents/guardians.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of the IEP team’s membership, it is very important that all members be on the same page about what should be in an IEP. In addition to setting good goals within the IEP, the team should also be clear about its own goals for ensuring that the student’s needs are met in the best way possible.

This requires that all IEP team members be open, communicative, and cooperative, and do their best to settle any disagreements and conflicts that might arise.

The Importance of Regularly Reviewing and Updating IEP Goals

IEPs are flexible roadmaps and, by design, are adaptable. The IDEA law mandates that an IEP meeting be held annually. This meeting is convened to discuss the student’s academic progress, the challenges they are facing and how they can be remedied/addressed, changes that need to be made to the services being offered to the child, and any additional support that the student might need. This meeting might also modify the IEP and create a new one.

An IEP can also be modified without a meeting, under the following conditions:

• The annual IEP meeting has already been held in person.
• Parents/guardians and relevant school staff/IEP team members agree not to meet and to take this approach instead.

In addition to the above, if any changes to the IEP are made without a meeting, all IEP team members must be notified in writing. This is in line with IDEA, which requires all members of an IEP team to receive a copy of the IEP and be informed of their duties.

The IEP team does not necessarily have to meet only once per year; parents can request an IEP meeting whenever they feel it is appropriate, not just the mandatory annual meeting. These additional IEP meetings can be an opportunity to reassess the student’s progress and thus align their IEP goals to any functional or academic demands that the parents deem appropriate. In this way, the IEP team can maintain routine monitoring of the student’s progress towards the goals set in the IEP, whilst also ensuring that the services and support the student receives remain aligned with the IEP.

Doing this ensures that the student’s IEP goals continue to align with the student’s needs as they grow and evolve over time. Any IEP can benefit immensely from modifications. The goals can also be changed to more advanced levels as the student’s skills develop over time.

Emphasizing Student Success Through a Comprehensive IEP

The ultimate goal of an IEP is to focus on a student’s overall well-being and educational success, as the very existence of an IEP is due to the fact that, without it, a student with learning disabilities cannot successfully complete their education.

Therefore, a comprehensive IEP is key to ensuring that any student with learning disabilities can keep putting their best foot forward year after year and do the best that they possibly can by providing the student an equitable learning experience.

Key Participants and Their Roles in the IEP Process

There are legal requirements for the composition of the team that writes an IEP for a child. By law, the IEP team must include:

1. Parents/Guardians/Family members

Parents know their children the best; they are familiar with their child’s strengths, struggles, common behaviors and, ultimately, have the deepest insights into what is best for their children. Therefore, input from parents/guardians is vital to the IEP writing process.

In addition, parents are heavily involved in implementing the IEP; they provide insights, flag any issues that arise, and advocate for their child. This makes them a key part of the implementation process, as they spend the most time with their children. Family, therefore, is a crucial support system for implementing an IEP.

2. The School Team

The school attended by the student receiving IEP support is responsible for providing the majority of the student’s IEP team members. These team members include:

• At least one general/regular education teacher and at least one special education teacher
• Related service providers (speech-learning pathologists, occupational therapists, psychologists, etc.)
• A representative of the school district who has the power to make decisions
• A qualified person who can interpret what the child’s evaluation results mean

It is very important for the school team to ensure that communication among members of the IEP team is factual and positive during IEP meetings. The school staff should also ensure that the communication in these meetings is clear and understandable to all and does not contain any jargon that might confuse or alienate parents or other members.

3. The Student

While students aren’t required to participate in their own IEP writing process, there is nothing in the law that prevents them from doing so. In some ways, it is best that the participants. If a student is interested in joining IEP meetings, they should be allowed to do so; this gives them a better understanding of how and why their IEP goals are set.

More importantly, when a student participates in their own IEP writing process, it gives them a sense of agency and empowers them to have a voice in shaping their educational journey. A student can voice their struggles in their own way and be helped by other members of the IEP team to articulate what those struggles are and how they can be addressed.

Over time, participation in the IEP writing process helps the student mature and become more independent. For this reason, at around age 16, most students are actively encouraged to join their IEP meetings to help with their transition plan, which supports students in special education as they transition from school to adult life.

Components of an Effective IEP

The ultimate outcome of an IEP team’s work and meetings is the development of an IEP for a child with special education needs. The following sections cover the contents of an effective IEP.

1. Strengths and Needs Assessment

Before a student receives an IEP, their eligibility must be determined under IDEA. In the simplest of terms, the core qualifying criterion for IEPs is a two-part requirement:

1. The presence of disability itself: A child should have some sort of physical or psychological impairment, and it must be one of the 13 physical or psychological disabilities identified in IDEA;
2. A demonstrated need for the child to receive special education services: For a child to receive an IEP, it is necessary that the child in question has a disability that specifically impairs or impacts their performance at school in a negative way, whether academically, emotionally, or socially. In other words, a medical diagnosis/evaluation of disability, even when it is among the 13 covered by IDEA, is not enough on its own. If a child has a disability that does not interfere with their education, the child can instead benefit from a 504 plan.

Once a student is found eligible for an IEP, the student’s school conducts a comprehensive series of assessments as part of the evaluation process to establish a baseline of the student’s areas of challenge and strengths. The assessments typically are:

Information from all of these evaluation “steps” is used to identify the student’s specific needs, the challenges they face, and how best to address them. In other words, the assessments drive goal-setting and service provision for the student in question, whilst highlighting strengths for motivation and accommodations.

2. Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance

The second most important element of an IEP is a section that records a student’s present level of academic achievement and overall functional performance. This is meant to serve as a baseline for the student, describing how they are currently doing in school and how well they can function in their day-to-day life.

To document this baseline, an IEP must record both qualitative and quantitative data, providing a clear narrative of a student’s present academic and other aptitudes. Apart from documentingthe baseline, recording the student’s present level of performance is crucial for the IEP to identify strengths or deficiencies in the student’s abilities, which in turn help the team determine what goals to set for the student.

3. Goal Setting: SMART Goals

When outlining the goals in an IEP, the current best practice is to follow the SMART goal model.

SMART is a pneumonic that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Following these five broad rules as guiding principles for defining and setting goals in an IEP can ensure that the goals address each area of a student’s identified needs. It is important that when these goals are set, input from parents/guardians and the student themselves, if they’re participating, be taken; additionally, goals are best worded succinctly, ideally in one or two sentences.

The benefits of SMART goals are that they can help write a consistent IEP and provide a way to reach consensus within an IEP team, as the process of writing an IEP involves a team of people discussing and deliberating on what the IEP should contain. Additionally, the existence of goals generally creates a means to ensure transparency and accountability for all involved, whilst also allowing monitoring of the student’s progress over time.

4. Accommodations and Modifications

The accommodations and modifications section of an IEP is where the IEP team documents all the supports they deem necessary for the student. When writing this section, care must be taken to differentiate between an accommodation and a modification.

An accommodation is a support allowed to a student so that they demonstrate what they know or show what they can do in a classroom, without changing any performance requirements; e.g. a speech-to-text device, so that an IEP student can better understand what their teacher is saying in a math class, but the student still has to score at least 60% to pass, just like the rest of the class.

In contrast, a modification is when learning or performance expectations, or even curricula, are changed to better support the student; e.g., giving an IEP student in English class a different reading comprehension exercise than what all other students receive.

Simply put, an accommodation is a way to level the playing field for a student, whereas a modification is an alteration to the work the student has to do or to the study content the student is given.

In cases of modification, they are best used sparingly, even for IEP students, as they can lower expectations for a student at any given grade level (i.e., they could be “left behind”). Selecting modifications should, therefore, be purposeful and based on the student’s strengths, needs, and goals.

5. Additional Considerations

In addition to the sections outlined above, an IEP must also make sure to document:

• The extent of separation from non-disabled children that the child must have, including participation in any extracurricular/non-academic activities;
• Whether the child should partake in any state or district-wide assessments, and if so, how (i.e., how might the tests be modified to accommodate the child’s needs);
• Details regarding what services are needed, when they will need to commence, and how long they will last.

Practical Steps for Writing Effective IEP Goals

Following the SMART approach to goals is a good way to draft IEP goals that are consistent, transparent, and overall strong; however, a few additional considerations when creating IEP goals are:

• Avoiding the use of vague language (e.g., “comprehend a story”, “use appropriate social skills”); every goal should be measurable.
• Creating goals about behaviors that are specific and observable (e.g., “Answer three questions,” “Stand two feet from…”)
• Avoid objectives that require constant monitoring (e.g., “Speak in complete sentences throughout the day”)
• Focusing strictly on measurable outcomes (e.g., “Use three complete sentences at lunchtime”)
• Distilling the IEP team’s understanding of the function of a student’s behavior into IEP goals through a Functional Behavioral Assessment, focusing on teaching alternative skills linked to any given behavior’s function (e.g., communication cards for frustration, self-Management strategies for anxiety, etc.)

Learning to Write IEPs: Resources and Strategies

Writing an IEP can be a daunting and arduous process. The IEP team has to juggle a plethora of factors whilst also writing goals that are appropriate and create the conditions for a student to succeed. Despite the SMART guidelines and additional practical tips, it can still be challenging to know how to set goals.

This is where the use of “goal banks” can be very instructive and helpful for the IEP team. Goal banks are pre-written guides with sample goals that can be used as a guide/inspiration when setting specific goals for a student. There are different goal banks for different learning needs (e.g., separate goal banks for autism, occupational therapy, executive functioning, etc.).

These goal banks can be immensely useful, as mimicking and adapting goals from existing IEPs can be especially helpful for parents/guardians who are just getting involved in the process of creating their child’s first IEP. Adapting goals from goal banks can save time when developing goals, as they provide inspiration and examples; goal banks can also help an IEP team stay aligned with educational best practices.

There are also college courses, often available in some places, dedicated to teaching how to write an IEP. However, many parents will likely prefer, for reasons of time, money, and overall effort, to work with an experienced teacher and practitioner in the IEP space. This practitioner can act as a mentor on how to approach the IEP writing process.

Whatever approach is taken to construct IEP goals, it is important to ensure that using pre-made goals or someone’s past experience in creating an IEP does not result in generic, “cookie-cutter” goals that disregard the specific needs of the child the IEP is supposed to serve.

Take the Next Step in Your Advocacy Journey

Developing an IEP for your child can be a daunting and intimidating process, rife with complicated, bureaucratic procedures and areas outside parents’ expertise.

​Navigating through all of this can feel isolating, but it doesn’t have to be!

The parent is the most crucial member of any IEP team. Therefore, at The Advocacy Circle, we believe that an informed parent is a child’s most powerful ally. Whether you are preparing for your first IEP meeting or facing a complex placement dispute, The Advocacy Circle provides parents the tools, templates, and community support they need to lead their child’s team with confidence.

​Join The Advocacy Circle to become part of a community of parents who are turning exhaustion into effective advocacy.