[Background music] Every year, families and educators of students
with disabilities – students like Liam – get together to plan individualized
education programs, or IEPs, in order to help each student succeed in school.
And later, in college, career, and life in the community.
We recommend a five-step process for developing
a college and career ready IEP. The first step is to make sure everyone
understands how the student is doing, academically and otherwise.
Liam’s IEP team gathers data – information – about his academic
and functional skills compared to the standards
and expectations for all students in his grade.
They note his strengths and his passions. This is great information that will
help the team later plan services that support Liam’s goals.
Based on the information shared, the team is concerned Liam
is not meeting all the grade-level standards when it comes to reading.
So what’s next?
A rich, open discussion to discover Liam’s disability-related needs.
The second step in developing a college and career ready IEP
is asking how Liam’s disability affects his access to instruction, engagement,
and progress in school and why he is not achieving
some of the grade-level standards in reading.
The team begins by sharing what they’ve observed.
Liam’s teacher has noticed, during small-group instruction,
that Liam has difficulty answering questions after reading grade-level text.
Liam’s dad is concerned because he sees Liam
losing confidence in his ability to read. And Liam agrees that’s true.
Now the team digs deep into why Liam is struggling in reading.
They want to identify the root causes of his challenges.
His teacher has observed Liam’s struggles to identify
key ideas and details in what he reads. Maybe that makes him frustrated,
so he goes off-task. But why does he have this difficulty?
The reading specialist has worked with Liam.
She says he’s mastered many foundational reading skills.
But on the skill of decoding – like sounding out words –
he is more than a year behind the benchmark for his grade.
It’s hard to read fluently and understand the ideas in a text
if you’re having to stop to sound out too many words.
Could this decoding challenge be the root cause of Liam’s reading
struggles and his off-task behavior? The IEP team agrees that it is.
So now they can move on to step 3 – addressing Liam’s
disability-related needs and supporting his unique strengths
by developing ambitious, yet achievable, goals.
They develop a goal for him to increase competency in decoding words.
And the goal to read text accurately, quickly, and with expression.
Achieving these goals will help Liam identify the main idea and supporting
details in grade-level materials, help him have greater confidence while reading,
and reduce his off-task behaviors, all of which are ultimately goals for Liam.
With the goals set, it’s time for step 4 –
aligning special education services to support Liam with his goals.
Everybody on the team discusses how they might contribute.
Liam’s teacher knows just the book that will
engage him while he learns to decode more words.
Because the general education reading instruction alone
has not been successful in meeting Liam’s needs, the IEP team determines
that he also needs some specially designed instruction in reading.
The reading specialist and the special education teacher will
work together to figure out the best strategies to help Liam decode words.
While Liam is working to increase his decoding and fluency skills,
all his teachers will make sure he gets certain accommodations in the general
education classroom, where he can continue to engage with his peers,
accessing the same rich content and curriculum that they are
and engaging in the same thinking strategies.
Some accommodations in Liam’s IEP will even be
made available to the whole class, such as text-to-speech on student laptops.
Liam is excited about this plan. The team writes down
today’s discussion in his IEP so everyone knows the plan.
They adjourn for the day, but Liam’s team will continually monitor his
progress, reviewing and revising his IEP as needed to help him stay on track to
meet his goals. That’s step 5 of college and career ready IEP development.
And then the process begins again.
Developing college and career ready IEPs from when a student
is first identified for special education, whether in preschool or high school,
all the way through graduation, is how to close achievement gaps
and provide additional opportunities for student learning.
It’s how to help students with disabilities graduate
ready for college, career, and life in the community.
For help with the five-step process, there are sample IEP forms school
can use, and more resources, such as five research-based beliefs
that underlie the five-step process, available on the college and career ready
IEPs page at the Department of Public Instruction website.
[ Music ]