In the world of special education, the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is the vital instrument that dictates the focus and academic strategies used for a student with a diagnosed learning disability. The IEP outlines the goals, objectives, accommodations, and modifications that will be implemented for the following year in order to assist the student bridge the gap between his current instructional levels to the expected general education instructional levels. When an IEP is written specifically, carefully, and with the input/observations of an entire IEP team, it makes the delivery of instruction and the progress monitoring of a special education caseload so much more effective. On the contrary, when an IEP is poorly written or without concrete and measurable goals/objectives, it is essentially useless and creates more work for the special education and general education teachers who are legally bound to deliver instruction to that plan.
Since this is now my third year as a special education teacher in the School District of Philadelphia, I have seen my share of well-written and poorly written IEP’s. It has been my experience that the key to writing a strong, effective IEP is the thorough accumulation of data through observation and assessment, which should drive the goals, objectives, accommodations, and modifications that one creates for the student. The process before plan is the crucial element to implementing a successful IEP.
By the time I am asked to write an IEP for a student, whether he is new to our school or new to special education in general, all CSAP meetings have already taken place and usually our school psychologist has done her Evaluation Report, diagnosing the student with a certain learning disability. I am usually given samples of the student’s work, written (and sometimes verbal) input form the parent, and input from former or current general education teachers about the student’s performance. In some rare cases, I have been able to observe the student in the general education classroom for a day or two to see how he interacts with the curriculum, his teachers, and his classmates. All of this information is invaluable data that will assist me to write the best, customized plan for this student.
Depending on the information I receive from the psychological evaluation regarding the nature of the disability, I will begin testing the student with a norm-referenced test to establish his academic levels in reading and math. In my school we use the Woodcock-Johnson Reading Mastery to establish a comprehensive reading level and the Key Math assessment to establish a comprehensive math level. One of the advantages to using both of these assessments is that it helps the special education instructor to make sense of the raw data (e.g. 3.4 reading level) because both assessments are broken down in multiple segments and components, which enables the teacher to see what specific areas in reading and in math are a student’s strengths and weaknesses.
The Woodcock assessment that I use with my older students is broken down into four components: Word Identification, Word Attack, Word Comprehension, and Passage Comprehension. Word Identification measures the student’s knowledge of vocabulary. Word Attack tests the phonemic and phonetic awareness of a student. Word Comprehension appraises the student’s understanding of word relationships through comparisons of synonyms, antonyms, and analogies. While, Passage Comprehension is a cloze assessment which tests a student’s ability use context clues to derive meaning from a passage. The final comprehensive reading level is derived the compilation of the individual components of the test. The Key Math assessment has 12 to 14 individual components, all which similarly contribute to the comprehensive math level of a student.
The co-dependent nature of these assessments means that if a student scores really well in one component, yet really poorly in another component the overall reading level will be skewed. For example, Student X may possess strong word recognition and be able to sound out words, and thus score a high score on Word Identification. Yet, he may have a poor understanding of the meaning of words and their relationships to other words, and thus score poorly in the Word Comprehension and Passage Comprehension. While, Student Y may have a great understanding of word meanings and relationship and thus score well on the Word Comprehension portion, but he has poor phonics skills and scores really low in Word Attack. Based on the scoring rubrics of the Woodcock, Student X and Student Y may both end up with the same comprehensive reading level. Yet, it obviously would be a gross mistake for Student X and Student Y to have similar IEP goals and objectives because their needs and skills are so dramatically different.
Thus, the initial ground work of observation, data collecting, testing allows the special education teacher to make an informed analysis of the aforementioned information in order to construct the most useful IEP possible. Having the prerequisite data and analysis helps educators to make sense of the raw numbers in order to implement the best educational plan to serve the student with a learning disability. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all IEP. Combining the results of the individual testing components with the observations and input from the other members of the IEP team helps the special education teacher to put the student’s strengths and weaknesses in proper context, which in turn helps the team to select the best resources and accommodations to utilize in the IEP.
Receiving a clear and thorough analysis of all the raw data makes writing, implementing, and delivering the instruction of an IEP so much easier and much more fluid from teacher to teacher. This is not to say that writing an IEP is ever “easy,” however when the necessary plow work is carefully done ahead of time, the implementation and delivery of instruction from an IEP is much more fruitful.
The importance of data collecting and collaborative analysis of information was never more evident than in September and October of 2010 when I tried to change the placement of one of my students with mental retardation. The student, “D. W. ,” had a comprehensive reading level of 2.6 and a comprehensive math level of 2.3, which is similar to or above other students in the seventh grade with the same diagnosis. However, after observing D.W. for years (he had been at our school since kindergarten), the IEP Team and his parents decided that D.W. would be best served in a Life Skills support class. Though he could sound out some words phonetically and had some word recognition, he had very little comprehension/retention and had little to no social/communication skills. After meeting with his parents, they admitted that they did not trust him to go to the corner store alone to buy simple groceries because they were not confident that he could make correct change and they felt that he was far too trusting and lacked social awareness and discernment. When we collectively made the decision to move him into a Life Skills placement, we received some bureaucratic flak from downtown.
Our school does not have a Life Skills support class and so D.W. would have to be placed at another nearby school in another region to receive the services he needed. However, the regional superintendent of the new school just looked at his comprehensive reading and math levels; and without ever talking to the IEP Team or the student himself, she decided that he didn’t need Life Skills support. We had to prove to her with ample documentation of our observations and parental input of why we chose such placement. Even after all of that, she still fought tooth and nail to restrict the move until she finally came to our building and observed D.W. in the classroom setting for herself. Within ten minutes of her observation, she realized that he was desperately in need of a Life Skills class and she approved the transfer. The fact that we as a team had lots of valid data allowed us to be able to properly analyze the data in order to write the most suitable IEP for D.W. Because we were so thorough in collecting data and writing a sound IEP, even the needless bureaucratic flak could not ultimately withhold D.W. from getting the adequate services for his needs.
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