Featured Speakers:
- Beckie Davis, Senior Program Associate, Special Education at WestEd
- Kate Nagle, Senior Program Associate, Special Education at WestEd
Host:
- Kelly Wynveen, Senior Project Manager, School Choice at WestEd
Kelly Wynveen:
Hi all. Thank you so much for joining. People are still trickling in. We’ll give it a minute while everyone joins. But welcome to our second best practice webinar through the California STACS Program, where today we’ll be talking about Individualized Education Program Basics for California Charter Schools. My name is Kelly Wynveen. I’m a senior project manager with WestEd, and we are really excited to kick this off. So before we begin, just a quick background on the California STACS Program. STAC stands for the Statewide Technical Assistance for Charter Schools, which is a sub-grant through the California Department of Education, funded by their Federal Public Charter schools grant program, which is bringing you this programming today, and also provides technical assistance to California charter schools on best practice areas for increasing academic achievement on five different topic areas.
That includes English learners, special education, socioeconomically disadvantaged students, career and technical education, and innovative strategies. WestEd leads the work on the special education strand of this programming, and we are excited to present this material to you today, but also highly recommend you check out the other programming offered from separate organizations on these other topic areas. Quick background on WestEd before we jump in. WestEd is a non-partisan research, development, and service agency. We work with schools, districts, state departments of education to promote excellence, improve learning, and increase opportunity for children, youth, and adults. From the WestEd team, here is our team for the California STACS Project. Today, you’ll be hearing from myself as well as my colleagues Beckie Davis and Kate Nagle, who are two senior program associates on our special education team.
They work with schools, districts, and states across the country related to special education, and we are really excited to have them on the call today to talk about special education for California charter schools. Before we jump into some quick working agreements, our best practice webinars are content heavy today, so you’ll be hearing a lot from the WestEd staff. We ask you to be present today, to assume good intentions. Keep your mics muted unless you want to jump in with a question or a comment and stay actively engaged. This is, like I said, a more content heavy session, and we’ll follow up this session with a continuous improvement network session, which is far less sit-and-get, and the chance to really hear from your peers.
So we highly encourage you to register for both of our best practice webinars and our continuous improvement networks, where you’ll really take the content and put it into practice and have time to engage with your peers, utilize some resources that we’ll present, and dive deep into the content with one another. A quick overview of what’s to come through the California STACS program related to special education. There will be three years of this professional development related to special education for California charter schools. Our first two webinars, this is number two in our series, have really been focused on foundational material. Best practice webinar number one was all around special education foundations, and today we’re gonna dive into the basics of IEPs.
From there in year two, we will offer more targeted webinars that will cover a range of topics specific to meeting California specific requirements for students with disabilities. And like I said, we’ll follow up each webinar with a continuous improvement network where you can really apply your learning, interact with your peers, and talk through some problems or challenges you might be experiencing at your school. Our agenda for today, so we will start by talking about the purpose of IEPs for special education students. We’ll then take some time to really dive deep into the required components of an IEP, and also talk about the importance of internal alignment of IEPs. Finally, we’ll end today’s session by sharing out some key resources, both California specific resources, as well as some nationwide resources that we think will be helpful for you in your role.
Our objectives for today is we hope you’ll walk away with a better understanding of the purpose of IEPs and their legal foundation, to identify key components of IEPs, to clarify the roles for team members when it comes to IEPs, and also to give you access and resources for writing educationally meaningful and legally compliant IEPs for students with disabilities in charter schools. So from there, we’re gonna dive in and I will pass it to my colleague, Beckie Davis, to get us started.
Beckie Davis:
We’ve got a quick little poll for you. We wanna know what is your experience with IEP writing or IEPs? Is it writing, participating in the development, implementing IEPs? Sorry. So what is your actual experience? Is it very little, you’re still taking baby steps? Do you have moderate experience, you are kind of up and running with it, or are you a fully grown adult with IEPs? So very little experience, still baby steps, moderate experience, you’re kind of off and running, or you are a fully grown adult when it comes to IEPs. 25% have very little experience, 33% have moderate experience, and 42% have tons of experience. Yay! So we’ve got a nice kind of cross section of experience with IEPs.
So we’re gonna start with some very basics about an IEP. According to the federal definition of an IEP, it’s a statement that is describing a student with disabilities, present levels where they’re performing currently. It’s a statement about their specially designed instruction that they need and then their annual goals that describe how they’re going to reach the next step in the process. So it is a legal document and it’s individualized, as the first word in individualized education program means. And it’s designed to ensure what the feds call a free appropriate public education, or FAPE. That means helping a student with a disability gain access to the general ed instructional setting. And the California Department of Ed provides guidelines for IEPs that emphasize student-centered planning, inclusion in general education, and strict adherence to service implementation.
In other words, keeping the student at the forefront of the IEP development, including the student as much as possible with appropriate supports and services in the general ed setting, and then implementing the IEP as it’s written. There are key regulations that require IEPs to include measurable goals, present levels of performance, and then the necessary services to ensure that free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. And we’ll be talking more about those components in just a moment. But beside the legal definition of an IEP, an IEP really is the vehicle through which that student accesses general ed instruction. And just like with our own families or our own personal cars, every vehicle is designed to meet the needs of that particular person.
So if you have a large family, you may have a minivan that’s designed so that you can get all of your family back and forth. If you are single, you might enjoy a two seater sports car. The IEP is developed along the same format. It depends on what that particular student needs in order to access the general curriculum. And the IEP is the foundation of all of IDEA. So who qualifies for an IEP? Well, in California, the student must be between the ages of birth through 22 years of age, but birth through three, two-three is handled in conjunction with another state agency. The student must have received an assessment of educational needs by qualified persons. The student has to meet one of 13 or more disability categories defined in IDEA and California actually adds a 14th, which is medical necessity for 3, 4, 5 year olds.
That disability has to impact the student’s educational performance, thereby requiring specialized instruction. So it’s not enough that the student is determined to have a disability, but because of that disability, the student has to require specially designed instruction or special education services in order to access the general curriculum. So a good example of when a student might have a disability but not qualify for an IEP might be a student who has attention deficit disorder, ADD or ADHD. And that diagnosis was made by a medical personnel by a doctor, medical doctor. But that student only needs accommodations. He only needs some preferential seating close to the point of instruction. He only needs some prompts for attention when he’s working independently. Just accommodations in the general ed setting like that. He doesn’t need to have specially designed instruction.
So that’s a student who does not qualify for an IEP, although he meets one of the criteria meeting the eligibility category. He does not need specially designed instruction. And so he might qualify for a 504 plan instead. So who develops the IEP? Well, the federal and state regulations describe the IEP team as including the parents of the child, at least one regular education teacher of the child, not less than one special ed teacher of the child, a representative of the district who is qualified to provide or supervise the provision of specially designed instruction who is knowledgeable about the general ed curriculum, and who is knowledgeable about the availability of resources in the district. And so we usually refer to that person as the local education agency or LEA representative.
And then someone who can interpret instructional implications of the evaluation results. And that may be another member of the IEP team. So if the special ed teacher can interpret educational results, then that person may serve two purposes at the meeting. And then anyone else who has knowledge and expertise about the student. And that phrase, knowledge and expertise, can be defined by the parent. So the parent can say, such and such has knowledge and expertise and I want that person to attend the meeting. Or it could be school personnel who ask for someone else with knowledge to attend the meeting. And then the student, when required or when appropriate. So when and how does the IEP team meet? Well, the team has to meet at least once annually, and that is to review the student’s progress and to make recommendations for changes in the IEP.
The team can meet more frequently if needed. If the parent or the school staff requests an IEP meeting because the student’s not making progress, then the team could meet more than just annually. And again, either the parent or the school can request a meeting. These meetings can be face-to-face, they can be via video conference like Zoom or Google Meet. It can be a conference call or a combination of any of the above. And the most recent reauthorization of IDEA in 2004 expanded the ways that participants could attend IEP meetings in order to ensure that it was easy, to make it easier for people, particularly parents, to be able to participate in meetings. And so now we’re gonna talk a little bit about the required components of the IEP, and I’m gonna turn that over to Kate.
Kate Nagle:
Hi everyone. It’s great to see you all here. I hope that you’re finding the presentation helpful. So on the slide you see the required IEP components, and there’s eight of them. First of all, there’s a present levels of academic achievements and functional performance, or PLAAFPs, or however else you pronounce it. When I was in classroom, we called those present levels of performance, so they were PLOPS. So now we’ve got PLAAFPs, or they can be, we can just call them a present level statement. Following that, then you have some measurable annual goals. Then monitoring plan is our component three. Four is a statement of special education and services and aides. Then we have an explanation of the educational setting, which is where the placement of the child. Then how the child is going to participate in state and district assessment. Then we have the dates, frequency, location, and duration of the special education services. And then for students who are approaching transition age going into high school, then we have a transition plan and an age of majority requirement.
Alrighty. Then we’ll move on to our first required component. So this is the present level statement. It is the foundation of the IEP. And it describes the student’s current performance, both the strengths of the student and then also the weaknesses of the student. And it covers academic performance, so English language arts, math, history, social studies, science, et cetera. And it also describes the students’ current performance in functional areas. So that could be their social functioning, it could be their emotional regulation. It could be their behavioral functioning, could be communication. It could be, for some students, their daily living skills. So these assessments will describe a student’s current strengths, where they are doing well, and then also areas of weakness in academic and in those functional areas. And the purpose is to explain how the students’ disability impacts their involvement and their progress in the general education curriculum.
Based on the students’ present levels of functioning and their strengths and their needs, the IEP team develops measurable annual goals for the student. These goals should meet the needs of the individual but result from their disability, and enable the student to be involved in and crucially to make progress in the general education curriculum. It’s no longer okay just for a student to sit in the classroom, where the IEP is designed to help that student make progress in the general education curriculum. The goals must meet each of the other educational needs as well. So if the student has any functional needs. We know that there are students who may have some behavioral problems, that mean that they are unable to take advantage of instruction in the general education curriculum. And for those students, we would want to have a functional behavioral assessment and then a behavior intervention plan so that they are able to take advantage and to make progress in the general education curriculum.
Now, measurable annual goals outline the progress that the team expects the student to make during the next academic year. They must be achievable, challenging and achievable. They should connect to the specially designed instruction, that’s a special education and the related services, that we’ll be talking about later on in a later slide. But there must be a connection between the student’s goals, their needs, and then what services are going to be provided to help overcome those needs or ameliorate those needs. Now, for children that have the most significant cognitive disabilities who will be assessed on an alternate assessment, these measurable goals need to contain some short-term goals or objectives. And those goals act as stepping stones towards the annual goals. Do we have any questions at all about the first two components?
Anna:
I have a quick question.
Kate Nagle:
Hi Anna, Hi.
Anna:
Hi. Just with the goal planning. So with those stepping stones that you were mentioning, is that something that the special educator focuses on or is that something that the whole team can discuss?
Kate Nagle:
Oh, the whole team would discuss them, yes. The students with significant cognitive disabilities were my area when I was in the classroom. So yeah, you want to get, ’cause these students have kind of multiple issues going on, should we say. And I had a number of students who, although they had visual impairments, in many ways their vision was, was kind of part of their strengths, given that they had, you know, kind of of multiple issues. So you would want to get everybody involved in really thinking through, well, if we analyze the road towards this annual goal, what do we want to see? It may be something like establishing a communication system is your annual goal. Well, then what are your steps towards establishing that communication system? So everybody pitches in. The more people that you can have that have insights of the student and the student’s learning strengths and learning needs, the better.
Beckie Davis:
And you can think of the short term objectives as being like a task analysis.
Kate Nagle:
Yes.
Beckie Davis:
So like Kate said, here’s the broad goal. What are the steps that the student needs to reach in order to achieve that goal? And this is an example that’s not… So for example, if a child is learning to tie his shoe, the first step might to hold the laces in a pincer grasp. The next one would be to cross the laces. Then the next short term objective would be to thread the lace through. And then there’s something about bunny ears or something.
Kate Nagle:
Bunny’s going down the hole or something.
Beckie Davis:
Yes, yes. So it’s a task analysis of what are those steps broken down that the student needs to achieve, usually in a specific order in order to achieve the entire annual goal.
Kate Nagle:
Thanks Beckie. And thank you Anna.
Anna:
Thank you.
Kate Nagle:
Next slide. So the next component is having a monitoring plan. And we are on component three. And the monitoring plan just outlines how the team is going to measure the student’s progress over time towards their IEP goals. So we don’t just kind of have the IEP team meeting and then the year goes by and no one’s tracking anything. So how the student’s progress is going to be measured over time towards those IEP goals. And then a really important point is how and when information is going to be shared with the parent. Okay? And that could be, oh, well, you know, we’ll send quarterly reports or monthly reports. And these reports are in addition to any other regular report cards that are received by all students.
So you know how sometimes all students will receive benchmark scores from district assessments? Well, the expectation is that if it’s a child with a disability. They’ll receive those benchmark scores too, like every student does. But then there also needs to be updated information for the parent about the student’s progress towards their IEP goals. So the monitoring plan will include how the team’s going to measure the student’s progress, and then how they’re going to share that information with the parent. Next slide.
Beckie Davis:
So Kate, if I can say one more thing about this — so what would happen if you waited until the end of the year to figure out how the student was doing on the annual goal and the student wasn’t making progress? It would be too late to change your instruction by that time. And so that’s one of the key reasoning behind that progress monitoring is that you can gather the data and make data-driven instructional decisions and change instruction if the child’s not making progress, rather than waiting until the end of the year when it’s too late to do anything.
Kate Nagle:
Or conversely, you might have the opposite situation, where the student all of a sudden just takes off and they are just wiping the floor with their IEP goals. And then you would want to come together and decide, well they, you know, what’s happening here. Do we need some harder goals for them? ’cause we all know that one of the issues for students with disabilities is that people can have very low expectations for them. So we just want to track their progress, be it too much progress or be it too little progress. Next slide. Okay. The next component, component four is the statements of special education services and aids. And if I can take your mind back to when we did the present levels of academic and functional performance, there needs to be a tie-in between those strengths and needs with the goals, and then with what we’re going to do to try and mitigate the impact of that disability on the student’s progress.
So the statement of special education services and aids, it’s a description of the services and supports provided to support progress towards those goals, and to participate as much as possible in the general education curriculum with general education peers. There’s, the statement can include special education, and that’s the individualized instruction or interventions from a special education teacher. It could be consultation to help with behavior issues. It could be counseling services, it could be job training, it could be life skills or daily living skills. But it’s special education and it’s individualized for that particular student. Also, the student may be found eligible for related services. And that could be occupational therapy, physical therapy. If you have a child who has a visual impairment, it could be orientation, mobility services, could be speech therapy. But they’re related services that go along with those special education services.
Also considered a supplementary aids and services. So this could be, it’s a whole kind of range. It could be something, something really complicated, assistive technology or augmentative communication, could be speech-to-text software or a text-to-speech software. It could be a communication board, or it could be something as simple as a pencil grip for a student who’s having a difficulty with their fine motor skills. There would also be program modifications and supports for school personnel. And I want to make this point here, that these program modifications and supports for school personnel, these aren’t accommodations for students. These are supports for teachers to help them serve the student. And these could be, for example, it could be training on a particular behavioral program. It could be consultation services from a specialist in autism, or someone from vision services or hearing services.
It might be support from a paraprofessional. It could be someone coming in who helps adapt curriculum and materials. It might even be something like an environmental consultation. So changes in the physical classroom where the student sits, for example, the size of the chair, the desk. It could be something like scheduling. Like say you have a student who has some other health impairment, which means that they don’t function well in the late afternoon. It may be to have their schedule so that that student has more kind of, not downtime, but not hard academics during the time when they’re at their most vulnerable. Okay, next slide. Explanation of educational setting. So this is where the child is going to be educated, where they’re going to receive their special education services and related services. The IEP team determines placement. It’s not made by one person outside of the IEP team meeting. Placement is driven by the IEP.
It’s where those special education services, their related services can be provided to the student in ways that they can benefit from them. We hear a lot about least restrictive environments, and that’s where you start. There’s a continuum of options, and the districts must maintain a continuum of options. Now in practice, you know, the IEP team comes together and they start, the assumption is that the child is going to be educated in the general education classroom. However, they may be receiving some special education or some related services that can’t be delivered in the general education classroom. So we might pull a child out, for example, for certain services that they receive. We might get those related service providers to come into the classroom. When I was a vision itinerant, I spent a lot of time in the classroom working with the students so that he or she wouldn’t be missing some of the general education curriculum.
For the other times, I would take the student outside of the classroom, especially if it was something around a daily living skill that they needed to learn. ‘Cause it couldn’t be, that need, that daily living need couldn’t be met in the general education classroom. There needs to be a continuum of options. So we start with the regular education classroom, and then it moves to more restrictive settings and other options that are in between the regular education setting and the most restrictive setting, which is a special school or placement. Again, there’s no predetermination here. You don’t say, oh well, that child has a learning disability. They’ve got to be in a resource room. You have to think about those services that the child needs to benefit from their general education. And then think about where can we deliver those services to make sure that the child is in the general education curriculum as much as possible and with their peers without disabilities.
We should also think about, you know, the impact and the location. You know, we’ve all heard these horror stories of children who are being taken to a school and they are on the bus for two hours. You would really have to consider whether that is the best placement for the student ’cause being on the bus for four hours, you know, is very, I think tiring for the child and may not enable them to get as much benefit from their education as possible. Next slide. I’m just keeping my eye on the time here. And this is participation in assessment. So IEP teams, IEP forms, IEP teams need to identify how the child is going to participate in an assessment, a statewide assessment, and then in district assessments too. And it’s at this point that the IEP team decide, hmm, what accommodations might the child need?
So for example, the IP will include a statement about the accommodations that a child needs to accurately measure their academic achievements and functional performance. Accommodations include how the test is delivered, how the student answers, when the assessment will take place, and the duration of the testing event. You’ll see on some IEPs that it will say frequent breaks for the student. And then where the test is taken. It may be that the student with a specific learning disability, with ADHD is just, they’re just too distracted to sit with their friends and take the assessment. So that child may have an accommodation of taking the test in a separate location. At this time too, the IEP team will decide whether the student will participate on the regular assessment or whether they’ll take an alternate assessment.
Now alternate assessments are based on alternate academic achievement standards, and they’re intended for a very, very small percentage of children with disabilities who were called children with the most significant cognitive disabilities. The IEPT makes this decision. And as part of that decision making, they need to decide why the regular assessment isn’t appropriate and then why the alternate assessment is appropriate. There can be some kind of, how can I put this? There can be some kind of through the years decisions that sometimes parents aren’t aware of if their child is being tested on an alternate assessment. So for example, some states say that children who participate on an alternate assessment aren’t able to graduate with a high school diploma. And that can have implications for the student’s future, you know, for the job that they could get afterwards.
So this statement really, really makes it clear that the IEP team has thought deeply about whether it’s gonna be the general assessment, the general assessment with accommodations or the alternate assessment. Most states, in fact, I would say all states have participation criteria for IEP teams to use to determine whether the child should participate in an alternate assessment. Okay, next slide. Okay, our next component is the date, frequency, location, and the duration of the services that the child will receive. So that’s when the student’s services will start. How often the student will receive the services, twice a week, twice a month, once a month, Where the services will occur. Remember we talked about the placement, the educational setting. It may be that the child will receive the services in the general education classroom. It may be that he or she will receive the services in the counselor’s office. Maybe that they will receive the services in the community as well. And then how long the student will be receipt of those services. Any questions? I’ve rushed through that, I apologize.
Anna:
I have another question.
Kate Nagle:
Hey Anna, no worries.
Anna:
Thank you. Could it be possible that sometimes student services won’t be provided for the entirety of the school year? Or for example, the entirety of the year that the IEP will be before the next annual review? Or are those services usually always for the entire duration of that IEP implementation period?
Kate Nagle:
That’s a great question, and I’m gonna echo Beckie here and say, hmm, it depends.
Anna:
Okay. Okay.
Beckie Davis:
How did you know, Kate? Yeah, it really does depend on the student’s needs. And I can think of a situation, sometimes schools have block scheduling at the high school level. So you’ll take four full-time courses for the first semester and then four different courses second semester. So if the student’s disability is in the area, let’s say math, and he has algebra first semester, you may have a goal that only runs as long as he’s in a math class. So that would be first semester. But you’ve got to make it very clear why the service isn’t going to run all year long and when it will run. So like Kate says, it depends, but the IEP, anybody that picks up that IEP should be able to tell from the IEP how long the service is gonna run, and if it’s not gonna run the full year, why it’s not going to.
Kate Nagle:
Next slide. Okay, the eighth component I’m going to talk about now is transition plan and age of majority. And in California, IEP teams must consider beginning transition planning by the start of the student’s high school or sometimes sooner, if that’s what the IEP team determines. But by age 16, transition services must be included in the IEP. And these transition services must include measurable post-secondary goals. Now these goals could be in employment, it could be education or training, it could be independent living if that’s appropriate for the student and their given needs. The transition services must be based on age appropriate transition assessments, and they should be designed to assist the student to reach their transition goals. So it’s really, really important when we’re thinking about transition that the students desires, you know, ambitions are included as part of those transition services as much as possible. And they could be it, they may maybe goals in employment, it could be that the student would then need to have some job skills support. That could be job training, it could be job shadowing. That’s why you would want to bring in someone from maybe your voc rehab services who can help the IEP team determine, okay, this is what the students would like to do. They want to join an apprenticeship program. How can we bring that about?
Greg:
Excuse me, I have a question if I may.
Kate Nagle:
Yeah. Hi Greg.
Greg:
Hi. So I’m working at charter school. I’m one of two RSP teachers and we manage a caseload between, from grades K through eighth and for our eighth grade students when they’re in eighth grade and most of the time, 13, going on to 14, we’re required to do a transition plan for those students going into middle school. We were told that if they turned 14 within the IEP year, we had to do it by the time they were 14, not 16. Did that change?
Kate Nagle:
No, no, no. That’s correct. In California, you know, you have to consider it and you are considering it and you’re putting a plan in place. I believe that was July, 2025. July 1st, 2025 that came in.
Greg: Yes.
Kate Nagle:
Yeah, yeah. So you’re doing exactly what you should be doing.
Greg:
So apart from the transition plan that students get in eighth grade going on, I mean yes, eighth grade going on to high school, the student gets another transition plan?
Kate Nagle:
No, no, no, no, no, no. I’m sorry, I’ve confused the situation here.
Greg:
No, it’s okay. I know what you’re talking about. It’s just one transition plan for the IEP period.
Kate Nagle:
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Greg:
We just thought they had to start it. We just thought the age cutoff was earlier.
Kate Nagle:
Yeah, yeah, I get it, yeah, yeah. Sorry about that.
Greg:
You’re good. Thank you.
Kate Nagle:
Okay, we’re okay for time. So I’ll just go through the final component, which is the final part of this component, which is the age of majority statement. And at 18, students are legally recognized as adults and educational decision making rights go to that student unless they’ve been deemed legally unable to make those decisions. And again, you know, that will differ based on the child’s individual circumstances. But the schools need to inform the students and parents of that transfer of rights at least one year before the student turns 18. Okay, next slide. Now, as I said right at the beginning, the components that I’ve just discussed are the federally required components. But your state may have additional components, and one of those are the emergency conditions requirements. And that is how the IEP will be implemented under emergency conditions.
And that could be a flood, it could be fire, it could be pandemic or an earthquake, that closes the physical school for more than 10 consecutive days. And the purpose of this is just to make sure that the child with a disability continues to receive that FAPE even if there is a disaster, and please, I hope there isn’t one, but that’s another requirement that you have in California. Any more questions? Oh, how is the IEP developed? Okay, so the initial IEP, that’s 30 days after the child has been being determined eligible for special education related services. IEP team comes together, looks at the assessments, designs the goals, goes through those components, then the IEP team implements the IEP. Ongoing, there needs to be a review at least every year. But remember we said that it could be revised as needed if the IEP team or the, you know, and the parents as well, ’cause they’re a crucial part of the IEP team, comes together and say, hey, this isn’t working or this, we need to change this. They’ve achieved these goals, let’s write some more.
But then every three years there should be a reevaluation of the student to decide are they still a kid with a disability or not? Now it is possible to kind of wave that because generally speaking, especially you know, for sensory disabilities like deaf and hard of hearing, visual impairments, they’re always probably gonna have this visual impairment or always gonna be hard of hearing. So the disability doesn’t kind of magically disappear. But that’s up to the IEP team to decide. I’m looking at the time here. Any questions?
Kelly Wynveen:
Nope.
Kate Nagle:
Then I am going to turn it over to Beckie. Beckie.
Beckie Davis:
Thank you, Kate. Up ’till now we’ve looked at the parts and pieces of an IEP. So we’ve got the pieces scattered all around, and now we’re going to look at something that’s even more important than the parts and pieces. We’re gonna look at how those pieces connect. And alignment matters for instructional outcomes and for compliance, because an IEP that isn’t aligned doesn’t just create compliance issues, it creates instructional issues. So when we talk about alignment in an IEP, we really can draw a straight line from present levels of academic and functional performance to the goals, to the services, and to progress monitoring. And there’s got to be a clear through line. So you should be able to pick up a service or look at a service in an IEP, go back and find an annual goal for it, go back to present levels and find a documented need for it, and then look at how often you’re gonna progress monitor that instruction.
So there has to be a direct relationship between present levels and the rest of the IEP. If a need shows up in the present levels but not in the goals or services, that’s a problem. And vice versa, if a goal or service shows up with no mention of a related need in the present levels, that’s a problem. So this is a flow chart of, to give you a visual of kind of the through line. And you see that from present levels, you’ve got a through line at the bottom to annual goals. You’ve got a through line at the top to the statement of special ed services and aids and related services, sorry. But within that you’ve also got the IEP connected, the annual goals connecting to progress monitoring, and then the participation outside the regular or with the regular assessments, the date, frequency, duration and location of services are all included and wrapped under that statement of special ed and aids and services.
So you can very clearly here see that the present levels drive everything. They’re the foundation upon which that IEP sits. So what we’re saying is that here the child is right now, in all the different areas, here’s where we want him to be at the end of the year, and then here are the steps or the annual goals that we’re going to take him through in order to reach that new present level. And here are the services and supports we’re gonna provide to him to reach that new level. And here’s the progress monitoring that we’re gonna put in place to know if we are on target to reach those annual goals by the end of the year. So that through line is critical, and that link between present levels, annual goals and services is crucial. And in the Endrew F. decisions from several years ago, that decision required the IEP not only to provide the components and have every single component compliant, but it also required that those components fit together such that that child would be able to make reasonable progress in light of his current circumstances. So not just to have a compliant IEP, but a compliant IEP that’s designed with that reasonable expectation in mind. So alignment is critical.
So let’s talk just a moment about our next poll question. And I want you to be honest because this is anonymous, I want you to decide or rate how often are IP components clearly aligned with the needs to goals to services, the IEPs that you see. How often do you have that very clear alignment? Rarely, sometimes, usually, or almost always. How often do you see that correct alignment in an IEP? So we have 0%, yay, saying rarely. 15%, sometimes. 54% saying usually and 31% saying always. That’s great. That aligns pretty much with what we see nationally. If you do have that 54% plus the always to combine to be a much higher percentage. So that’s great. I’m not sure we’ve got time for the discussion question specifically, but I will put in another plug for our next continuous improvement network meeting June 16th, where we’re going to dig much more deeply into this topic in more detail.
How your school reviews IEPs, do you have a review rubric that you use? Do you have a process? How do you review the implementation of IEPs? You know, if you’ve got a completely compliant, wonderfully written IEP, but it’s not being implemented, that doesn’t do the student any good. And then what challenges are common for your IEP teams with the development of good, meaningful, educationally meaningful and legally compliant IEPs? So the key takeaway I want you to remember from this is that the IEP often breaks down, not including all of the required components or not having compliant components, but in aligning those components within the IEP. And just a couple of answers to kind of bulletproofing your IEPs, there should be a direct relationship between the present levels of performance and the other components in the IEP.
So if the PLAAFPs describe a problem with the child’s reading level and points to a deficiency in a specific reading skill like phonemic awareness, then this problem must be addressed under both the annual goals and the special education services. So make sure that you’re conducting relevant and meaningful assessments to inform instruction; that you’re writing present levels that address all of the students’ needs; that you’re crafting measurable annual goals for all of the needs, so annual goals that can actually be measured; that you’re developing special ed services, related services, supplementary services, and program modifications that again, address all of the student’s needs; that you are measuring the student’s progress towards his or her goals, and that you’re making instructional decisions and changes if needed. Progress monitoring is not any good if it doesn’t change instruction when the data show you that changes need to be made. Kelly?
Kelly Wynveen:
Thanks so much Beckie. I know this time flew by. We are so thankful that you were able to join us today. A few just next steps for you and some resources for you all to take away. So first we’ve got some resources put together for you. So the next slide, there’s some QR codes, grab ’em now or later. Like I mentioned in the chat, this deck will be sent to everyone who registered for this call and will also be posted on WestEd’s STACS website within one week of this event. So if you can’t grab it now, don’t worry. But we’ve put together some some IEP resources for you all on this slide as well as some more specific to California resources on the next slide, all related to IEPs. We will use these resources then in our next event, which is our continuous improvement network, which we keep plugging ’cause we really want you to join where you’ll actually have time to really connect with your peers.
It will not be us talking at you nearly as much. You’ll dig into some of these resources. You can pull up your own IEPs and walk through a rubric to really put this content into practice. So please, we encourage you register for that event. We’ve got a quick exit survey. I promise it will only take like two minutes, but we really value your feedback. We’ve got two more years of this programming and we wanna make sure that we are talking about topics you wanna hear about and that this content is relevant to you as a school leader and a California charter school. So take two minutes to fill out our exit survey, and then the only other ask is if you want more of this, please register for our next events. Not only do we have that continuous improvement network in June, but then we’ll take a little break for the summer and be back in September with our next best practice webinar, number three, which will be all about designing high impact and inclusive academic instruction. We will always have these on the third Tuesday of the month at noon. We really appreciate you joining this webinar today and just once again, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedules to join us for this event. Thank you all so much. Have a great rest of your day.