Step 1: Gathering Teacher, Parent, and Student IEP Input and Collecting Data
- How to Write an IEP
- Step 1: Gathering Teacher, Parent, and Student IEP Input and Collecting Data
- Step 2: How To Write a Present Level of Performance
- Step 3: How to Write IEP Goals
- Step 4: How to Select IEP Services
- Step 5: How to Pick Appropriate IEP Accommodations
- Step 6: Think About Life After Graduation with Transition Planning
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Why do I need IEP input from everyone?
While it may seem like more work, it’s actually easier to write an IEP when you have input from more people. It means that you don’t have to pull everything in the IEP out of your own head!
Having a variety of perspectives also makes the IEP more student centered and it will likely be more meaningful for the student.
It’s also required by IDEA (the federal law governing special education) that every IEP is developed with input from all parties, especially the family.
Who Should Provide IEP Input?
At a minimum, every IEP should include input from:
- The Parents/Family
- The Student
- At least one General Education Teacher (if the student is or may be in general education at all)
- The Special Education Teacher
- Related Service Providers (Speech, OT, PT, etc.) if they provide the student with services
In addition, it’s always helpful to talk to other people who work with the student. This could include the nurse, counselor, student mentor, or administrator.
And, don’t forget about the paraprofessionals! Often, they know better than anyone what the student needs and where they shine.
What kind of information is needed?
The input provided should be relevant to the student’s Present Level of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance. This should include both strengths and needs.
Academics is pretty straightforward. How are they performing based on the state standards and their IEP goals? This includes their grades, participation, work completion, performance on state and district assessments, and other relevant academic measures.
Functional performance is a little more abstract. It basically includes everything related to being able to fully participate in their education. This includes their social and emotional well-being, independent functioning, communication skills, and behavior in school.
What can each team member share with the IEP team?
While everyone should provide info on academics and functional performance, each individual will also have a unique perspective to share.
Parents/Guardians and Families
The family perspective is so important to the IEP that the present level has a separate section specifically for it. Parents have usually known their children longer than anyone else on the team. They’re in a great position to share their child’s strengths, interests, and needs as well as their concerns.
Parents can also share:
- Context about the student’s behavior outside of school. For example, are the challenges seen at school also seen at the park, a birthday party, or the store?
- Relevant family history and any situations at home that may impact the child’s performance. For example, changes like new siblings, moving, divorce, a loss in the family, or changes in medication.
- What works for the child, including learning preferences and supports for best behavior.
In addition, parents should be directly asked about their goals and dreams for their child.
What do they want them to learn at school?
What skills are important to them?
What goals do they have for them in the long term, including after graduation?
The family’s goals should be respected and incorporated into the IEP.
The Student
While it isn’t required for students to participate in their IEP until they reach the age of 16 (younger in some states), they should still be able to provide input on their own IEP no matter their age. Not only does this make the IEP more student-centered, but it helps develop the student’s self-awareness and self-advocacy skills.
Primarily, students should be asked:
- What do they like/dislike about school
- What supports help them (are their current IEP accommodations working for them?)
- What are their strengths, interests, and preferences are
- What their goals are for the long and short term, including what they want to do after they graduate
The General Education Teacher
It isn’t uncommon for special education teachers to write IEPs for students that they only see for a few hours a week. In those cases, it’s extra important to get their input on what’s working and what’s not in the gen ed classroom! But even if your student is primarily served in a special education setting, getting input from the general education teacher is vital. They can help get creative about the support needed to increase meaningful inclusion for the student.
General education teachers should provide input on all of the areas covered in the present level:
- Academic Performance
- Social and Emotional Functioning
- Behavior
- Communication
- Independent Functioning
They can also provide feedback on if the student is using and benefiting from their current accommodations. They may recommend adding or removing accommodations depending on the student’s need.
The Special Education Teacher
This is probably no surprise. Special education teachers do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to writing IEPs.
However, the type of information special education teachers provide is different from the rest of the team.
Yes, they provide information on strengths, barriers, interests, and the student’s functional performance. But they must go a step further on those barriers.
When other members of the team and/or the special education teacher identify an area of weakness, the special education teacher needs to give more detail. This often means taking baseline data on their performance so that it can become a goal if needed. More on this below.
This one is only relevant if the student has related services in their IEP. Most often, this includes speech/language services, occupational therapy, or counseling services. It could also include vision or hearing specialists, adaptive PE teachers, and many more.
Typically, these providers will provide input in their specific areas of expertise. Often, they will even have their own section of the present level to complete. And they will likely present their input at the IEP meeting.
What Additional Data Do I Need to Collect?
When you’re collecting input for the IEP, you’re going to get teachers and parents saying things like “she struggles in math” and “he has a hard time with transitions.”
This kind of information is very helpful because it helps us identify skills for the student’s IEP goals. But, in order to write very clear present levels and data-driven IEP goals, we need to go a step further.
Let’s look at some examples. For each of the below statements from general education teachers, we would need some actual data to better describe the difficulties.
“She’s struggling with multiplication.”
Let’s take a teacher who says a third-grade student is below grade level in math and is struggling with multiplication. This is helpful, especially if the student’s disability impacts math. But, we need data about the student’s current performance with multiplication.
Helpful data in this case would be to give the students some grade-level multiplication problems and see how they do.
Let’s say the student only gets 20% of the grade-level multiplication questions correct.
Now you can include that information in the present level and write a goal for the student. Without knowing their baseline performance, it’s hard to determine if a goal is really needed or what percentage correct to aim for in the goal.
“Her reading is below grade level.”
Reading is complex. Data for reading goals need to be more comprehensive in order to target the right skills.
Luckily, most schools give reading assessments to screen for decoding, comprehension, fluency, sight word knowledge, spelling, phonemic awareness, and other reading skills a few times a year. Your student may also have had diagnostic assessments as a part of their evaluation process. Look back at these assessments to find out where the gaps lie.
If your student hasn’t been assessed (or if the previous assessments weren’t specific enough), you should pull them for some more comprehensive assessments of their reading skills. Focus on finding their defects and strengths in order to set goals that will move the needle for their reading.
“He has a hard time with transitions.”
Similarly, if a teacher reports the student struggles with transitions, you will wonder what that actually looks like. Are they refusing to leave? Are they just slow to transition? Do they get furstrated and start yelling?
Depending on what the transitions look like, you might have the teacher collect data on the percentage of transitions that take longer than 2 minutes or that the student starts yelling or refusing to leave.
If you were to have them take this data in different classes, you might learn that they only struggle with transitions during centers. Or, you might find that their transitions are harder in the math than science. Maybe they did better when the teacher gave them a countdown? This kind of data makes your supports and progress monitoring more meaningful.
And, having this type of data will give you something to go off of when you’re writing the goal as well as helping find strategies that work for accommodations.
“He never turns his work in.”
This data would be fairly simple to collect. Check the gradebook- how many missing assignments are there? How many were late?
If you wanted a little more detail, you could have the teacher keep a checklist of assignments. After each assignment, they can simply checking off if the student completed 0%, under 50%, over 50%, or 100% of each assignment in the given time.
You might also ask the student how they go about getting their work done. Do they have enough time to finish the work? Or is it that they finish the work, but then misplace it or forget it at home?
This can help identify the type of goal that might be needed as well as accommodations that will help the student keep their grades up despite their disability.
Having specific data about the student’s present level will make your IEPs so much more meaningful!
“She’s always calling out in class.”
This one is so common. And it really needs some data to get a good picture of what’s really happening. Is it that the student is calling out 10 times in 60 minutes? Or 10 times in 2 minutes? We can’t write a goal without knowing more.
Data for calling out is simple. Have the teacher keep a tally of how many times the student called out during a set number of minutes in class. It’s important to keep the amount of time and type of activity the same each time you collect data so you can get a good idea of what it looks like.
How can I gather input without pulling out my hair?!
Having read all of that, you might be thinking “How is this even possible? It’s so much information!”
And I agree, it is a lot of input to get your hands on. Luckily, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel! There are many tools for you to choose from that will simplify this process for you!
I’ve got everything you need to gather input from parents, teachers, and students!
Gathering Parent IEP Input
And it’s available in English & Spanish!
Parents, just like teachers, are busy. They often need reminders and options for how they can provide input for the IEP.
That’s why I made an easy-to-share Parent Input Questionnaire! It’s a fillable PDF, which gives you the flexibility to accommodate parent preferences for printed or digital options.
It has two versions- so you can choose from the simplified or more detailed options!
Here’s what special education teachers are saying:
Extremely Satisfied ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I really liked using the one-page handout for parents. I felt that this was a quick and easy way to gather information. The fillable feature is perfect since I mostly communicate with parents over email. -Katelyn O.
Extremely Satisfied ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Loved being able to get more information from parents when my school did not do enough to reach out and ask parents for more input for their child’s IEP. Loved that it was in Spanish as most of my students’ parents speak Spanish currently. -Lauren S.
Gathering Teacher IEP Input
General education teachers can often feel overwhelmed when it comes to offering IEP input. They may not know where to start or only focus on one area of concern. You can prevent these problems with the Teacher IEP Input Bundle.
This goes above and beyond a simple “tell me about the student” email. It’s got specific prompts for identifying the student’s strengths and needs across six specific areas of development:
- General Information (Strengths, Interests, & Preferences)
- Social and Emotional Skills
- Independent Functioning Skills
- Academic Skills
- Communication Skills
- Behavior
Plus, everything is positively stated, so you can very quickly grab the student’s strengths and identify the areas that need to be addressed with accommodations and goals.
I liked to fill these out myself for my students and compare them to the answers from the general education teachers. This made a better IEP, and I didn’t have to think too hard when it came time to write.
Special education teachers are loving it!
Extremely satisfied ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
These forms were exactly what I was looking for. The information provided helped me generate new goals and track existed goals quickly and in great detail. The general education teachers that needed to fill these out said that it was much easier and made sense! – Lori M.
Extremely satisfied ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I loved using this resource to help me collect valuable information for my student’s IEP meeting. The PDF form is fillable and can be easily sent back to me by email. The thing I love the most is that the form has all of the essential information I need to complete my students’ IEP before the meeting. This resource has really improved my life. – Rethinking STREAM Education
Extremely satisfied ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I loved using this resource to help me collect valuable information for my student’s IEP meeting. The PDF form is fillable and can be easily sent back to me by email. The thing I love the most is that the form has all of the essential information I need to complete my students’ IEP before the meeting. This resource has really improved my life. – Rethinking STREAM Education
Gathering Student IEP Input
Students love to share about themselves! But they often don’t know what to say when it comes to their strengths and needs.
That’s why having a Student Input Form can be so helpful! And these differentiated Student Input Forms are just what you need to get your K-6th graders’ input for their own IEPs!
There are multiple options for you to choose from, so you have something for everyone on your caseload!
Here’s what teachers are saying:
Extremely satisfied ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This has been a useful resource for collecting IEP data. I like how there are different options depending on how the student prefers to express themself. – Adrienne M.
Extremely satisfied ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Love how this is differentiated so I can continue to use this resource each year! My students enjoyed being “interviewed”. – Carrie H.
You can get all of this at a 20% discount with the IEP Input BUNDLE!
What’s Next?
After you’ve gathered input and data, you’re ready to write the present level of performance- the heart of the IEP!
The next post in our series will go deeper into how to use student skill inventories, such as those shown below, to make your IEP writing so much easier and quicker!
