A ONE PAGE IEP

The Case for the Communicative Individualized Education Program

By RICHARD JAMES LUCIDO PH.D.

East Detroit Educational Press

Maple Forest, Michigan U.S.A

Copyright 2013 Richard James Lucido All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. ISBN: 148107265X ISBN 13: 978-1481072656

For Samuel, James, and Jack

Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction __________________________________________ 3 Chapter 2 The Legal IEP Paradigm _________________________________ 9 Chapter 3 Legality in IEPs is Unnecessary ___________________________ 27 Chapter 4 What is a Plan? ______________________________________ 33 Chapter 5 Introduction to the Communicative IEP ___________________ 39 Chapter 6 Where is the Form? ___________________________________ 52 Chapter 7 Examples for Elementary Students _______________________ 61 Chapter 8 Examples for Secondary Students ________________________ 75 Chapter 9 Final Thoughts and Other Considerations __________________ 91 References ___________________________________________ 103 Appendix ____________________________________________ 107 Acknowledgements ____________________________________ 117 About the Author ______________________________________ 119

Chapter 1 Introduction

he following was written to offer a simple solution to an often illuminated problem in special education. That is, our Individualized Education Program (IEP) documents have strayed from their original functional purpose. Instead of being designed to efficiently communicate the details of a childs educational programming to educators and parents, our IEPs are primarily focused on legalities and the documentation of compliance with state and federal law. This misplaced emphasis on legality has lessened the practical utility of the IEP document to the classroom teacher. It has also created a significant paperwork burden, which has siphoned educator resources away from service delivery. The legal focus of IEPs is far from a new problem. Many in the field have been expressing concern over this issue for years. Burns (2006) notes that, The erosion of the IEP from a real educational plan to legalistic document to show compliance has trivialized the importance and use of the IEP (p. 9). IEP development researcher Schick (2007) reports, The IEP, because of its legalistic nature and complexity has further separated the education of children with disabilities from the children without disabilities (p.6). Perhaps most poignantly, the Presidents Commission Report on Special

A ONE PAGE IEP Education Excellence (2002) came to the conclusion that, The original concept of IEPs as an instructional framework for a defined period of a childs education has been lost to the greater need to document legal and procedural compliance (p.16). These researchers argue, as do I, that our IEP documents are not doing what they should. Instead of efficiently communicating the details of a students educational plan, they are focused on legalities. The documentation of compliance and the protection of the school district have taken precedence over creating a document that has practical value to those professionals charged with its implementation. This is done to the extent that in many places, such as in my home county, IEPs are routinely up to 20 or more pages in length. A 20 page document designed to provide evidence of procedural compliance is simply not helpful to teachers, parents, and students. On the contrary, to the extent that an IEPs length and complexity lessen the likelihood that it will be kept on hand and actually used by teachers, it is damaging. This book offers a broad solution to the problem, which is that the field should reconceptualize the written IEP as a communicative tool as opposed to a legal document. The central purpose of the written IEP should be to communicate the details of a childs educational program to those responsible for its implementation, not to protect the district from dissatisfied parents or to prove compliance to the state. It will be argued that this reconceptualization will produce IEP documents that are more useful in the classroom, as well as result in a significant savings of educator resources that could be better prioritized toward service delivery. As a practicing school psychologist, and parent of a child with Severe Multiple Impairments, I have witnessed the negative effects of the current legal IEP paradigm first hand. I have been a parent in a 90 minute IEP meeting and watched six other professionals arduously document their efforts in regards to my son in front of me. About that, unfortunately, I cannot legitimately complain for I have done the same to countless other parents over the span of my career. I do not think my story is unique, but I want to share it so that my perspective is made clear. As I mentioned, I am a school psy-

Introduction chologist writing this during the summer break between my 10th and 11th year on the job. About two years ago I crossed a threshold that I had been approaching for some time. I found that I was spending nearly as much time writing, proofing, and correcting IEPs (and related paperwork) than meeting with kids. It is not a pleasant feeling to know that such a large part of your workday is aimed at producing a document whose only actual purpose seems to be to sit in a filing cabinet and wait for an audit. The reality was that our IEPs became so thick and complex that they were simply not read. They became useless to staff. Crushed under the weight of their own legality, they lost all communicative value. Over my career I have spent many days in county level professional development meetings going over the yearly changes in the IEP document, learning what new compliance probes were going to be used by auditors to monitor our IEPs. Then, being a school psychologist and special education department leader, it was partly my job to bring this information back to our special education staff meetings and inform the teachers. I would present the changes in how we were to document in order to be compliant and stay out of trouble. The staff of course would groan, Why are we changing this again? Why is this necessary? At first these complaints annoyed me greatly. Do your job people, I thought. Grow up. You are supposed to be professionals. Looking back at it now, I find that these internal retorts were just my knee jerk reactions to being questioned. The truth was that I had no satisfactory answers for them. Why were we taking so much time away from kids to focus on the painstaking creation and perfection of an ever changing legal document that appeared to fulfill a solely bureaucratic purpose? What was the value in expending so many resources on the task of proving compliance? Since I did not yet know what to do about these nagging doubts, I avoided letting them upset me. I rationalized, maybe this is commonplace, I thought, a function of large organizations. So 20 to 30 percent of my workday is spent on a largely meaningless activity. I am just doing what I have been asked to do. I am following my directives, doing my job. I cannot do anything to change our system

A ONE PAGE IEP anyway. I reasoned this problem away. I traveled the path of least resistance and life went on, at least for a little while. Later that year I had a meeting with my friend Dena, a special education teacher at the high school where I worked. It was the change of the semester and she wanted to show me something. She had written a single page information sheet for some of the students on her caseload. This information sheet contained a description of the students disability, a brief description of their needs, what services they were getting, and what accommodations needed to be implemented in the classroom. She was going to send these out to the students teachers. She told me that she thought this was a good idea because, other than the simple accommodation notice form that our school used, the teachers had no way of knowing anything about these kids. They needed a reference to give them sufficient background, to let them know what they needed to do for these students in the classroom and why they needed to do it. I told her that I thought it was a great idea. She sent her information sheets out to the teachers and received positive feedback. This simple exercise appeared to be really helpful. It took me several months after this conversation to realize the significance of what had happened. When Dena told me her plan, there must have been a reason why I didnt simply suggest th at she just give teachers copies of her students IEPs. Doing so would have saved her the time in writing these new one page documents. It would have been the simplest solution. However, I realized, as I am sure she did, that our 20 page IEPs didnt communicate anything. Instead of seeing them as a help, giving teachers a copy would be seen as overwhelming them. In contrast, what was helpful was Denas simple one page document that efficiently communicated each students needs and services to their teachers. The teachers liked it. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence suggested that accommodations were being implemented with a higher fidelity. My first impulse was to try and get everyone at our high school to do the same thing, to write this one page communicative IEP to give to other teachers. Initially this made sense to me. We will write a 20 page legal IEP for the state (because we have to), and then a

Introduction one page communicative IEP for the benefit of our teachers, as well as our parents and students who would also appreciate it. One IEP will keep us legally protected and in compliance, and the other will be useful. Now it likely goes without saying that suggesting that we write another IEP for each student (even if it is only one page) is a good way to keep yourself unpopular in the lunchroom. Fortunately, I realized this before I ever suggested it to anyone that such an activity ought to be mandatory. However, I soon started thinking that maybe we dont have to do two. What if we could tinker with Denas information sheet just enough so that it would become the actual IEP? Maybe, I thought, we could write a one page IEP that would satisfy the state and be useful at the same time. Armed with this hope I reexamined IDEA 2004. I read everything I could: independent research studies, governmental reports, every state model IEP form, and the law itself. I concluded that it could be done. By making a broad conceptual shift, a recommitment to the purpose of the document, we could write short, practical, IDEA 2004 compliant IEPs that have a high communicative facility. I wrote this book to convey my findings on the matter. I have arrived at four simple conclusions based on the available evidence regarding our current IEP processes. These are as follows: 1.) The current legal IEP paradigm produces documents with low communicative facility. 2.) The current legal IEP paradigm drains staff resources, which directly affects the service level available to students. 3.) The current legal IEP paradigm is based on neither practical nor legal necessity. 4.) Improving our IEPs will require a broad conceptual shift from a legal/contractual underpinning to a communicative purpose.

A ONE PAGE IEP

The rest of this book will concern itself with explaining each of these conclusions further. It will also present my views of what a communicative IEP is and how to write one.

Chapter 2 The Legal IEP Paradigm

roadly speaking, our special education processes are inefficient and have conceptually drifted from their intended purpose. What was conceived as a system to benefit students by encouraging high standards and parental cooperation has become bogged down in legalities and the documentation of compliance. This problem is not new. It has been recognized by the federal government for years. For example, consider the findings from the President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education Report (2002): The current system often places process above results, and bureaucratic compliance above student achievement, excellence and outcomes. The system is driven by complex regulations, excessive paperwork, and ever-increasing administrative demands at all levels (p. 7). Congress attempted to address these concerns in the introduction to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 2004. They write:

A ONE PAGE IEP Almost 30 years of research and experience has demonstrated the education of children with disabilities can be made more effective by focusing resources on teaching and learning while reducing paperwork and requirements that do not assist in improving educational results (20 U. S. C. 1400 (c) (5)(G)). Consider further the Senate Report on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2003); which concludes: Lengthy and complex IEPs are not necessarily beneficial to students if they create confusion and take teachers away from instructional time with children (p. 30). Although Congress has recognized this problem, over focus on the documentation of compliance and litigious paperwork continues to be detrimental to effective service delivery. Consider the conclusions from the Texas Study of Personnel Needs in Special Education (Caranikas-Walker et al, 2006): Both special education teachers and other special education professionals devoted many hours per month to non-teaching tasks or tasks other than providing direct services to students. For other special education professionals, it appears that more work hours are spent on paperwork such as developing IEPs (Individualized Education Programs), ARD (Admission, Review, and Dismissal) committee work, and other administrative tasks than on providing direct services to students. This directly impacts the service level for special education students (p. 23). While the general problem with legality in special education is broader than any one process or aspect of the system, at the center of all special education paperwork and process is the Individualized Education Program (IEP), a yearly document created for each student to guide their services within special education. Therefore, it is this document that will be our focus.

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The Legal IEP Paradigm It should first be noted that there is no IEP design that is in universal use around the country. IEPs are different everywhere you go. Most states have an approved model IEP form. In 18 of these states it is required that the official model form be used (Ahearn, 2011). The rest of the states offer it as a suggestion but not a mandate. In many of these states IEP forms are developed at the county level. In other places individual school districts design their own IEP forms. Some attempts at reforming IEP paperwork have been made in recent years. At the federal level, the U.S. Department of Educations Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has produced a federal model IEP form that is four pages in length (OSEP, 2006). Several states have followed suit, such as Texas, who has also reduced their model IEP form to four pages (Texas Education Agency, 2011), and Alabama, whose new model IEP form is slightly longer at six pages (Alabama Department of Education, 2012). These steps are encouraging. However, it should be noted that this trend toward simplified forms is not universal. For example, Ohios model form is currently nine pages in length (Ohio Department of Education, 2010), Michigans is twelve pages (Michigan Department of Education, 2010), and New Mexicos is an amazing 27 pages in length (New Mexico Public Education Department, 2012). Note also that these page counts are for blank model forms; when they are filled in with actual content they will grow appreciably in length. The progress made by OSEP and some states in making changes to their model IEP forms is a positive step. However, the core issue of a misplaced focus on compliance and legality remains unaddressed by these reforms, which have been narrowly focused on the issue of paperwork reduction. The field remains in need of an explicit qualitative change, a reconceptualization of the IEP document that addresses the inefficiencies stemming from the litigious nature of the process. Consider the following from the Presidents Commission Report (2002), which appears to get to the heart of the problem: A particularly revealing issue to the Commission was the strikingly high number of parents, teachers and administrators who described how IEPs are not actually designed or used for

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A ONE PAGE IEP individualized education; instead they are focused on legal protection and compliance with regulatory processes..The original concept of IEPs as an instructional framework for a defined period of a childs education has been lost to the greater need to document legal and procedural compliance (p. 16) The above defines the counterproductive conceptualization that exists regarding the purpose of the IEP document. That is, IEPs are constructed as if they were legal documents, or contracts, formal binding agreements between parents and schools regarding service delivery and access to programs. Equal to this purpose in the current paradigm is the IEPs role in documenting compliance with IDEA 2004 and specific state regulations. This legal focus detracts from what ought to be the core purpose of the IEP document, efficiently communicating the details of the education plan to school staff, parents, and students so that it could be effectively implemented. For the rest of this book, IEPs written with the primary aim of being contracts and documentation of compliance will be termed legal IEPs. In contrast, IEPs whose construction places the doc uments communicative facility above its purpose as a contract and proof of compliance will be termed communicative IEPs.

Legal IEPs are not Communicative Documents

Legal IEPs are not designed as communicative tools that describe a students educational program to those entrusted with its implementation. Instead they are technical documents designed as legal safeguards for schools and parents. Their content and layout appear to be more a function of districts piecemeal responses to state compliance probes than a result of a serious consideration of how to produce a document that has practical value to those working with students. Addressing the reasons why Texas IEPs were often more than 20 pages long, Borreca (2011) gave the following testimony describing how this defensive legality enters the process:

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The Legal IEP Paradigm One explanation is an unwarranted and unjustified fear of litigation. Over the years, there has been litigation and it has been emphasized to document, document, and document. Pages of paperwork have been added to cover issues at the local or state level. Local districts have been reported to have added elements because the state has come in for review, and said, I dont see documentation for this. (p. 4) The above highlights a central issue in legal IEP construction. Because of pressure on districts to create ever more perfect legal documents, IEPs are often designed more for the audience of state compliance monitors than they are for parents and general education teachers. A document whose primary purpose is to demonstrate that a district is in compliance and legally protected will not be designed in such a way as to maximize its effectiveness as a communicative reference for those involved with the student. These end points have little overlap. The consequence of this legal first paradigm appears to be the decreasing communicative value of our IEP documents in inverse proportion to their legal sophistication. Three central areas of content in legal IEPs appear to decrease their communicative value. In order of importance, these are an over documentation of the IEP development considerations, nonindividualized content, such as inserted sections of special education law and administrative statements, and protective statements documenting that the district followed procedure. Because these content areas add length and dilute the vital content, they limit the effectiveness of the IEP document as a communicative tool. Let us first examine the over documentation of federal compliance in regards to the considerations mandated to be taken into account in the construction of each IEP. IDEA 2004 explicitly stipulates that the IEP take into consideration multiple issues. Among these are the concerns of the parents, the academic, developmental, and functional needs of the student, the strengths of the student, the results of past and current evaluations of the student, the impact of the students behavior on their learning, the communication needs of the student, the needs of english language learners, the needs of

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A ONE PAGE IEP students with visual impairments, and the students assistive technology needs. It is common in the design of legal IEP documents to set aside a text box for most or all of these considerations. The IEP team is then obligated to write stylized statements and perhaps supply actual data for each consideration as documented proof that the considerations were in fact considered. See the State of Delawares (Delaware Department of Education, 2007) or the State of Illinois (Illinois State Board of Education, 2010) model IEP forms for typical examples of this practice. Although it is common practice to produce statements for each of the considerations in the IEP, it is not required by federal law. IDEA 2004 clearly stipulates what statements are necessary in the IEP in section 1414(d)(1)(A)1. In section 614(d)(1)(A)(ii) the rule of construction states that nothing else beyond what is explicitly required by this law is required. Therefore, statements in the IEP that document each consideration are not required. It should be noted that a proper IEP does consider all of the preceding issues. However, to consider means to think and discuss. It does not mean to document. This excessive documentation, apart from being a drain on educator resources, unnecessarily adds to the length of the document, making it more difficult to read. This reduces the IEPs co mmunicative facility to teachers, parents, and students, the opposite of what should be the goal. It is further the case that many districts across many states are asked to provide documentation for considerations that are not even explicit in IDEA 2004. Most typically this documentation is in regards to the placement decision making process. An example of this common practice can be seen in the following section from the New Mexico model IEP form (New Mexico Public Education Department, 2012).

The reader may review the sections of IDEA 2004 that govern IEP construction in the appendix.

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The Legal IEP Paradigm

Section of the New Mexico Model IEP Form

Federal regulations and state rules require that all public agencies have a continuum of alternative service and setting options" available as needed in order to meet the needs of children with disabilities for special education and related services. At this IEP meeting, the public agency and/or the parent(s)/guardian(s) proposed the following items and options: All Items Proposed Reason for Acceptance or Proposed Accept Reject Rejection (Must include a () () By All Options Considered description of each evaluation procedure, assessment, record or report used as a basis for the proposed or refused action) #1 Regular Education classroom with Special Education services specified as: (Setting 1: 80% or more of the day in regular classroom)

#2 Regular Education classroom combined with Special Education classroom and services provided specified as: (Setting 2: 40% to 79% of the day in regular class setting)

#3 Regular Education classroom combined with Special Education classroom and services provided specified as: (Setting 3: less than 40% of the day in the regular class setting)

#4 Special Education services provided all day or approaching a full day (Setting 4) specified as: (Other setting: public/private separate schools, RTC, homebound/hospitals)

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A ONE PAGE IEP This section of the New Mexico Model IEP form requires the district to document what options for programs and services were considered but not selected along with a rationale for them not being selected. Plainly put, and perhaps difficult to believe, many IEPs actually contain documentation for what is not in the plan, along with an explanation for why it is not in the plan. One could only speculate at the intended purpose of this, but a logical assumption would be that it is meant to protect districts from parents coming back after the IEP is completed and arguing that the district should have selected another option for their childs programs and services. This type of defensive documentation (communicating why something is not in the plan) is of zero value in communicating what is in the actual plan. Another, admittedly more extreme, example of documentation that serves no educational purpose can be found in the New Jersey IEP model form (State of New Jersey Department of Education, 2007). See the following section of the IEP that requires three separate areas of documentation regarding the rationale for why a student is spending less than 20 percent of their time in general education.

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The Legal IEP Paradigm

Page 11 of the New Jersey Model IEP Form

RATIONALE FOR REMOVAL FROM GENERAL EDUCATION Decisions regarding placement are based on the individual needs of students and must begin with consideration of the general education setting. The purpose of this page is to document the discussions that have occurred with respect to accommodations, modifications, and supplementary aids and services in each academic or functional area that are necessary to educate the student in the general education setting. If the student will be included in the general education setting for more than 80% of the time, no rationale is required. Items 1 through 3 of this section of the IEP need not be completed or included in the students IEP. If a student will not be included in the general education setting for more than 80% of the time, items 1 through 3 below MUST be completed for each CONTENT/SUBJECT AREA. 1. Identify the supplementary aids and services that were considered to implement the students annual goals. [N.J.A.C. 6A:14-4.2(a)8i]. Explain why they are not appropriate to meet the students needs in the general education class:

2.

Document the comparison of the benefits provided in the regular class and the benefits provided in the special education class [N.J.A.C. 6A:14-4.2(a)8ii].

3.

Document the potentially beneficial or harmful effects which a placement (in the general education class) may have on the student with disabilities or the other students in the class [N.J.A.C. 6A:14-4.2(a)8iii].

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A ONE PAGE IEP The inclusion of this section would not only increase the time it takes the teacher to write the IEP, but it alone would add several pages (one for each content area) to the documents length. Therefore we can see how the addition of this one section would simultaneously take teacher time away from students and decrease the communicative value of their IEP documents by diluting vital content. For what educational benefit would this sacrifice be made? This documentation of a rationale is entirely focused on protecting the district. It is certainly not the case that this content provides valuable information on how to work with a student to achieve success. It does not describe the plan to those responsible for its implementation. Its purpose, explicitly stated at the top of the page, is to document the discussion regarding the decision making process, like a type of quasi-legal due diligence. This kind of documentation is not even suggested by IDEA 2004, let alone required. In addition to unhelpful documentation, legal IEPs are characterized by a large amount of nonindividualized content, such as inserted sections of law and administrative statements. Similar to the excessive documentation of the considerations, these additions add length and lessen the communicative facility of the document. Inserted sections of law continue to be found in IEPs that have been simplified. For example, the U.S. Department of Educations Office of Special Education Programs model IEP form (2006) has a copied section of law above each textbox. The following section of law is inserted above the text box for special education and related services: A statement of the special education and related services and supplementary aids and services, based on peer-reviewed research to the extent practicable, to be provided to the child, or on behalf of the child, and a statement of the program modifications or supports for school personnel that will be provided to enable the child: To advance appropriately toward attaining the annual goals. 34 CFR 300.320(a)(4)(i)] To be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum and to participate in extracurricular and other nonacademic activities. [34 CFR 300.320(a)(4)(ii)] To be educated and participate with

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The Legal IEP Paradigm other children with disabilities and nondisabled children in extracurricular and other nonacademic activities. [34 CFR 300.320(a)(4)(iii)] Along with inserted sections of law, legal IEPs often contain what can be referred to as administrative statements regarding the position of the educational agency on issues such as inclusion. For example, see the following statement taken from Delawares Model IEP form (Delaware Department of Education, 2007): A student with a disability shall not be removed from education in age appropriate regular classes solely because of needed modifications in general education curriculum. Special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only if the nature or severity of the disability is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily. Other administrative statements are focused on spelling out appropriate special education procedures such as the statement below taken from the Connecticut State Model IEP form (Connecticut State Department of Education, 2006): Parents please note: Under the procedural safeguards of IDEA, a copy of the Procedural Safeguards in Special Education shall be given to the parents of a child with a disability only one time per year, except that a copy also shall be given to the parents: 1) upon initial referral or parental request for evaluation, 2) upon the first occurrence of the filing of a complaint under Section 615(b)(6), 3) upon request by a parent, and 4) upon a change of placement resulting from a disciplinary action. A copy of Procedural Safeguards in Special Education which explains these protections was made available previously this school year (date)___________ is enclosed with this document. A copy of Procedural Safeguards in Special Education is available on

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A ONE PAGE IEP school district website : http://www [Delete if not available on line]. If you need assistance in understanding the provisions of IDEA, please contact your childs principal, the districts special education director or the CTs federally designated Parent Training and Information Center (CPAC at 800- 4452722). For a copy of A Parents Guide to Special Education in CT and other resources contact SERC (800-842-8678) or go to: http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/cwp/view.asp?a=2678&Q=320730. The addition of copied sections of law and administrative statements in numerous areas throughout the IEP document appear to be for legal rather than communicative purposes. This type of content is completely nonindividualized. It does nothing to improve the documents ability to efficiently communicate the details of a students education plan to those entrusted with its implementation. In contrast, it detracts from it. Adding legal or administrative text above every section in the IEP can easily double or triple the number of pages. This makes the IEP less accessible to teachers, parents, and students. Again, this is the direct opposite of what ought to be the goal. Lastly, we find that legal IEPs are characterized by numerous protective statements. Rather than contribute to the communication of the plan, these statements are focused on documenting that the district followed procedure. For example, the Illinois model IEP form contains a section on parental rights and involvement (Illinois State Board of Education, 2010). When the parent is not in attendance the district must fill in a text box detailing the attempts to contact the parent prior to the IEP meeting. There is another line which documents the date and manner in which the parents were informed about their procedural safeguards. Finally there is a section which documents if the parents were given a copy of their childs evaluation report and eligibility determination, the districts behavioral intervention policies, their childs IEP, and the districts behavioral intervention procedures.

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The Legal IEP Paradigm While it is important for the district to perform the actions required to be documented in this section, the inclusion of this type of content in the IEP document itself is not aligned to what should be its purpose: the communication of the plan. Protective statements are an aspect of contracts, not communicative tools. They do not help teachers to make the right accommodations or counselors make the right schedules for their special education students. They do not help parents understand their childs progress or the strategies the school is using to address their disability. Protective statements appear to be included for the safety of the district, not for the benefit of teachers, parents, and students. Their effect when placed throughout legal IEPs is to lower the overall communicative value of the document.

Legal IEPs Drain Limited Educator Resources

The time it takes to create, proof, correct, and monitor the exacting contracts that legal IEPs have become drains educator resources away from their students. Special education teachers spend an inordinate amount of time on paperwork unrelated to instruction. The last large scale national survey found that the average special education teacher spends five hours a week on paperwork (SPeNSE, 2001). A more recent study found that the time special education teachers spend on paperwork related to special education equals 60 percent of their time spent on academic instruction (Vannest et al, 2011). In some places, special education support staff (e.g., school psychologists, social workers) spend more time completing special education paperwork and other administrative tasks than providing services to students (Caranikas-Walker et al, 2006). These studies highlight the inefficiencies in the system and the lack of appropriate prioritization of resources. Special education leaders at the state level are noticing the effects this burden has on teacher retention. A recent survey of state directors of special education (Ahearn, 2011) cited concern that excessive amounts of paperwork are driving teachers out of the field, and called for reductions in paperwork for teachers. Furthermore,

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A ONE PAGE IEP the report suggested that IEP requirements should be reviewed to see what elements could be reduced in order to allow teachers increased time for classroom activities. It appears that not much has changed since the Presidents Commission Report (2002) cited that, special educators spend more time on paperwork than grading papers, communicating with parents, sharing expertise with colleagues, supervising paraprofessionals and attending IEP meetings combined (p. 17). For teachers, this time spent on paperwork directly detracts focus from a variety of important activities such as instructional planning, case management, and working with parents, activities that we know can lead to improved student achievement. It should come as no surprise that 88 percent of special education teachers report that the requirements of IDEA interfere with their teaching duties (SPeNSE, 2001). Succinctly stated, overly litigious IEPs have a cost that can be measured in lack of student achievement. This cost needs to be taken seriously. It is simply unconscionable to students, parents, and tax payers for schools to robotically continue on with processes that we know are so vastly inefficient. While there is a lot we do know about the cost of legality in our IEPs, there is much that has still gone unmeasured. When we consider the teacher time lost to the construction of legal IEPs we also need to consider professional development. How much time is spent in professional development talking about compliance issues rather than learning skills applicable to teaching? What percentage of time in district and county special education staff meetings is taken up with issues regarding the documentation of compliance that could be put to practical use developing school wide systems to enhance teaching and learning? Doing the research and finding the answers to these questions may provide an even more serious picture of the cost of the litigiousness of our current practices.

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The Legal IEP Paradigm

The Legal IEP Process Affects Meeting Quality

So far the argument made here against the current legal IEP paradigm has rested on two points, that legal IEPs are not communicative documents and that their construction is a drain on educator resources. However, a third point of contention with the legal IEP paradigm can also be raised. That is, the potential for the emphasis on legality and paperwork to affect the quality of the IEP meeting. This point of contention is not as self-evident as the lack of communicative facility of legal IEPs, nor does it have the research support as does the argument that the paperwork burden is detrimental to service delivery. It is, however, an important point to raise here as future research may support the hypothesis that the degree of legal focus is inversely correlated with IEP meeting quality. Consider the following narrative based on a collection of my less than optimal IEP experiences; maybe as a parent or educator you can relate: Several staff members, all facing the same way to look at a projected image of a computer screen, are working together at their task of diligently clicking selections and filling up text boxes with stylized language. A large, often referred to, binder sits at the table full of examples on what compliance monitoring probes will be used to evaluate the IEP upon audit. The parent is in attendance along with the sixteen year-old student for whom the IEP is being written. The student appears bored. He is uninterested in the project of text box completion that is consuming his teachers. The staff try to include him. The general ed gym teacher engages with the student in idle conversation about sports, while the others speak to each other regarding compliance issues. As always there is much concern about making a mistake, English 10 resource is not departmentalized is it, I dont know what box to check here? Do we need the grade equivalents, I know we had to last year but didnt that change? The student asks if he really needs to stay any longer. He wants to go back to class. The teacher replies that he can leave in just a minute, after they ask a couple questions about his after high school plans so they could be rec-

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A ONE PAGE IEP orded in the transition section of the IEP. Most of the questions on the form are geared towards individuals with adaptive needs and are not at all pertinent to the young man who has only a mild learning disability in reading. By law we have to ask, the teacher explains. The student provides the needed information. The staff members wish him a good rest of the year and spend the remaining time in the hour diligently focused on their project. After resolving a few technical problems involving the determination of the exact number of weekly minutes in special education and finding out the date that school will start next year, the team has finished their task. The legal IEP meeting is finished. The paper work is mostly done. It will be submitted to the director of special education in a couple of days. The team is hopeful that the document will pass this inspection so that it could be laid to rest in a file cabinet in the central office; if not, corrections will need to be made (in case the file is pulled for compliance monitoring). The preceding narrative admittedly portrays legal IEP meetings in an overly negative light. While in my professional experience educators regularly work to get vastly more out of their meetings than what was described, the complexity and process of our legal IEPs can act as an impediment to meeting quality. The task of documentation at times is on par with, or can even take precedence over, the discussion and planning of the educational programming. I have undoubtedly made this error myself at times throughout my career as a school psychologist, and I have also witnesses it at times during IEPs for my son. I am sure that most any parent or special education professional can identify with at least some aspect of the above narrative. I want to be careful not to stretch this argument too far because the research on satisfaction rates with the legal IEP meeting process, although far from great, is generally more positive than negative (e.g., Dildine, 2010; Lee-Tarver, 2006). However, we ought not to interpret these findings as indicating that there is only modest room for improvement. I believe that there is still vast room for improvement.

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The Legal IEP Paradigm Technical and procedural progress frequently results from replacing something with which people are basically satisfied, with something even better. Once that improvement has come along, once people see that an alternative is possible, they may never want to go back to the old way of doing things. In the time before automobiles, people were basically satisfied with using horses for transportation. That is all they knew, so they were happy with what they had. However, once they had a better alternative in the automobile, few people would rate the horse as a highly satisfactory means of transportation. To me it seems obvious to propose that an IEP meeting process focused on students rather than the documentation of procedure would likely be preferred by parents and teachers. This question is well deserving of future empirical attention.

Conclusions
It has long been recognized that IEPs are excessively litigious and over-focused on compliance. This legal IEP paradigm has resulted in a tragic misappropriation of educator resources towards paperwork and away from service delivery, as well as IEP documents that have a low communicative facility to those entrusted with their implementation. Solving this problem will require a broad conceptual shift regarding the purpose of the IEP, a resolute determination that the written IEP should be designed as a communicative rather than a legal document. Standing in the way are our long held implicit assumptions regarding why legality in IEPs is thought to be necessary. These assumptions will need to be challenged in order for the field to break out of the current paradigm. This will be the focus of the next chapter.

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Chapter 3 Legality in IEPs is Unnecessary

t has so far been presented that legal IEPs are not highly communicative documents and that their construction drains educator resources to the detriment of the students most needing their support. Regardless, those unwilling to move beyond the current legal IEP paradigm could still argue that this legal focus is fulfilling a vital purpose, and that shifting to a communicative purpose, although helpful in some ways, would ultimately be detrimental to students. But what could this vital purpose be? What could be so necessary about inserted sections of education law, administrative statements, detailed documentation of every consideration, protective statements, and the overall contractual nature of most IEP documents? Since we know that none of this is explicitly mandated in IDEA 2004, this content cannot be considered a legal necessity. We are left to assume that IEP designers must consider it to be a practical necessity, but why? Where does this thinking come from? The idea that our current legal IEP paradigm is a practical necessity seems to stem from two widespread implicit assumptions about the IEP. These are the assumption that the content of the IEP

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A ONE PAGE IEP document functions to protect students educational rights and the assumption that it is necessary to contractualize education for students with disabilities. The idea that the legal/contractual nature of our IEPs is a practical necessity appears to directly follow from an acceptance of these assumptions. In other words, if you believe that an IEP document is a contract that protects rights, then logic would obligate you to consider it necessary to include legal content (e.g. protective statements, inserted sections of law). Even if you agree that this content can be detrimental to the documents communicative facility, you would still have to support its inclusion, maybe considering it a necessary evil. Therefore, for our purposes both of these assumptions will need to be made explicit and critically analyzed. Unless it can be demonstrated that these assumptions are somehow invalid, it will be impossible to break out of the current legal IEP paradigm. First, let us consider the implicit assumption that the contents of the IEP document function to protect students educational rights. Evidence for the breadth of this assumption can be found in the inserted sections of law in the federal model form (OSEP, 2006) as well as many state model forms. Having inserted sections of law, and paraphrasing of law, in so many IEP forms gives the impression that doing so is a practical necessity; why else would it be done with such ubiquity? This naturally leads to the wider idea that a stud ents educational rights are somehow protected by the legal text within their IEP. Once accepted, the implicit assumption that the IEP document functions to protect student rights sets up a framework where legal content can only grow and never diminish. This is because any calls for limiting the inclusion of additional legal content is like suggesting that our students do not deserve the thorough protection that a legally sophisticated IEP provides. Luckily there is a way out. Stepping back and shining a light upon this assumption shows it to be without sufficient foundation. In general, legal protection against discrimination comes from the law, not from a personal document or contract between parties. Consider the rest of society; it is against the law for a person with a disability to be denied service in a business establishment because of

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Legality in IEPs is Unnecessary their disability. To do so would be illegal. If and when it happens individuals may find recourse and protection under the law. This protection, however, stems from the law itself. It is not the result of a personal document stating the needs and rights of the individual with a disability. This protection is also not the result of a contract between that individual and the business establishment (if there was one) where the establishment agreed in writing to provide access to that individual. Such a contract or a personal document as a means of ensuring civil rights would be absurd. Likewise, considering the legal content in a childs IEP document as being essential to the protection of their rights in education is equally absurd. Unlike IEPs, rights are not individualized. Rights are universal in this country. They live everywhere and apply to everyone. The implicit assumption that they are ensured by the text in a personal document makes no sense. The second assumption that drives the superfluous content in legal IEPs is the idea that an IEP is a legal contract. Unfortunately this idea is very wide spread. A typical example of this thinking can be found in the following passage taken from A Parent's Guide to Special Education (2010) A Joint Publication of the Federation for Children with Special Needs and the Massachusetts Department of Education: Your child's Individualized Education Program (IEP) is developed at the Team meeting and represents a formal agreement about the services that the school will provide for your child's special education needs. The IEP is a contract between you and the school. As with any contract you should make sure you fully understand the terms to which you are agreeing and make certain that everything that was agreed to verbally is written in the contract (p. 19) By conceiving of the IEP this way we are in effect contractualizing education, i.e., ensuring that every aspect, documented in fine detail, of a students educational programming is negotiated and settled upon between the parent and the district. In this contractual para-

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A ONE PAGE IEP digm, the IEP meeting functions as the negotiation session and the IEP document acts as the finished contract. Conceived this way, the purpose of the IEP document, from the perspective of both the parents and the school district, naturally becomes protective rather than communicative. From this protective purpose stems the majority of the superfluous content found in most legal IEPs (e.g., excessive documentation of considerations, administrative statements, and protective statements). This is the heart of the problem. But is it necessary for us to contractualize education for students with disabilities in order to make it individualized? This language is not in the law. IDEA 2004 states, the term `individualized educ ation program' or `IEP' means a written statement for each child with a disability [34 CFR 300.320(a)]. The word statement in no way implies contract. While IDEA 2004 requires schools to meet and individualize an educational program for students with disabilities, it does not require schools to contractualize education. This has also been made explicit by recent case law (Van Duyn v. Baker School District) where it was found that a schools failure to implement the IEP was not the legal equivalent to breach of contract. The fact that it is not a legal necessity for schools to contractualize education for students with disabilities does not disqualify it from being a practical necessity. This question will need to be addressed separately. While I know of no direct formal argument supporting the claim that contractualization is a practical requirement for individualization, there is an abundance of evidence to the contrary within general education. There are many instances in general education where students programs and services are adjusted based on their individualized needs. For example, consider grade retention. The decision to have a student repeat a grade is made by the school and the parents based on the students individual needs. In this scenario, extra services are being provided (a whole year of education) without the pretense of a legal contract. Secondly, class scheduling for secondary students is completed based on student interest and needs (e.g., electives, remedial classes, credit recovery). Again, educational programming is modified without the use of a contract. Thirdly, many general education students with health problems

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Legality in IEPs is Unnecessary require accommodations and interventions, such as the restriction of certain physical activities or the administration of medication at school. Often these accommodations are recorded in a type of medical care plan; however, such a plan would certainly not be considered a legal contract. Finally, in the Response to Intervention framework assessments and interventions are designed and implemented to meet the individual learning needs of general education students. While parents are informed and often participate in this process, no formal contract is required. In all, these examples demonstrate that without contracts, schools, working in conjunction with parents, have been providing intervention services, making significant changes to educational programming, as well as taking specific actions to protect the health and welfare of students based on their individual needs. Therefore, there is no reason to assert that a contract is a practical necessity to provide individualization within education for special education students when it is not necessary for general education students. The concept of an IEP as a right protecting contractual document is ill-conceived. The implicit assumptions underpinning our current legal IEP paradigm are based on neither legal nor practical necessity. Nevertheless, there is one last argument that can be anticipated in favor of the legal focus in our IEPs, the argument that we should not ignore our history. Four decades ago few children with disabilities were appropriately educated; many schools refused to educate them entirely, let alone provide acceptable access to general education (Bradley et al, 2011). It could be argued that only because of federal disability law and the IEP being conceived as a legal contract did all of the gains in terms of access occur. These points have some validity and will not be disputed here. However, a question will be raised. If a way of doing things 40 years ago resulted in positive outcomes 40 years ago, does that mean that this manner of practice needs to continue in the present and persist indefinitely into the future? If it is possible that systematic discrimination against persons with disabilities is not as prevalent today as it was 40 years ago, might it also be prudent to temper our response to it?

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A ONE PAGE IEP Consider that there was a period in American history, relatively close in time to the origin of special education law, when armed soldiers were needed to enforce the racial integration of public schools. Today we do not keep the National Guard outside schools to protect against a spontaneous resurgence of segregation. To do so would be an absurd waste of resources. Although they were necessary at one time, in todays world these measures are no longer r equired. Similarly, the conceptualization of an IEP as a legal safeguard created to protect individual rights in education may have outlived its purpose. Education for persons with disabilities has come a long way. If we can allow ourselves to set down our swords we will be able to fully reap the dividends the efforts of our forbearers provided for our children. We should have confidence that shifting from the legal focus of our IEPs will not send us back into the early 1970s. In the following chapters, the framework for the communicative IEP will be presented. However, if one continues to view the purpose of the written IEP as a legal/contractual document created to protect rights in education, then the following will seem woefully inadequate. Moving past the idea that legally constructed IEP documents are necessary will require a broad conceptual shift. This will be difficult. Change is hard. However, such a change in the field is necessary to move towards greater levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

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Chapter 4 What is a Plan?

lthough we often say plan, the P in IEP technically stands for program. However, in typical usage the word plan is the actual meaning of our reference in that an IEP is the plan for the educational program. Consequently, the terms program and plan are virtually synonymous for our purposes here, but what is a plan? Dictionary.com (2012) defines it as, a scheme or method of acting, doing, proceeding, making, etc., developed in advance. In other words, a plan is what we are going to do. This should be the focus of the IEP document, writing down what we are going to do. This characterization of an IEP as, what we are going to do is a general statement that broadly applies to both the document and the meeting. In practice we may call them both IEPs, but they are different. The IEP meeting is the event, the discussion, where the decisions on what we are going to do are made. In contrast the IEP document exists as the written record of what we are going to do. Focusing now just on the IEP document, it can be seen that when we record what we are going to do, what we are really doing is creating instructions for what to do. We write the document so that it could be referred to in the future. Whether it is an author of the IEP, or another staff member who did not participate in the IEPs construc-

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A ONE PAGE IEP tion, the purpose of referring to it in the future would be the same, to find out what to do. Therefore, the central purpose of the IEP document should be to help school staff know what to do. In nearly every human endeavor people write plans on paper so that others will know what to do. Blueprints are written so builders know what to do. The Xs and Os in football playbooks are written so the players know what to do. Dieticians write out meal plans so the dieters know what to do. Symphonies are written down so the musicians know what to do. These plans are designed in a manner that holds the consumers understanding of the plan in the highest regard. In other words, the presentation of the plan is designed for the consumer of the plan not for its creator or a third party. Sheet music is written for musicians, not composers or music critics; football playbooks are written for players, not coaches, team owners, or fans. Therefore the value of the design of any particular written plan should be measured by how well the consumer of that plan understands what to do. In the same manner the value of the design of an IEP document can be determined by how well the school staff understand it, specifically, how clearly and efficiently it communicates what to do. Producing written IEPs that effectively communicate what to do ought to be our highest priority. Other purposes of the document that interfere with this purpose need to be discarded. Our problem in special education is that we have lost this focus. Legal IEPs are often constructed to serve several functions that are unrelated to the communication of the plan (e.g., legal protection, documented proof of compliance). It is the attention paid to these other functions that impede the communicative function of the document. Plainly put: these distractions wreck the written plan. An analogy may be helpful here to better illustrate the point. Consider a pair of holiday shoppers preparing for a day after Thanksgiving assault on the stores. They meet for coffee after dinner to plan their attack. In the morning they will go to several stores to get the door opening deals. It may be necessary for one of the pair to get in line right away while the other picks up the desired items, or they

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What is a Plan? may have to separate to both pick up items and then wait for an extended time in line. Planning is critical as they want to hit as many store openings as possible to get the door buster deals. This can be done because each store opens up at a different time. So lets say that our pair of shoppers are extraordinarily org anized and meticulous. They want to put their strategy to paper to be sure they maximize the effectiveness of their early morning raid. What would they write down? We would imagine that they would make a simple list of the tasks to be done, the order and time that they need to be done, and who is going to do what. This would make the most sense. They may write something like this:

BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING PLAN

4:30 meet at Dunkin Donuts for coffee, both bring vans (must be empty!) 4:45 get in line for 5:00am opening at Meijer 5:00 to 5:30 at Meijer get the Sony flat screen deal and the wall speakers 5:35 drive to Best Buy wait in line till 6:00 opening 6:00 split up in Best Buy, Sarah gets tablet computer, Lisa gets in line 6:15 get to Walmart for the % off coupons for toys 7:15 leave to go to Macys (opens at 7:30; last store use % discount till done, clothes)

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A ONE PAGE IEP Let us now imagine what the preceding would look like if our shoppers wrote their plan the way legal IEPs are written. Obviously it would look much different and be much longer. To make a sufficient parallel I would imagine that our shoppers would record many extraneous details, such as their current level of disposable income set aside for Christmas shopping, each of their family members detailed input of what they want for Christmas and why, a narrative explanation for why each shopping maneuver listed was chosen, as well as documentation of evidence for why alternative shopping maneuvers are not being planned, expenditure data from past shopping trips, commitment signatures and checkboxes confirming that each party understands the contents of the plan, protective statements regarding responsibility for merchandise obtained while one partner is standing in line alone, copied sections of each stores sale and return policy, written documentation of the concerns of each shoppers significant other regarding the trip, copies of Google maps that support the feasibility of the travel time estimates between stores, as well as written documentation regarding other anticipated needs (e.g., gas and food money, truck space, traffic). All of this extra information would not assist in the execution of the plan in the least. In fact, the likely 20 pages that it would take to document the preceding would obscure the vital directions, making them less likely to be followed in the stores where it counts (who has time to thumb through twenty pages while wrestling for the last Tickle Me Elmo). Therefore, even though such a document could be seen by some as being thorough and impressive, to the extent that this extra content interferes with the primary goal of guiding efficient shopping behavior, it is damaging to the entire endeavor. Such a document would be worthy of no praise, and should be seen as folly. Less is more when it comes to the communication of a plan. However, in special education we have fallen into the trap of neglecting this obvious piece of common sense. The point of the argument here is not to imply that that thorough documentation is always bad, but merely that it is always bad when it exists as part of a plan, because it confuses the nature of the plan; it damages it. It turns a plan

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What is a Plan? into an argument, requiring evidentiary support. We need to keep the plan pure. We need to protect it. Otherwise, it is of little value outside of fulfilling a bureaucratic requirement, forms that need to be completed before services can be provided. This is where we are at now. This is what needs to change.

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Chapter 5 Introduction to the Communicative IEP

communicative IEP will place the communicative facility of the IEP document and educator resources above legalities. It will read as a treatment plan rather than a legal contract. Its primary purpose is to be a simple record of the educational planning that occurred at the IEP meeting, written in such a way as to maximize its communicative facility to school staff, parents, and, when appropriate, students. Brevity will be prized. For most students, the goal is for the IEP document to be no longer than a single page. More than a page takes away from its communicative facility, and in this system, communication takes priority2. Referring back to the law, we find that IDEA 2004 defines an IEP as a series of statements regarding a students educational programming. The following seven statements (plus a few more for transition if the student is nearing 16 years of age) are to be included in each IEP. By limiting their focus to these seven statements, a team could produce a short IDEA 2004 compliant IEP. It should be noted that this document structure is similar to the current OSEP model
2

Please note that proper individualization of the process will require some students to have IEPs that are longer than a single page.

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A ONE PAGE IEP IEP form (OSEP, 2006), which basically consists of a series of text boxes to address each statement. The list of required statements below are taken from IDEA 2004 (20 U.S.C. 1414(d)(1)(A))3. (I) a statement of the child's present levels of academic achievement and functional performance (II) a statement of measurable annual goals (III) a description of how the child's progress toward meeting the annual goals described in sub clause (II) will be measured (IV) a statement of the special education and related services and supplementary aids and services (V) an explanation of the extent, if any, to which the child will not participate with nondisabled children in the regular class and in the activities described in sub clause (IV) (VI) a statement of any individual appropriate accommodations that are necessary to measure the academic achievement and functional performance of the child on State and district wide assessments (VII) the projected date for the beginning of the services and modifications described in sub clause (IV), and the anticipated frequency, location, and duration of those services and modifications The communicative IEP takes as its starting principle the idea that only two types of content ought to be included in the IEP document. The first is the above statements that are explicitly required by federal law, and the second is what the team determines to be of
3

Please see the Appendix for an unabridged transcription of IEP requirements in IDEA 2004

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Introduction to the Communicative IEP practical value to school staff, parents, and students. These two areas of content will be presented in a communicative fashion directed primarily at those entrusted with its implementation and in a manner that is understandable to parents and students. Please see the following two fictitious examples of communicative IEPs.

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A ONE PAGE IEP

Hannahs Communicative IEP

NAME: Hannah DATE of BIRTH: 08/9/04 IEP DATE:3/3/13 GRADE: 2nd PROVIDER: Ms. Mitchell SCHOOL: Elmwood Elementary

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS Hannah has a Learning Disability. She has average cognitive ability and average math and communication skills. She has a strength in athletics. Hannah has deficits in the areas of basic reading skills (currently at a level 12, first grade first month, on the districts reading assessment: 02/26/13), and anger management (8 discipline referrals last year) that affect her performance in general education. Her goal from her last IEP was to be able to read level 10 books at 95% accuracy, so the goal has been met. Hannahs goals for this time next school year are to be able to read level 18, end of first grade, books with 95% accuracy and have no more than two discipline referrals. A progress report on her reading level/discipline will be sent home each quarter. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Hannah will receive special services in the resource room for approximately one hour each day. The focus of this intervention is to improve her reading skills with small group reading practice and explicit phonics instruction. Hannah will participate in general education for the rest of the day. (Hannah will also receive support in general education from the districts Title One reading support services approximately 2 to 3 times each week). Hannah will participate in social work groups 2 to 4 times a month for 15 to 30 minutes. The focus will be anger management and building of self-concept. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS Hannah will have tests read aloud in general education. Hannah will have a break pass to social worker to use when needed . Teachers should be advised that Hannahs aggressive behaviors often stem from academic frustration (especially in not understanding written seat work). In the past these behaviors have been circumvented by teachers making sure that Hannah knows how to complete the work. When Hannah does become angry, teachers should prompt her to use her feelings strategies. If this does not work teachers could ask if she needs to use her break pass. Please call (x547) to notify Mrs. McEvoy (the social worker) if help is ever needed. ASSESSMENTS For all state assessments Hannah is to have the questions read aloud. PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ IEP START DATE: 3/4/13 ________________ ________________ _________________ _________________

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Introduction to the Communicative IEP

Hannah:
Hannah is a second grade student with a common combination of problems. She is behind in reading and has behavioral difficulties. This example shows how you can write a communicative IEP for a student with more than one set of needs and still keep it brief and manageable. First, it should be pointed out that in the Performance Level section Hannahs reading skills are described as, currently at a level 12, first grade first month, on the districts reading assessment: 02/26/13. Although this statement does provide a grade equivalent, when reading this you may find that it does not thoroughly detail what a level 12 is, but it should not have to. IEPs ought to be tailored to teachers, parents, and students, not third parties. Hannahs Performance Level statement and goals represent a clear demonstration of this difference. For the past year and a half, Hannahs mother and the team have been working through this particular leveled book system that the school utilizes. Hannah knows when she has passed a level. Each time she passes a level with 95 percent accuracy, she receives a big sticker, and a new set of books at the next level are sent home. Most of the time Hannah and her mother go out for pizza to celebrate. At the IEP meeting, Hannahs mom was shown a level 18 book and given an opportunity to flip through it. She agreed that it was a good goal for Hannah to be able to read it by the end of the IEP year. Therefore, for those involved with Hannahs education, stating that her reading skills are currently at a level 12, and the goal is to improve them to a level 18, is the most natural way to speak about her reading. Since everyone involved, including Hannah, understands how reading skills are measured through this particular leveled book system, there is no communicative reason to record her reading level in a more technical way (percentiles, standard scores, confidence bans). There is also no communicative reason to state in the document that all the team members understand the schools leveled book system or to explicitly document in the IEP that mom was actually shown a level 18 book before she agreed to the goal. These would be

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A ONE PAGE IEP protective statements. In a communicative IEP the aim is to actively resist including such content because it dilutes and distracts from the vital content, such as the following important advice about her behavior: Teachers should be advised that Hannahs aggressive behaviors often stem from academic frustration (especially in not understanding written seat work). In the past these behaviors have been circumvented by teachers making sure that Hannah knows how to complete the work. When Hannah does become angry, teachers should prompt her to use her feelings strategies. If this does not work teachers could ask if she needs to use her break pass. Please call (x547) to notify Mrs. McEvoy (the social worker) if help is ever needed. The above is vital content. It is prominent and undiluted in this IEP precisely because restraint was used in documenting the performance level and protective statements were resisted. If Hannah had a legal IEP, this content, if included at all, could easily be stuck on page 11 of a 16 page document. In that position it would not be readily seen, and therefore would not be able to do anyone any good.

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Introduction to the Communicative IEP

Jacobs Communicative IEP

NAME: Jacob DATE OF BIRTH: 09/09/98 IEP DATE: 4/6/13 GRADE: 9th PROVIDER: Ms. Dickerhoff SCHOOL: Elmwood High School

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS: Jacob has a Learning Disability in reading. Although Jacob has Very High cognitive abilities (psychological from 2010) his basic reading skills are at a first grade level. To illustrate, he has trouble recognizing words such as that, two, from, and because. This severe deficit in his functional reading skills affects his performance in all areas of the curriculum. His math skills are adequate as long as the reading has been removed from the calculation tasks. Jacob has been through many reading programs since he started receiving intervention while in the first grade. These interventions aimed at improving his reading skills have been unsuccessful. Therefore the focus of Jacobs special education services has shifted from being intervention focused to accommodation focused. His goal from last year was to be able to pass a full schedule of general education classes, which he did. This goal will continue for this next IEP year, and will be measured by his quarterly report cards. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Jacob will be enrolled in general education for the entire school day. He will meet with the teacher consultant as needed, but not less than once per month for assistance and support in managing his accommodations. The teacher consultant, Ms. Dickerhoff, will work with the teachers in the implementation of Jacobs accommodations. Please call her with any questions (x343). ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS Jacob has a tablet computer that he will be allowed to take with him to all classes. Most of the schools text books have an e-text component. Jacob will be able to use his tablet ear phones to have the digital text book read to him in class. Jacob will have a peer note taker in each of his classes. The student who takes these notes will be given the use of a Jacobs tablet to take notes for both of them. Jacobs tablet has a text reader so he can listen to the notes as a means to study at home. Jacob will have all tests and quizzes either read to him or given to him in a digital format so that he could read and respond to them himself with the help of his text reader. If material is required to be read that does not have a digital text option, Jacob will either be given an alternative assignment with digital text, have the text read to him, or be excused from responsibility from that assignment or material. Jacob will be allowed to use his speech to text program on his tablet and email his work in or print it out in the library. ASSESSMENTS Jacob will take the regular assessments but will require the audio version or have the test read to him. He will be able to use his speech to text program for any writing assessments. PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ IEP START DATE: 4/7/13 ________________ ________________ _________________ _________________

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A ONE PAGE IEP

Jacob:
Jacob is a young man of exceptional intelligence who is challenged by a very significant processing problem that has limited his reading skills from progressing beyond a first grade level. Since elementary school, Jacob has received intervention from seemingly every research-based program known. His reading problems have resisted every attempt at intervention. Since Jacob is now in high school, all parties agree that spending any more time in school laboring over his inability to quickly recognize four and five letter words is not the best use of his time. It may never happen. Therefore, in his particular case, instead of using special education as a means to improve his reading, it will be used to help reduce, to the extent possible, the negative impact that his status as a nonreader will have on his ability to progress within the general education curriculum. In others words, this IEP will be focused chiefly on accommodations as opposed to remediation. With this in mind, Jacobs IEP is primarily written for the benefit of the five general education teachers Jacob currently has that were not at the IEP, as well as the six new teachers he will have next semester, and the six new teachers he will have the semester after that. These teachers will require instruction on Jacobs situation and how it can be overcome. The team has determined that a primary danger for Jacob is that his teachers are not going to believe that his reading problems are significant enough to require the listed accommodations. Communicating this in the IEP is of the highest priority, because helping the teachers grasp the extent of his difficulties is essential to getting their enthusiastic support. Therefore, Jacobs Performance Level statement contains examples of the words that he has trouble recognizing (that two from). Instead of writing a test score that most of his teachers will not know how to interpret, or writing less than the first percentile or Extremely Low Range, the team thought that the use of these specific word examples would more forcefully explain the severity of Jacobs reading problems to his high school teachers. The team felt that another danger in Jacobs situation is that the teachers may have the philosophy that all of the accommodations

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Introduction to the Communicative IEP may be interfering with his chances to improve his reading skills. They may reason that Jacob will never learn to read if he always finds short cuts to bypass reading. This may affect teacher support for his accommodations. In order to address this inevitable concern, the following extended explanation was offered in the Performance Level section: Jacob has been through many reading programs since he started receiving intervention while in the first grade. These interventions aimed at improving his reading skills have been unsuccessful. Therefore the focus of Jacobs special education services has shifted from being intervention focused to accommodation focused. This statement about Jacobs school history is not required to be in the IEP. However, it was a piece of information that the team felt should be included so that the teachers would understand why Jacobs services are focused on accommodations rather than remediation. Everything in this particular IEP is focused on the audience of Jacobs general education teachers, especially those who are not familiar with his case. If you think back to our previous example of Hannahs IEP, you will remember that we were not writing it for staff not in attendance at the meeting the way that we are here. Therefore, this IEP is not only individualized as far as content, but it is also individualized as far as style, as we are writing for a particular audience. In this way a communicative IEP process trusts school staff to produce a document that is individualized to each students needs as well as to their situation.

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A ONE PAGE IEP

Checking for Statements Mandated in IDEA 2004

All of the statements mandated by IDEA 2004 have been included in these two example IEPs. Their location may not be overtly obvious because, unlike the legal IEPs that we are all used to, each mandated statement is not perfectly cordoned off into its own little section. Remember that the primary design aim of a communicative IEP document is that it be easy to understand, not easy to audit. Nevertheless, the reader will find that the IDEA 2004 mandated statements are systematically positioned in both of these two examples. Therefore, it should not be too difficult to identify them and check for compliance. To demonstrate this, we will examine the IDEA 2004 mandated statements in Hannahs IEP. Looking back you will find that the first heading on her IEP (and in all the communicative IEPs presented in this book) is entitled: Performance Level/Progress in General Education/Goals. This section contains the first three required statements in the order in which they are presented in the law. The first mandated statement pertains to the students performance level. Please see this requirement below followed by the quote from Hannahs IEP that fulfills this mandate.

IDEA 2004 Mandated Statement #1:

(I) a statement of the child's present levels of academic achievement and functional performance

Statement #1 from Hannahs IEP:

She has average cognitive ability and average math and communication skills. She has a strength in athletics. Hannah has deficits in the areas of basic reading skills (currently at a level 12, first grade first month, on the districts reading assessment: 02/26/13), and anger management (8 discipline referrals last year) that affects her performance in general education.

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Introduction to the Communicative IEP Also under the first heading in the communicative IEP and immediately following the performance level statement are the statements regarding goals and how progress towards them will be measured.

IDEA 2004 Mandated Statements #2 and #3:

(II) a statement of measurable annual goals
(III) a description of how the child's progress toward meeting the annual goals described in sub clause (II) will be measured

Statements #2 and #3 from Hannahs IEP:

Hannahs goals for this time next school year are to be able to read level 18, end of first grade, books with 95% accuracy and have no more than two discipline referrals. A progress report on her reading level/discipline will be sent home each quarter. The next two required statements can be found under the next two headings: Programs and Services and Accommodations/Supplementary Aids.

IDEA 2004 Mandated Statements #4 and #5:

(IV) a statement of the special education and related services and supplementary aids and services (V) an explanation of the extent, if any, to which the child will not participate with nondisabled children in the regular class and in the activities described in sub clause (IV)

Statements #4 and #5 from Hannahs IEP:

Hannah will receive special services in the Elmwood resource room for approximately one hour each day.. Hannah will participate in general education for the rest of the day.Hannah will participate in social work groups 2 to 4 times a month for 15

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A ONE PAGE IEP to 30 minutes.. Hannah will have tests read aloud in general education. Hannah will have a break pass to social worker to use when needed. The next section in the communicative IEP is labeled: Assessments. This section contains the 6th mandated statement in IDEA 2004.

IDEA 2004 Mandated Statement #6:

(VI) a statement of any individual appropriate accommodations that are necessary to measure the academic achievement and functional performance of the child on State and district wide assessments

Statement #6 from Hannahs IEP:

For all state assessments Hannah is to have the questions read aloud. Hannah will take assessments in a small group setting. The last IDEA 2004 mandated statement does not have its own section in the communicative IEP (other than the IEP start date recorded in the bottom right).

IDEA 2004 Mandated Statement #7:

(VII) the projected date for the beginning of the services and modifications described in sub clause (IV), and the anticipated frequency, location, and duration of those services and modifications The information required in this statement is best presented as part of mandated statement #4 which is addressed in both the Programs and Services and Accommodations and Supplementary Aids section of the communicative IEP. If you go back to that section you will find that when Hannahs social work and resource room services are

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Introduction to the Communicative IEP described they are followed by statements that quantify their frequency and duration. In regards to the location of the services, by stating at the top of the IEP where the student attends school it is clearly indicated that the default location for services is indeed that school. If services are to be offered in a location other than the school stated at the top of the page, it would then be the responsibility of the team to document that location within the body of the IEP.

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Chapter 6 Where is the Form?

he communicative IEPs presented in the preceding chapter were designed for simplicity; they were not written on complex forms. If presented without individualized student content, they would consist only of four headings and blank space. The communicative IEPs lack of form-like appearance is intentional. There are two reasons for this bias against forms. The first being that the expectation that the IEP be written on what is essentially a blank page supports the idea that an IEP is plan that requires creation, as opposed to a form that requires completion. This is meant to affect teacher behavior. Keep in mind that it is possible for a team to complete an impressive looking legal IEP form without really writing anything of consequence, without any creative consideration of a childs unique set of circumstances and needs. Selecting from drop down menus and filling in text boxes is by definition, pun intended, limited to thinking inside the box. Educators can get away with this because, regardless of the quality of the plans individualized content, the formality and size of a legal IEP form ensures that it will be perceived as a technical and impressive document. So even if a team does a bad job of it, on the surface, the document still looks good. In

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Where is the Form? contrast, a one page narrative must be written intentionally, as it requires original thought about the particular student. If created flippantly it will look terrible. There are not pages of legal statements and documentation to hide the fact that you have a bad plan or that you are out of ideas to help the student. The plan is all there is to see, plainly written in ones own words. Thus the narrative design of the communicative IEP shines a spotlight on the quality of the plan, which thereby incentivizes diligence in its creation. The second and most important reason for the narrative structure of the communicative IEP is that narratives simply communicate information better than forms. Forms break down information into lesser component parts and separate them on the written page. This is done to assist the person filling out the form to know exactly what they need to record, what is being requested of them. This structure is also beneficial for the person who has to process the form in that it improves the efficiency in which specific pieces of information can be located. This information breakdown makes forms ideal for data entry, processing, and storage. However, it is exactly this breakdown and separation of information inherent in the design of forms that makes them inferior to narrative as a means of communication. Unlike forms which divide information into component parts, narrative binds information into coherent wholes. This cohesiveness leads to big picture understanding for the reader. Compare the special educational instructional section from the Washington State IEP model form (State of Washington, 2011) with that of the communicative IEP. The information from Hannah, the first example from the last chapter, will be presented in both IEP formats.

Hannahs Instructional Setting in a Communicative IEP:

Hannah will receive special services in the resource room for approximately one hour each day. The focus of this intervention is to improve her reading skills with small group reading practice and explicit phonics instruction. Hannah will participate in general education for the rest of the day.

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A ONE PAGE IEP

Hannahs Instructional Setting in a Washington IEP:

Students ages 3 to 5 A Regular Early Childhood (REC) program means a program outside the childs home that includes at least 50% children without disabilities. If the child attends a REC program, check the appropriate box from the first four choices. If the child does not attend a REC program, check the appropriate box from the five remaining options. Students ages 6 and above = Total minutes per week of building instructional time available for this student (excluding lunch) = Total of those minutes in A. above in which this student is in a special education setting (excluding lunch) Choose one: In a REC program: Not in a REC program: REC Program 10 hours per week &: Special education services with nondisabled peers Special education services elsewhere REC Program <10 hours per week &: Special education services with nondisabled peers Special education services elsewhere Separate class In separate day school (public or private) Residential facility (public or private) Home Service provider location POINTS TO CONSIDER: Children should be educated with non-disabled peers to the maximum extent appropriate. The IEP Team, including the parent(s), is responsible for determining the educational placement of the child. Job placements and community-based instruction are considered to be general education settings, unless only disabled individuals are present (such as in a sheltered workshop). For additional information on LRE for students ages 3 to 5 and ages 6 and above, refer to the LRE Calculator.

Choose one:

A.

1811

B.

300

83%

= Percent of time spent in a general education setting (A minus B divided by A)

In general ed. setting 80 to 100% of the time In general ed. setting 40 to 79% of the time In general ed. setting 0 to 39% of the time In separate day school (public or private) Residential facility (public or private) Correctional facility Homebound/hospital Home-school/ Parentally placed private school

An explanation of the extent, if any, to which the student will not participate with nondisabled students in the general education class, and in nonacademic and extracurricular activities, including a description of any adaptations needed for participation in physical education:

Hannah will not participate with nondisabled students for one hour each day while she is receiving intervention services in the resource room

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Where is the Form?

Looking at Hannahs instructional setting in the Washington State IEP you will notice that the vast majority of the printed words are part of the form and not part of the plan. In fact, of its 393 total words only 25 of them are specifically about Hannah. The other 368 words are completely nonindividualized. They comprise the form's instructions, points to consider, and the descriptions of educational options presented for selection. For those interested in a percentage, the content of the above section is 93.6% form and 6.4% about Hannahs plan. How can this be considered an individualized educational program when the vast majority of its content is nonindividualized? Furthermore, consider that Hannahs entire communicative IEP is only 391 words. Her entire IEP is only a few words longer than just the nonindividualized content on a single page of the Washington State IEP. This demonstration highlights why legal IEPs are so hard to read; there is just way too much filler. The important content specific to the child is spread apart in little chunks amid a sea of nonindividualized content. This separation of content is devastating to the documents communicative facility. You would be hardpressed to be able to invent an IEP format more non communicative that this; what could be worse than constantly interrupting content? Can you imagine if books were written this way, where 93 percent of the printed words were identical in every publication and only 6 or 7 percent of words separated cook books from spy novels? Communicating a plan through the medium of completed forms is far from ideal. Outside of special education, I can think of no other place where this is done. Let us make another comparison. On the next page you will find Hannahs goal information as it reads in the communicative IEP as opposed to the Michigan model IEP form. To avoid confusion at the onset we should state that the Michigan model form is set up to do only one goal per page. Since Hannah has both a reading and a behavior goal, she will require two complete pages.

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A ONE PAGE IEP

Hannahs Goals in a Communicative IEP

Hannahs goals for this time next school year are to be able to read level 18, end of first grade, books with 95% accuracy and have no more than two discipline referrals. A progress report on her reading level/discipline will be sent home each quarter.

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Where is the Form?

Hannahs Goals in a Michigan IEP Form

Instructional AreaList the appropriate content area (e.g., strand/domain): Reading Michigan Content Expectations Upon Which Goal Will Be BasedList the appropriate GLCE, EGLCE, HSCE, EHSCE, or Early Childhood Standards of Quality for Pre-kindergarten: R.FL.01.03 read aloud unfamiliar text with a minimum of 90% accuracy in word recognition at an independent reading level. Baseline Data The student is currently at level 12 on the Elmwood Reading Assessment. Annual Goal By 3/3/14, the student will read fluently at a level 18 book on The Elmwood Reading Assessment SHORT-TERM OBJECTIVES/BENCHMARKS By the end of the 4 marking period of the 2012/2013 school year the student will read a level 14 book fluently on the Elmwood Reading Assessment. By the end of the 1st marking period of the 2013/2014 school year the student will read a level 16 book fluently on the Elmwood Reading Assessment. By the end of the 2nd marking period of the 2013/2014 school year the student will read a level 17 book fluently on the Elmwood Reading Assessment. By the end of the 3rd marking period of the 2013/2014 school year the student will read a level 18 book fluently on the Elmwood Reading Assessment. SCHEDULE FOR REPORTING PROGRESS When: Hannah will be administered the Elmwood Reading Assessment quarterly. The results will be sent home. Insert Progress Monitoring Data
th

Report Date: Report Date: Report Date: Report Date: Special Education Teacher School Social Worker Other:

Progress Reporting Progress: Progress: Progress: Progress: Teacher Consultant Occupational Therapist

Comments: Comments: Comments: Comments: Speech and Language Provider Physical Therapist

Position(s) responsible for implementing goal activities (check all that apply):

Position(s) responsible for reporting progress on goal: Special Education Teacher

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A ONE PAGE IEP

Hannahs Goals in a Michigan IEP Form (Continued)

Instructional AreaList the appropriate content area (e.g., strand/domain): Behavior Michigan Content Expectations Upon Which Goal Will Be BasedList the appropriate GLCE, EGLCE, HSCE, EHSCE, or Early Childhood Standards of Quality for Pre-kindergarten: No expectation related to this area Baseline Data 8 discipline referrals over the span of the last IEP year. Annual Goal By 3/3/14, the student will have a total of 2 or less discipline referrals accumulated over the span of the IEP year. SHORT-TERM OBJECTIVES/BENCHMARKS By the end of the 4th marking period of the 2012/2013 school year the student will have less than one referral on her student dicipline report. By the end of the 1st marking period of the 2013/2014 school year the student will have less than one referral on her student dicipline report. By the end of the 2nd marking period of the 2013/2014 school year the student will have less than 2 referrals on her student dicipline report. By the end of the 3rd marking period of the 2013/2014 school year the student will have less than 2 referrals on her student dicipline report. SCHEDULE FOR REPORTING PROGRESS When: Hannahs discipline referrals will be sent home along with a phone call upon their occu rrence, a progress report will also be sent home each quarter. Insert Progress Monitoring Data

Report Date: Report Date: Report Date: Report Date:

Progress Reporting Progress: Progress: Progress: Progress:

Comments: Comments: Comments: Comments:

Position(s) responsible for implementing goal activities (check all that apply): Special Education Teacher School Social Worker Other: Position(s) responsible for reporting progress on goal: Social Worker Teacher Consultant Occupational Therapist Speech and Language Provider Physical Therapist

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Where is the Form? The purpose of these examples was to present to an opportunity to contrast the communicative IEP against two state endorsed legal IEP formats. Which IEP design better communicates the individualized content of Hannahs plan? If Hannah were your student, or your child, which format would you rather have? Lastly, it should be acknowledged that most teachers and parents could study what was written in the Washington State and Michigan IEPs and understand perfectly well the content of Hannahs goals and the quantity of special education instruction that she is receiving. To say that a form is not communicative is not the same as asserting that it is undecipherable, only that its content is not presented as clearly as it ought to be. Nothing should be made harder than it needs to be. Unnecessary complexity in a planning document is not a sign of sophistication. It is a sign of inefficiency.

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Chapter 7 Examples for Elementary Students

his chapter will present six fictitious examples of communicative IEPs for elementary students. As in chapter five, each IEP will be followed by a short description and explanation of how it differs from a legal IEP. All of the IEPs in this chapter are constructed from the principle that only two types of content ought to be included in the IEP document. First are the statements explicitly required by federal law, and the second is what the team determines to be of practical value for staff, parents, and students.

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A ONE PAGE IEP

Martels Communicative IEP

NAME: Martel DATE OF BIRTH: 02/17/05 IEP DATE: 10/25/13 GRADE: 3 PROVIDER: Mr. Cochrane SCHOOL: Elmwood Elementary

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS: Martel is eligible for special services as having a Cognitive Impairment. His last evaluation (11/5/12) resulted in a Full Scale IQ score of 62, which is within the first percentile. Martel is getting close to reaching his goal from last year, which was to have mastered all of his letter sounds. He currently can produce 20 of the 26 sounds; he has the most trouble with vowel sounds. His reading goal for this year is to master his letter sounds and be able to read early first grade text at 80 percent accuracy. In math, Martel is proficient with addition of ones and twos (e.g., 7+1, 7+2), but he still cannot add threes or fours (e.g., 6+3, 6+4). His math goal is to achieve mastery with all one digit addition problems that have sums up to ten. Progress reports will be sent home quarterly. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Martel will receive all of his academic instruction in the districts program for students with Cogn itive Impairments at Elmwood Elementary. He will leave this program each day to be with his general education peers for lunch, recess, and specials classes (e.g., gym, art, music). ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS When in the general education specials classes, Martel will require any pertinent text read to him. He will require that directions be given verbally. At times he will require academically rigorous assignments to be shorted or eliminated. Door-to-door busing will also be necessary as it is not safe for him to walk to school due to his limited safety skills. ASSESSMENTS Due to his disability Martel will take the states alternative assessment for students with Cognitive Impairments. He will require no additional accommodations for this assessment. PARTICIPANTS ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ START DATE: 10/25/13 ________________ ________________ _________________ _________________

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Examples for Elementary Students

Martel:
Martel is a student with a Mild Cognitive Impairment who attends a classroom program for students with Cognitive Impairments in his local district. Consider the following statement taken from his Programs and Services section: Martel will receive all of his academic instruction in the districts program for students with cognitive impairments at Elmwood Elementary. He will leave this program each day to be with his general education peers for lunch, recess, and specials classes (e.g., gym, art, music). There are no numbers in this statement, no weekly minute count of Martels time in general verse special education. This has been done intentionally. IDEA 2004 requires that the IEP contain a statement describing the anticipated frequency and duration of services. This statement effectively does this without the use of numbers. Unless Martel is in lunch, recess, or specials, he is in the program. This explains his level of service in a much clearer and more communicative way than saying that he will be in special education for 1438 minutes and general education for 468 minutes each week. Using words, rather than numbers, is not only more communicative, it is also a big time saver. Adding up combinations of minutes, and ranges of minutes, with perfect accuracy considering the fluctuations in the school schedule is time consuming and is prone to errors. These errors all have to be caught, sent back for correction, and then checked over again. If these errors are not caught in time, the team will have to go through a formal process to amend the IEP document, which will require recollecting signatures and recopying and distributing the IEP documents to all involved parties. All this takes time away from services and instruction, which is ultimately detrimental to Martel and all his classmates.

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A ONE PAGE IEP

Davids Communicative IEP

NAME: David DATE OF BIRTH:09/23/2003 IEP DATE:4/3/13 GRADE: 4th PROVIDER: Mrs. Bergeron SCHOOL: Elmwood Elementary

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS: David is eligible as having an Emotional Impairment. He has a medical diagnosis of bipolar disorder. His cognitive and academic skills are average (psychological 11/11/12). His work quality and grades are average. David has difficulty controlling his anger and can fly into rages directed at his teachers and other students, which results in him being removed from class. These removals occur approximately 2 to 4 times a week. His goal from last year was to lower the frequency of his behaviors requiring removal to less than three per month. This goal has not been meet. An updated functional behavior assessment has been completed and a new behavior intervention plan was constructed this morning and will be implemented starting tomorrow. Davids goal going forward will continue to be to reduce the frequency of his behaviors requiring removal to less than three per month. Parents are to be called on the occasion of each removal. PROGRAMS & SERVICES David will participate in social work groups lasting 15 to 30 minutes 3 to 6 times per month; the focus of these groups will be to increase his anger management and social skills. David will meet with the resource room teacher for approximately 5 minutes at the end of each school day to go over his daily behavior chart and receive his positive behavior coupons (see the current behavior plan for more details). The rest of his time will be spent in general education. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLIMENTARY AIDS David will not require any academic accommodations. David will have a pass to see the social worker or school psychologist when needed to help him calm down if he becomes upset in class (see the current behavior plan for more details). ASSESSMENTS David will take the standard state assessments without any accommodations. PARTICIPANTS ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ START DATE: 4/3/13 _________________ _________________

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Examples for Elementary Students

David:
David has presented a significant challenge to the staff at Elmwood Elementary. Things have not been going well this year. His parents are frustrated and so are his teachers. Keeping in mind that a communicative IEP is not a protective document, we should feel free to be honest in our assessment of his progress. Therefore, in the Progress in General Education section, Davids IEP contains recognition of his failure to reach his previous IEP goal. This honest appraisal of failure serves a vital communicative purpose. It acts as a reminder of what has not worked in the past. This may free future IEP teams from the common mistake of robotically continuing on with strategies that have not been successful. It is also important to point out the following sentence from Davids Programs and Services section: David will meet with the resource room teacher for approximately 5 minutes at the end of each school day to go over his daily behavior chart and receive his positive behavior coupons (see the current behavior plan for more details). Although this sentence makes sense and it likely provides a sound intervention strategy for David, it would never be stated as succinctly in a legal IEP. Because of the form-like structure of legal IEPs, this content would have to be separated onto different pages. The content of the strategy (the daily review of the behavior plan and delivery of reinforcement) would most likely be described on the supplementary aids page. Apart from that, the minutes would have to be reported on the programs and services page as 25 special education resource room minutes per week (on most state forms you would be unable to record it as 5 minutes a day even if you wanted to because the form calls for, and only allows for, a weekly total). This separation of content is not ideal. It functions to complicate something that is inherently uncomplicated, making Davids IEP a more difficult to understand and less useful document.

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A ONE PAGE IEP

Christines Communicative IEP

NAME: Christine DATE OF BIRTH: 4/19/03 IEP DATE:10/20/13 GRADE: 4th PROVIDER: Ms. Mitchell SCHOOL: Elmwood Elementary

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS: Christine is eligible for special services as having a Specific Learning Disability in the area of math calculation. Her cognitive ability is average, except for a significant deficit in working memory, which limits the amount of information she can effectively process at once. She has no other academic weakness (see psychological from 2011 for more details). Christine has made significant progress in developing her computation skills since she started receiving services in the 2nd grade. Her goal from last year was to have a test average in her general education math class of 60%. She has achieved that goal as her test average is currently 68%. Christine has been receiving less service in the resource room each year as she has been increasing her skills. Her goal for the upcoming IEP year is to a hold a math test average of 75%. If she reaches this goal, the team feels that her resource time could be further reduced, or she could possibly be decertified. Christines math test average can be viewed by her parents or other team members at any time via the districts web based gra de book. PROGRAMS & SERVICES: Christine will go to the resource room for approximately 35 minutes three days a week for supplemental instruction in math. This will be in addition to her math lessons in the general education classroom, which she will attend in their entirety. Christine will go to the resource room while the rest of her class is doing silent reading and social studies (She will be excused from any gen ed work she misses) The focus will be primarily on getting assistance with the math work that she is doing in general education. She will spend the rest of the day in general education. During this year, if Christines test average remains at or above 75%, then her resource sessions will be decreased to twice per week (resource teacher will call parents to discuss first). If she can continue to hold that average, her resource time may be reduced to once per week. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS: Christine will receive extra time as needed to complete any work requiring calculations. Christine will be allowed to take math assessments in a small group setting. ASSESSMENTS: Christine will take the standard state assessments. She will be allowed to take math assessments in a small group setting. She will be allowed extra time x1.5 for assessments involving math. PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ IEP START DATE: 10/21/13 ________________ ________________ _________________ _________________

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Examples for Elementary Students

Christine:
Christine has been a favorite of the staff at Elmwood Elementary. She is a hard worker and her case stands as an example of a successful special education intervention. Christine was found eligible for services in the fall of her second grade year. At that time, she could barely add at all. With the help of special services she has made considerable progress and is nearing grade level math skills. Instead of standardized test scores, Christines performance level statement uses her class test average to define her math skills. The team thought that simply stating her test average, the metric of her goals and the metric of her level of service need, provides a Performance Level statement that is in the language of her programming. Doing this keeps things future-focused and on the language of the plan. Consider also the following forward-looking statement in her Programs and Services section: During this year, if Christines test average remains at or above 75%, then her resource sessions will be decreased to twice per week (resource teacher will call parents to discuss first). If she can continue to hold that average, her resource time may be reduced to once per week. This if/then statement was created because the team is anticipating further success and wanted to plan a gradual phase down in her service level. The language in the above statement is not contractual and therefore may be a source of apprehension for those accustomed to creating legal IEPs, where a new IEP or an amendment is required for even the most miniscule change in service level. However, if the parents agree at the IEP that her services are going to be decreased based on her improving test average, then there is no reason why this efficient and data-driven manner of decreasing her services could not be implemented.

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A ONE PAGE IEP

Conners Communicative IEP

NAME: Conner DATE OF BIRTH: 8/21/05 IEP DATE: 4/6/13 GRADE:2nd PROVIDER: Mrs. Wooley SCHOOL: Elmwood Elementary

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS: Conner is eligible for special services as having an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Recent assessments (12/11/12) indicate that he has average to above average cognitive ability and academic skills in all areas. Although Conner has a strength is his learning capability, he has weakness in work completion, along with significant social and pragmatic language deficits. He finds writing stressful, which hinders his productivity. He does not react well to change. Connor has two broad goals: independence and socialization. His independence goal for this year will be to produce at least 50% of the required classroom work (measured by the teachers grade book). His socialization goal this year will be to demonstrate competence in joining in on games with the other students (recess, free time) and being able to follow the rules long enough to complete the activity (measured by social worker observation). Progress reports on both goals will be send home quarterly. The team finds that both Conners level of social performance and work completion are related to how well he can manage his anxiety in school. The lower his stress level, the better his performance in all areas. The purpose of most of his accommodations is to help him manage stimulation so that he can stay as relaxed as possible. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Conner will attend social work groups 2 to 4 times each month for 20 to 30 minutes. The focus for Conner will be social skills training and peer mentoring). He will receive language therapy 3 to 6 times each month (split between individual and group sessions) to work on his pragmatic language skills. The school psychologist will monitor the implementation of Conners reinforcement system and, in consultation with the team, make any adjustments as they are needed. At this time the team feels that Conner does not require support from a special education classroom. He will spend all of his instructional time within general education. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS Conner will use a speech to text program on his computer tablet to cut down on stress associated with writing. Conner will continue to use a visual schedule, which will be maintained by his general education teacher. Conner will continue to have a break pass that he can use up to three times each day to leave the classroom and go to Mrs. Sheppards office for a 10 min break. Conner becomes upset during fire drills. Before the alarm sounds, he will be escorted out the building by either a building secretary or a member of the special education support staff. Conner will continue to have in place a positive behavior reinforcement system (the details of which will continue to evolve; as they do Conners mom will be notified and consulted ). Conner will get extra time as needed for tests and assignments (one and a half the normal allotment). Conners tests and assignments may be modified, shortened, or eliminated if the teacher feels that the work load may become difficult for Conner to manage.

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Examples for Elementary Students

ASSESSMENTS: Extra time for state assessments (one and a half the normal allotment). Testing in a small group environment Conner will require the opportunity to take a five minute break from a test to walk in the hall. Conner will require the use of a scribe for writing responses longer than two sentences. PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ START DATE: 4/6/13 _________________ _________________

Conner:
Conners IEP is longer than the others we have so far reviewed. He has a more complicated set of needs and therefore his IEP is a bit longer than a single page. Every student is different and a full consideration of their individualized needs would undoubtedly result in IEPs of various lengths. Conner has well-developed cognitive abilities and academic skills in all areas. You will notice that in the Performance Level this was stated just that simply. Adding more for the sake of adding more is not always best. Keeping our comments short on his academic skills allows the focus to fall on the next two sentences which communicate the heart of his disability. Although Conner has a strength is his learning capability, he has weakness in work completion, along with significant social and pragmatic language deficits. He finds writing stressful, which hinders his productivity. I would also like to point out the following sentence in Conners Programs and Services section. The school psychologist will monitor the implementation of Conners reinforcement system and, in consultation with the team, make any adjustments as they are needed.

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The above statement is a task without the specific details of the program. Behavior plans are always a work in progress. The exact specifics of it are very unlikely to continue for a full year. By making the statement the way it was made, it makes it clear that Conner will have a reinforcement system and that it will be the responsibly of the school psychologist to ensure its implementation and maintenance. Writing IEPs with a communicative, rather than contractual underpinning, allows for them to be used to assign duties, to be functional to school staff. This helps to ensure follow-up and follow-through as people are more likely to complete tasks that are written down and shared with others as opposed to those assigned verbally.

Shardes Communicative IEP

NAME: Sharde DATE OF BIRTH: 4/02/07 IEP DATE:5/10/13 GRADE: Kindergarten PROVIDER: Mrs. Fleischman SCHOOL: Elmwood Elementary

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS: Sharde has just been found eligible as having a Speech and Language Impairment in the area of articulation. This is her initial IEP. Her academic skills are good as is her school behavior. Sharde makes the following errors in her regular speech: Substitutions: k/g initial, g/d initial, f/t initial, ch/sh medial and final Blends: bw/br, tw/dr, f/fr Omissions:/d,s,z,j/ Shardes goal is to be able to articulate these sounds during an assessment of her natural speech. Progress on this goal will be reported each quarter. A progress report will be sent home to her parents. PROGRAMS & SERVICES: Sharde will receive individual speech and language therapy 4 to 8 times each month for 10 to 15 minutes sessions. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS: Sharde does not require any accommodation for her articulation deficits. ASSESSMENTS: Sharde will take the standard state assessments without accommodations. PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ IEP START DATE: 5/11/13 ________________ ________________ _________________ _________________

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Sharde:
For Sharde, the fact that she has only one deficit corresponding to one service need makes this a very brief IEP. This is as it should be. Notice that her Performance Level statement does address both academic learning and school behavior, as such a statement is usually beneficial to staff working with the student. However, it does not go into detail on test scores from classroom and state assessments. This would be unnecessary, as it is not required by law, nor does it provide any increase to the practical value of the written plan. Average skills mean average skills. We should not feel that we need to prove that she is average in the IEP by recording test acronyms and standard scores. We, of course, have to be sure what we are writing is accurate (someone should check her test print outs), but we do not need to record it, because it is superfluous and detracts from the communicative value of the document. With this unnecessary information out of the way our eyes can easily fall upon the list of sounds she is having trouble producing. Immediately following this statement is the goal, the improvements that she is expected to make. The speech and language services fall next. This IEP functions as a simple record that clearly communicates a simple plan. At times, communicative IEPs may be very short. This is a good thing. We should not feel compelled to make them longer for the sake of making them look more impressive. Exercising restraint in such cases helps ensure that limited staff resources are not directed away from service delivery.

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Sofias Communicative IEP

NAME: Sofia DATE OF BIRTH:9/23/03 IEP DATE: 12/14/13 GRADE: 5th PROVIDER: Mrs. Matthews SCHOOL: Elmwood Elementary

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS: This is Sofias first IEP. She is eligible for special services due to her health. She has cancer that is currently in remission. Her academic skills are average. She had no difficulties in school before she became sick at the start of last year. Sofias illness may result in her missing a lot of school and not feeling 100% while at school. Special precautions may need to be taken to protect against her weak immune system. Sofias goal is to be able to continue to make the expected a cademic progress for her grade level as measured by the normal classroom assessments and her quarterly report cards. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Sofia will be in general education for all of her instruction. She will be assigned a teacher consultant. The teacher consultant will make contact with Sofia approximately 1 to 3 times monthly for 5 to 30 minutes (the frequency and duration will depend on her health; where it is anticipated that she will require less support during the times when her health is good and more support when it is not) . The focus of these meetings will be to communicate about issues that may arise regarding the implementations of her accommodations, and when necessary, give her some direct tutoring in subjects that she may be having difficulty with due to absences. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS When Sofia is out sick, her assignments will be scanned and emailed to her mothers email address ksmith5654@yahoo.com Sofia will be provided with an extra set of text books that she can keep at home. Sofias assignments can be shortened or eliminated at the teams discretion if a per iod of extended absence occurs that makes it unreasonable for her to be expected to complete the assignments. There is a couch in a small room adjoining the principals conference room. Sofia will be allowed to leave class and lie down for a bit when she is not feeling well. Her teacher will keep track of the frequency and duration of its use and report to her mother via email every 2 to 3 weeks. Sofia will not be seated next to students who are sick. The teacher will address this with the class. If the students sitting next to her are sick (i.e. sneezing, coughing), either Sofia or that student will be moved to a different area of the classroom that day. To help Sofia recover from absences, the school is exploring the possibility of using a camera to take video of the critical areas of the days lessons which could then be accessed by Sofia on her home computer. There are technical issues that have yet to be resolved. Mrs. Siecinski will attempt to get such a system up and running within the next two months so this service could be provided. ASSESSMENTS Sofia will take the regular assessments without accommodations. PARTICIPANTS ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ START DATE: 12/14/13 _________________ _________________

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Sofia:
Sofia is eligible under the category of Other Health Impairment due to her cancer. She became sick last year. Unit then she was a typically functioning student who needed no special supports. You will notice that even in this extreme case there is no medical section of the IEP that documents her type of cancer or the medications that she is currently taking. These are absolutely irrelevant to the purposes of educational planning. What is recorded, however, is how her condition affects her functioning at school. See the following section of her Performance Level statement: Sofias illness may result in her missing many days of school and not feeling 100% while at school. Special precautions may need to be taken to protect against her weak immune system. Sofias performance level statement identifies three needs that will require supports. She will miss a lot of school, she may not feel well while at school, and precautions need to be taken regarding her immune system. This is what is important to record, as it is these needs that will require attention in the IEP. If you look back at her IEP you will find that each of these areas are addressed in her Accommodations section. I also want to draw attention to the following statement from Sofias Supplementary Aids section: To help Sofia recover from absences, the school is exploring the possibility of using a camera to take video of the critical areas of the days lessons which could then be accessed by Sofia on her home computer. There are technical issues that have yet to be resolved. Mrs. Siecinski will attempt to get such a system up and running within the next two months so this service could be provided. In my experience within a legal IEP paradigm, writing something in the IEP that the district is not 100 percent sure they can deliver is avoided at all cost. This is what I have heard from lawyers giving

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A ONE PAGE IEP professional development on special education for years. They say it is just not worth the risk. Therefore, if Sofia were attending a school district with legal IEPs, the exploration of this strategy would likely not be recorded in her IEP. In stark contrast, since the communicative IEP paradigm views the IEP document as a plan as opposed to a contract, it encourages the practice of assigning responsibilities to specific staff to explore creative solutions. This is advantageous because assigning duties to staff by writing them in the IEP, as opposed to just asking verbally, assures a higher fidelity of implementation. Now maybe Mrs. Siecinski will find that it is beyond the current limitations of the district to provide this service for Sofia. That is ok; the statement never implied that is was a guarantee. However, maybe it will be possible and this service will be put in place for Sofia. If so, it may be of great benefit for her. It may also be of benefit for many other students in similar situations because the district has now developed its capability to implement this accommodation. In a broad sense, an IEP process that supports the recording of an intervention idea that is going to be explored (without 100% guarantee of implementation) tremendously widens the universe of possible solutions for each student. It supports individualization and creativity in student problem solving, which over time acts to widen the intervention capabilities of the entire district. In contrast, an IEP process that limits the interventions it records to only a few wellworn cookie cutter options and discourages the exploration of novel solutions for fear of being unsuccessful, and being seen as somehow breaking the contract, unnecessarily restricts the universe of possible solutions for each student. This is an unfortunate, and generally unnoticed, side effect of the legal IEP paradigm.

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Chapter 8 Examples for Secondary Students

nlike elementary IEPs, many IEPs for secondary students will require a section on the students transition goals and services. The section of IDEA 2004 that addresses the transition section of the IEP has been reprinted below.

beginning not later than the first IEP to be in effect when the child is 16, and updated annually thereafter (aa) appropriate measurable postsecondary goals based upon age appropriate transition assessments related to training, education, employment, and, where appropriate, independent living skills; (bb) the transition services (including courses of study) needed to assist the child in reaching those goals; and

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(cc) beginning not later than 1 year before the child reaches the age of majority under State law, a statement that the child has been informed of the childs rights under this title, if any, that will transfer to the child on reaching the age of majority under section 615(m). I would like to comment about requirement (cc) listed above that mandates the IEP contain a statement documenting that the student has been informed of the rights that will transfer over to them upon their reaching the age of majority. While so far I have not been critical of the mandated statements in IDEA 2004, I am afraid that I need to point out that this requirement is a clear example of a protective statement. It therefore does not fit in with the general idea of writing IEPs for the audience of teachers, parents, and students. However, this requirement is in the law, and consequently must be complied with. Therefore this mandated statement is included in the sample IEPs of the students in this chapter who are 17 years old. Please see the following six fictitious examples of communicative IEP written for secondary students.

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Megans Communicative IEP

NAME: Megan DATE OF BIRTH: 6/19/95 IEP DATE:03/2/13 GRADE: 11 PROVIDER: Ms. Stine SCHOOL: Elmwood High School

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS Megan is eligible for special services as having a Learning Disability in basic reading skills, reading comprehension, math calculation, and written expression. Her overall level of cognitive ability is within the Low Average Range, with significant deficits in the areas of perceptual reasoning and processing speed (psychological 2011). Current testing from the WJ-III (2013) finds her to have skills in reading and writing that fall at the 2nd to 3rd grade level, language comprehension skills that fall at the 3rd grade level, and math skills at the 5th grade level. Megans multiple areas of academic skill and cognitive processing deficits will necessitate the support of special services in all areas of academics. Despite these significant learning deficits, Megan is actively involved in drama and has obtained roles in the school play for the last two years. People generally find her to be charismatic and a good speaker. Megan has been enrolled in special education resource room classes for all of her core areas since the start of high school. She has generally earned passing grades. Megans goal from last year was to increase her word reading to a mid third grade level; her recent testing shows that she narrowly missed that goal. Megans other goal was to pass all of her classes (including general education drama), which she accomplished. Going forward, Megans goals for next year are to score an early fourth grade reading level, pass all of her classes, and to score an overall ACT score of 14. Reading testing will be completed in advance of her next year and mailed home, ACT scores and grades will be disseminated through the usual channels. TRANSITION GOALS & SERVICES Megan wants to pursue a career in acting. She also thinks she could be successful working in sales. She will gather information about post secondary education options in the performing arts and explore job shadowing opportunities in the field of sales. She will work with the support staff at the career resource center in the library to accomplish these goals. Megan will continue taking drama for the remainder of her time in high school. Megan was informed of her rights she will receive upon turning 18 years old. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Megan will attend special education resource room classes at Elmwood High for all her core academic areas. She will be in general education for all non academically rigorous electives. Depending on her schedule choices (which will likely include several electives) she will be in special education for 3 to 5 of the 6 periods in the school day. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS Megan will require extra time for tests and assignments (2 times the normal allotment). Megan will require tests to be read to her. Megan will require the use of a calculator for tasks that involve math. ASSESSMENTS Megan will require extra time up to twice the normal allotment. Megan will require tests to be read to her. Megan will require the use of a calculator for tasks that involve math. PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ IEP START DATE: 3/3/13 ________________ ________________ _________________ _________________

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Megan:
Megans IEP is the first one written in this book that has a transition section. As stated in IDEA 2004, all IEPs for students turning 16 within the IEP year must have both a post secondary goal and a statement of the transition services needed to assist the student in meeting that goal. Her IEP has placed information regarding transition under the heading of Transition Goals and Services. See below: Megan wants to pursue a career in acting. She also thinks she could be successful working in sales. She will gather information about post secondary education options in the performing arts and explore job shadowing opportunities in the field of sales. She will work with the support staff at the career resource center in the library to accomplish these goals. Megan has taken several transition assessments, the results of which are summarized in the first two sentences in this section. The team did not feel it to be necessary to list the formal transition assessments, the dates she took them, or the scores she obtained in the IEP. Nor did they think it necessary to attach the formal assessments to the IEP document. The overall findings from the assessments are in line with Megans explicit wish to follow her strength and explore a career in acting or sales. This simple end result is all that needs to go into the plan, as it is the goal to which her class programming and transition services will be directed. Remember that while IDEA 2004 requires that a students transition goals be based on an appropriate transition assessment, it clearly does not require the assessment to be included in the IEP. In most cases this would be unnecessary content that would needlessly add to the length of the IEP and reduce its overall communicative facility. Also on the subject of transition, it should be pointed out that Megans skills for independent living are not addressed in her transition section. This is in contrast to many legal IEPs where it is common to provide documentation of a students independent living skills regardless of the nature of their disability. However, this is not

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Examples for Secondary Students necessary. If you refer back to the transition section of IDEA 2004 posted at the start of this chapter you will find that a students ind ependent living skills only need to be addressed if it is appropriate to do so. Therefore, since Megan does not suffer from a more global disability that impairs her adaptive functioning, there is no need to document her independent living skills (e.g., her ability to cook, drive, use public transportation, shop for groceries). By leaving this content out of Megans IEP the team not only reduces the size of her IEP but the IEP meeting is spared from the time that would be spent asking Megan transition questions about her ability to take care of herself. This distracts from the vital discussion that needs to occur, and in my experience, can often be seen as insulting to students with mild disabilities.

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Jacks Communicative IEP

NAME: Jack DATE OF BIRTH: 4/12/01 IEP DATE: 11/5/13 GRADE: 7 PROVIDER: Mr. Urban SCHOOL: Elmwood Middle School

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS Jack is eligible for special services as having an Emotional Impairment. He suffers from severe recurrent depression that affects his motivation to achieve in school. He has trouble maintaining social relationships. Jacks cognitive abilities are average, but he has a weakness in his math skills. Last week they were measured at a 5th grade level with the WJ-III. Jack is currently passing half of his classes. His low marks are due to his near complete lack of homework completion and effort in the classroom. Jacks test and quiz averages across his classes are within the B to C range. His goal from last IEP was to be passing all of his classes; this goal will continue into the next IEP year. His math goal going forward will be to bring up his math skills to the 7 th grade level on standardized testing to be completed in advance of his IEP next year. These results will be mailed home. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Jack will have two special ed courses: a special education math class and a special education directed study class. His remaining four periods of the day will be spent in general education classes. Jack will meet with the school social worker 2 to 3 times a month for 15 to 30 minutes. The focus will be on cognitive behavioral modification to increase his work production. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS Jack will require extra time (up to 1.5 times the given time frame) to complete tests and assignments. Jacks teachers will send home weekly progress reports focusing on his productivity in class. Jack will have an anytime pass to go see either his counselor or the social worker if he feels that it is necessary. Jack will be seated near the front of the class. ASSESSMENTS Jack will require extra time (up to 1.5 times the given time frame) to complete any state assessments. PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ IEP START DATE: 11/5/13 ________________ ________________ _________________ _________________

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Jack:
Communicative IEPs at the secondary level need to be written with the counselors prominently in mind. In most districts they are the ones who would set up a students program, as they are the ones in charge of class scheduling. Therefore, the statement i n Jacks Programs and Services section that deals with his schedule was written in terms of the classes he requires rather than his number of minutes in special education. See the statement below. Jack will have two special ed courses: a special education math class and a special education directed study class. His remaining four periods of the day will be spent in general education classes. Describing Jacks time in special education this way makes it clear to the counselor how he should be scheduled. It also makes it very clear to Jacks parents and Jack himself the amount of time he will spend in special education classes. Writing in his IEP that he will get these two specific courses in special education is far clearer for all involved than saying that he will be in special education for 619 minutes per week. Talking about scheduling in terms of the number and type of class periods is the language of general education in secondary schools. Instead of being different and recording time in minutes, Jacks team smartly chose to find synergy within this existing system. This should reduce the number of scheduling errors.

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Tywans Communicative IEP

NAME: Tywan DATE OF BIRTH: 4/9/00 IEP DATE: 09/15/13 GRADE: 8th PROVIDER: Mr. Neale SCHOOL: Elmwood Middle School

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS Tywan is eligible for special services as having Hearing Impairment. Overall, Tywan has an 80% reduction in his hearing abilities. He does best when he is looking directly at a person when they speak because his understanding is aided by his developing lip reading skills. He has a difficult time understanding the teachers directions in a noisy classroom. Tywan has average cognitive abilities and academic skills. His school behavior and attendance have been good. In short, when Tywans hearing difficulties are appropriately accommodated, he can be very successful academically. His goal from last year was to pass all of his classes with a C or better. He has met that goal as his current grade point average is 3.1. Tywan will continue with this goal for the next IEP year. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Tywan will be enrolled in all general education courses. He will meet with the county hearing consultant (Mr. Johnson: 555-777-7777) two to four times each school year to assess progress and the appropriateness of his current hearing supports. Tywan, his parents, and his teachers are encouraged to call Mr. Johnson at any time that his consultation services may be additionally required. At Elmwood Middle School, Tywans accommodations will be directly managed by M r. Neale (x444), the teacher consultant. He will meet with Tywan as needed, but not less than once a quarter to monitor his progress and the fidelity of the implementation of his hearing supports. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS Tywan will require the use of an FM system in all of his classes (teachers should be advised to contact Mr. Neale immediately if they have trouble working the system or if they have any questions regarding its use). Tywan should be seated toward the front of the room in a position so that he could see the teachers lips during instruction. Tywans teachers should check for his understanding of directions and provide written directions when possible. Tywan may require his directions repeated. His teachers should be prepared to do this, especially when the directions are given while the class is being noisy, as this would limit the effectiveness of his FM system. ASSESSMENTS Tywan will take the standard state assessments without accommodations. PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ IEP START DATE: 09/15/13 ________________ _________________ _________________ _________________

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Tywan:
Tywan is a student whose limitations lie solely in his sensory impairment. His IEP clearly conveys this. The central emphasis of the document is to detail his accommodations and who is in charge of supervising them. The team felt that explicitly laying this out as much as possible would be beneficial to Tywan and his teachers so that everyone would know what they were responsible for. This, along with his accommodations, is the most important part of his IEP. At the risk of sounding redundant, it must again be highlighted that this vital content is able to be presented prominently on the front page of the IEP because, and only because, the superfluous legal content has been removed. If Tywan had a legal IEP, this vital content would have been inserted inside a sandwich of documentation. The effect of this would be a decrease in the number of people who would read this content, thus lessening the likelihood of the IEPs effective implementation in the classroom. Finally, like certain other communicative IEPs presented in the book (e.g., Jacob and Sofia), Tywans goal is to do well in his courses. This is a simple, easy to measure, and very appropriate goal for students whose IEP is more accommodation focused as opposed to instructionally or behaviorally focused. In other words, for Tywan, since the purpose of his special education services are not to teach him academic content directly but to accommodate his disability so that he can profit from general education instruction, the most natural way to measure how well he is progressing is through his general education grades.

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Justins Communicative IEP

NAME: Justin DATE OF BIRTH: 5/2/99 IEP DATE: 10/14/13 GRADE: 9th PROVIDER: Mrs. Lackey SCHOOL: Elmwood High School

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS Justin is eligible for special services as having a Learning Disability in math calculation. His skills in reading and writing are adequate. His school behavior is good. Standardized testing from this year indicates that his math skills overall are equivalent to those of the average student in the 4 th grade. His goal from his last IEP was to increase his skills to the level they are at now. His math goal for this next IEP year is to be able to increase his standardized math test scores by another grade level. Testing will be completed in advance of his next IEP, and the results will be mailed home. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Justin will attend a special education math program in the resource room. He will be in general education classes for all other subjects. For classes outside of the math department that have a large math component (e.g. chemistry, economics, physics), the current plan is for Justin to try to take them in general education and use his accommodations to be successful. If he finds himself failing, then the counselor could switch him into special education versions of these classes. Justins father would like to be consulted by phone before any switch it made (555)777-7777. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS Allow use of calculator for all assessments that are math or math related. Allow for extra time x1.5 for all assessments that are math or math related. Allow use of a formula sheet for tests and quizzes in math related classes. Reduce calculation requirements for math related classes when possible (teacher discretion). ASSESSMENTS Allow use of calculator for all assessments that are math or math related. Allow for extra time x1.5 for all assessments that are math or math related. PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ IEP START DATE: 10/15/13 ________________ ________________ _________________ _________________

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Justin:
Justin has a short and simple IEP. He has a learning disability with just one deficit area, math calculation. However this does not mean that there are not important decisions to be made at his meeting, or that it is not vital for him to have a highly communicative IEP document. Sometimes a deficit in math is tricky to program for because there are several areas of coursework in science and social studies that are heavily math dependent. For such coursework the team does not want to abandon Justin in general education without proper supports, but at the same time they do not want to let a narrow disability in math calculation limit his overall educational exposure. The team came up with the following solution for Justins math related coursework and communicated it in his Programs and Services section. For classes outside of the math department that have a large math component (e.g. chemistry, economics, physics), the current plan is for Justin to try to take them in general education and use his accommodations when necessary to be successful. If he finds himself failing, then the counselor could switch him into special education versions of these classes. Justins father would like to be consulted by phone before any switch it made (555)7777777. Notice how Justins Program and Services section contains an if/then statement regarding his future programming. It grants the specific duty to the counselor to switch his class if he is unsuccessful. This can be done because the communicative IEP is conceptualized as a game plan rather than a contract. If/then statements such as these help the document to have usefulness throughout the IEP year. The ability to write in such a fashion is an advantage for the communicative IEP.

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Lawrences Communicative IEP

NAME: Lawrence DATE OF BIRTH: 11/06/97 IEP DATE: 9/29/13 GRADE: 10th PROVIDER: Mr. Petersimes SCHOOL: Elmwood High School

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS Lawrence has a Learning Disability in basic reading skills, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and written expression. His reading skills as of 9/14/13 were measured to be at a 3rd grade level, his written expression skills were found to be at a 4th grade level. Lawrence has significant fine motor deficits and his writing is very difficult to read. Lawrence has broad cognitive deficits (Full Scale IQ of 75), especially in the domain of Verbal Comprehension. His math skills are average. Lawrence has had zero discipline referrals last year. He has well developed social abilities and is a leader among his peers. His goal from last year was to improve his standardized test scores in reading and writing, one grade level overall. Lawrence has accomplished this goal. This goal will be continued for the next IEP year. Standardized testing will be completed at the end of the school year; the results will be mailed home. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Lawrence will attend general education classes that are co-taught by a special education teacher for his core academic areas that rely heavily on language arts skills (english, science, social studies). He will attend a general education math course and general education electives that will not be co-taught. The team feels that Lawrence will be successful in general education electives only to the extent that his accommodations and supplementary aids are vigorously implemented. Lawrence is not the best self advocate. His general education elective teachers will need to be vigilant in frequently checking for his understanding and supplying the accommodations he needs. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS Lawrence will require all assessments to be read aloud. Lawrence will require extra time for tests and assignments up to twice the regular allotment (upon student request/teacher discretion). He will require the use of either a computer or a scribe for tasks that require written responses longer than two sentences. Lawrence may have parts of his tests and assignments modified, reduced, or eliminated based on his ability to successfully complete them (teacher discretion). Teachers may contact Mr. Petersimes x232 if they need help figuring out how to modify the course content. ASSESSMENTS Lawrence will require all assessments to be read aloud. Lawrence will require the use of either a computer or a scribe for assessments that require written responses longer than two sentences. Lawrence will require extra time for state assessments up to 2 times the normal allotment. PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ IEP START DATE: 9/30/13 ________________ ________________ _________________ _________________

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Lawrence:
Lawrences IEP is a good example of how a communicative IEP can describe a program for secondary students who have a Learning Disability in multiple areas. Lawrence has low skills in language arts and a low level of verbal cognitive ability. These deficits will make learning more difficult for him in all areas than it will be for many students his age. Lawrences accommodations are very important to his ability to be successful in the general education environment. The team thought that it was important to fervently explain this in the Programs and Services section. They write: The team feels that Lawrence will be successful in general education electives only to the extent that his accommodations and supplementary aids are vigorously implemented. Lawrence is not the best self advocate. His general education elective teachers will need to be vigilant in frequently checking for his understanding and supplying the accommodations he needs. The information in this passage is not required in IDEA 2004; however the team thought that it would be of value to record. It is a plain worded explanation for Lawrences programming. It gives advice to the general education teachers. It shares the knowledge of the team with the rest of the professionals working with the student both now and in the future. This content is at the heart of what an IEP should be.

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Andreas Communicative IEP

NAME: Andrea DATE OF BIRTH: 6/8/95 IEP DATE: 10/4/13 GRADE: 12 PROVIDER: Mrs. Marino SCHOOL: Elmwood High School

PERFORMANCE LEVEL/PROGRESS IN GENERAL EDUCATION/GOALS Andrea is eligible for special services due to a Cognitive Impairment. Testing from 2013 found her to have a Full Scale IQ of 54, reading skills at a 4th grade level, and math skills at a 1st grade level. Andrea is progressing well in her life skills courses and her general education electives. Her teachers report that she is an enthusiastic learner who is not afraid to ask for help. Her goals from last year were to increase her reading skills to the fourth grade level, which she did, and to be able to make change for bills up to 20 dollars to the nearest 50 cents, which she is still unable to do. Andreas goals going forward are to reach a 5th grade reading level; her math goal, because of its critical importance for her independence, will be continued from last year. Her progress will be measured with the Brigance Assessment; progress reports will be sent home quarterly. TRANSITION Andreas plan is to attend the Moore School of Vocational Development in the fall. She has already been accepted and registered. Andrea is interested in cooking. She loves her current cooking elective and hopes to take classes in this area at the Moore School next year. Andrea would like to work in a restaurant full time one day. Her grandfather owns a small diner. For the last several years, Andrea has been busing tables on occasion. She plans on spending more time there this year now that she is older, possibly working as an assistant to the cooks. Andrea was informed of the transfer of her educational rights that will occur upon her 18 th birthday. PROGRAMS & SERVICES Andrea will attend the program for students with Cognitive Impairments for 4 of the 6 periods of her school day where she will receive instruction in reading, writing, math, social studies, and science. She will attend two general education electives which she has already begun (digital photography and intro to culinary arts). During her math period in the program for students with Cognitive Impairments Andrea will work on change making and general money processing every day for at least 15 minutes. Work in this area will take priority above the required curriculum set for the class. Three days a week a homework assignment in the area of money processing and change making will also be given. ACCOMODATIONS/SUPPLEMENTARY AIDS In her general education electives Andrea will need her assignments that require reading, writing, or math reduced by as much as 50%. She will require extra time for assignments (double time). If Andrea is struggling in her general education electives, her teacher should call Ms Marino (ext 556) for assistance on the implementation of the accommodations or to coordinate the extra help that she may need. ASSESSMENTS Due to his disability, Andrea will take the alterative state testing for students with developmental disabilities. For all testing in the high school Andrea will require extra time, tests read to her, and the use of a calculator (if math is involved). PARTICIPANTS: ________________ ________________ ________________ ________________ IEP START DATE: 10/5/13 ________________ ________________ _________________ _________________

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Examples for Secondary Students

Andrea:
Andrea has been making strong academic progress and seems to have a good transition plan and supports in place. She is nearly ready to move on from high school and enter her post secondary placement. However, one problem remains. Her math skills when applied to money are still nonfunctional. Unfortunately for Andrea, this area of deficit is critical to independence, probably more so than the many other areas in which she outshines her peers within her disability category. The team realized this during her IEP meeting. In the discussion it was made clear that she had a low likelihood of developing functional money processing skills by years end if she continued on with the same type of math instruction that she has had for years. While everyone involved understands full well that due to her disability these skills may not develop in Andrea no matter what instruction is given, the team thought it would be worthwhile to increase focus in this area, provide her with extra instruction and practice, even if it means that she will miss some other areas of instruction. See the following sentences taken from the Programs and Services section of her IEP: During her math period in the program for students with Cognitive Impairments Andrea will work on change making and general money processing every day for at least 15 minutes. Work in this area will take priority above the required curriculum set for the class. Three days a week a homework assignment in the area of money processing and change making will also be given. Recording the above section in a legal IEP may be exceedingly difficult. This short paragraph contains information regarding service minutes, curriculum modifications, accommodations, and service content. Because of the form-like nature of most legal IEP documents this content would need to be spread out over several sections across multiple pages; the 15 minutes of modified curriculum would have to be posted somehow on the minutes page, the excusal for

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A ONE PAGE IEP work missed on the accommodations page, and the content of the intervention would require still another page (maybe on the supplementary aids and services page, although it still would not be a good fit). If presented this way, the IEP document would not make sense to someone who was not at the meeting. This means that it would be very difficult for compliance monitors to follow the logic of this intervention. If compliance monitors have trouble following an IEP it will be red flagged, creating problems for everyone involved. A savvy IEP team would be cognizant of this. Therefore there is high likelihood that the team would never even attempt to record such a strategy in a legal IEP. There would be too much potential to get in trouble with the districts compliance monitoring system. Furthermore, there would be no practical benefit to doing so because no one would understand it anyway. Given this, one of two things would end up happening. The team could simply forget about the whole idea of implementing this intervention, or they could attempt to implement it without recording it in the IEP. Not implementing the intervention would be a tragic disservice to the student, and implementing the intervention without recording it in the IEP would be a slap in the face to the process, a further trivialization of the document. Either way, the legal IEP paradigms inability to deal effectiv ely with such a simple intervention, ironically because it is too individualized for the form, highlights the need for a system that holds the adaptability of the document in higher regard.

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Chapter 9 Final Thoughts and Other Considerations

communicative IEP is constructed from two types of content: what is explicitly required in the federal law and what the team determines to be of practical value to record. This content is presented in the document in a manner thought to have the most communicative value to its primary audience of school staff, parents, and students. This communicative IEP paradigm is hypothesized to have several advantages over the current system. Among these are an increased usefulness of the IEP document in the classroom, the potential for more focused and meaningful IEP meetings, and a substantial savings of limited educator resources that could be better prioritized toward service delivery. An increase in the communicative facility of IEP documents should result in them having a greater utility in the classroom, which would make them more likely to be referred to throughout the school year. To illustrate, consider the following common scenario. A general education secondary teacher who teaches five classes every day, each averaging 30 students, teaches about 150 students daily. Assuming an IEP rate of 13 percent would yield 20 different students with IEPs in this teachers classroom throughout the course of the

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A ONE PAGE IEP day. That means the teacher has to implement 20 different sets of accommodations and have an understanding of 20 different unique constellations of needs in order to provide these students with the most effective educational experience. Although it is a tall order, it is imperative that it be accomplished, and accomplished well. Therefore the effect that the legal IEP paradigm would have on this teacher needs to be considered. Do legal IEPs provide her enough help with her task? Are they helpful to this teacher at all? In a legal IEP paradigm, with IEPs that can be 20 pages in length, 20 IEPs would total up to 400 pages. Housing 400 pages is way beyond the capabilities of a folder (certainly beyond those of a staple). She would require two oversized binders each semester to house the IEPs of the special education students in her classes (that is if she were to actually desire to obtain them). Having general education teachers consult these binders to reacquaint themselves with the needs and accommodations for their students would be completely ineffective. A basic consideration of human nature leads us to conclude that IEPs stored in such a fashion would rarely be consulted as frequently as they should be, if at all. It is simply too much to sort through, too difficult to be useful. We can also safely conclude that such a presentation of this information would likely result in a diminished quality of each consultation, as the vital content will be diluted in a sea of documentation and protective statements, pages of paperwork directed toward the state and not the classroom. In contrast, consider the behavior of the same teacher whose school uses one page communicative IEPs. Twenty one-page IEPs can all be held together with a single staple or a small paper clip. They could all fit into a back sleeve of a grade book or a lesson planner. This means they could physically be at the teachers fingertips every time a paper is graded or a lesson is prepared for. Imagine the increase in frequency in which those IEPs could be consulted. Furthermore, the quality of each consultation would increase. Because it is presented in a way that is designed for their understanding, teachers will be able to take away more in less time. Most teachers should be able to read the entirety of a one page communicative IEP in the

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Final Thoughts and Other Considerations time they would spend hunting through twenty pages trying to verify a single accommodation in a legal IEP. Given the above, it makes sense to assert that writing IEPs as one page communication tools as opposed to 20 page contracts would actually change the behavior of the teachers. By making it more efficient to do so, we would increase the likelihood that teachers would consult the IEP document throughout the school year. The net result of that consultation should be an increase in the effectiveness of their instruction for the student. There is simply nothing that is more important than this outcome. In addition to being more useful in the classroom, communicative IEPs may also result in an increase in meeting quality. Limiting the distraction of litigious paperwork would allow the team to remain focused on the creation of the plan rather than the documentation of compliance. This may result in IEPs that are more effective and individualized, as well as increased levels of parent and student satisfaction with the IEP process. Research, of course, is needed to test this hypothesis. Lastly, as described earlier, the process of constructing legal IEPs comes at a significant cost of educators time and resources. It would be a statement of manifest fact that the move to a (possibly one page) communicative IEP would result in an increase in educators focus towards their primary role of providing direct services to students. This time could then be used for lesson planning, caseload management (actually checking up on the fidelity of IEP implementation and consulting with general education teachers on the progress of the interventions and accommodations), as well as increased parent communication. This has the potential to translate into better teaching, higher fidelity of IEP implementation, and increased parental involvement.

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Research Measuring Communicative Value

Although not following the exact principles outlined in this book, there is some evidence that streamlined IEPs have practical advantages over traditional IEPs. Schick (2007) investigated teachers perceptions of IEP usefulness between two Colorado school districts; one district used IEPs that were a single page in length (without content) and the other district used IEPs of a more traditional length, seven pages (without content). The district that employed the short form enjoyed higher ratings of IEP usefulness from both their general and special education teachers than did the district that utilized a traditional length IEP form. Furthermore, qualitative analysis revealed that both special and general education teachers in the district using the traditional forms reported their IEPs to be too lengthy and legalistic to be useful to them. However, apart from this particular study, investigations of the effects different IEP designs have on their communicative facility are practically nonexistent. My search of the literature found no other studies that directly examined this question. This is problematic. Research into this area should be a priority for the future if the field is to develop more useful IEP documents. As of this moment, we lack empirical evidence that the current OSEP model form would result in a more useful document than the Illinois state model form, or how the communicative IEP presented here would fare against either. Without studying the differences between them on outcome measures that directly or indirectly pertain to communicative value we can only hypothesize what the effects would be. There are numerous dependent measures that could be employed to test the communicative values of different IEP designs against each other. For example, we could start by measuring the direct effect of communication: knowledge. Investigators could simply ask secondary students what their IEP goals are and report on their accuracy. If students cannot recite their goals when asked, or even know the areas that their goals are in, it may be considered the fault of their IEP process. Researchers could ask general education teachers what are the accommodations of the special education

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Final Thoughts and Other Considerations students in their classes. Do they know off-hand? If they dont, how could their accommodations be consistently implemented? In addition to measuring knowledge, teacher behavior would also be indicative of the communicative value of a districts IEPs. Researchers could investigate where general education high school teachers keep their IEPs. This may tell us much about the communicative value they hold. Are they useful enough to have a copy kept on hand in their classroom, or are they in a file in a central office? How often are they referred to? This may get at the center of whether an IEP design produces documents that function as valuable communicative tools. Lastly, researchers could simply measure everyones opinion on the communicative facility of the document. Teachers, parents, and students could rate their IEPs for clarity and usefulness. Regardless of the measurement methodology, until a research base regarding the communicative value of IEPs is established, the topic of IEP reform remains a discussion about paperwork reduction, rather than a discussion about increasing the value of IEP documents for the benefit of students.

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The Future of Compliance Monitoring

A shift from legal to communicative IEPs will be assisted by a concurrent change in the typical approach to compliance monitoring. Currently compliance monitoring is generally completed through a review of district paperwork by either a state agency or some internal processes that reports back to the state. Auditors check over IEP and other special education papers searching for inadequacy in the districts documentation of their own compliance. Insufficient documentation, as determined by the state, is punished, usually with additional paperwork requirements. To the extent that it is in the immediate best interest of special education directors to keep their districts out of trouble with state auditors, they are motivated to continue over emphasizing the documentation of compliance in their special education documents. This unfortunate incentive structure maintains much of the legal IEP paradigm. The problem in this system is that compliance monitors have made the error of equating the policing of documentation with the policing of behavior. They are not the same. I liken it to the following hypothetical scenario: What if the highway patrol stayed off the roads, and, as an alternative tactic to enforce the speed limit, they required motorists to mail in reports of how fast they drove each day? Since no one would actually report speeding, tickets would only be written for insufficient documentation of speed, a failure to prove (through paperwork) that you stayed under the speed limit. Those citizens who kept the best records would be ok, and those who were not as focused on documenting their lawfulness would pay a lot of tickets, that is until they also started to hyper focus on documenting their compliance with the speed limit. It is laughably obvious that this would not produce safer highways. It would, however, produce hours of paperwork for each motorist, and, for those who do not know better, the illusion that driving quality is actually being measured.

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Final Thoughts and Other Considerations Psychology tells us that you get what you measure; people will focus on what is monitored, what is incentivized. In other words, if you measure paperwork you will get more paperwork. However, if you measure actual behavior, you should get improvements in that behavior. Therefore, to ensure compliance and quality in special education, compliance monitoring methods must begin to focus on the behavior of the educational staff, as opposed to their own documentation of their behavior. If the goal of compliance monitoring is to police the general behavior of school staff during the IEP (e.g., what considerations were brought up, what evidence and data were reviewed, whether or not the student was informed of the transfer of rights upon their reaching the age of majority), then the actual behavior of staff during the IEP meeting should be monitored, rather than what the staff wrote about their behavior. Instead of focusing so much on reviews of paperwork, compliance monitors could observe, unannounced, a random selection of IEP meetings. There they could obtain direct evidence regarding if the district was being compliant with procedure. They could listen to the discussion regarding assistive technology, the restrictiveness of the educational environment, and alternative programming options. This is what they really want to measure anyway. What actually occurs rather than what was written about what has occurred. This is what needs monitoring, direct monitoring, behavioral monitoring. By measuring the process of the IEPs development directly, the actual document could be spared from its duty to prove the validity of its own construction. Besides eliminating the need for excessive documentation of the considerations, alternative monitoring methods could also work to deemphasize the need for protective statements. For example, many legal IEP forms have a section documenting when and how the procedural safeguards were given to parents. Instead of checking to see whether this box is checked to determine if the safeguards were being appropriately distributed, would it not make more sense to measure this directly? Why not take a small sample of the IEPs a district conducts and follow up with a parent questionnaire or telephone interview? Simply ask the parents directly if they have been given

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A ONE PAGE IEP their procedural safeguards. Would that not also provide evidence that the safeguards were being distributed? If done correctly, such direct parent follow up may also result in school districts gathering additional useful information regarding the implementation of their procedures. It would also make parents feel that their input is important and would foster improved communication and participation. This may have the added effect of being a benefit in and of itself as we know that parental involvement is directly related to academic achievement (e.g., Henderson & Mapp, 2002; Jeynes, 2005). In summary, alternative compliance monitoring methods such as parent surveys and direct IEP observations would reduce the pressure on districts to create IEPs that must document the validity of their own construction. They would also likely result in more valuable feedback to districts regarding what procedures are actually being followed. Those designing compliance monitoring processes need to be cognizant of the fact that behavior and documentation of behavior are not one in the same, and that equating the two may cause significant collateral damage.

Getting Started
Unfortunately it is unlikely that compliance monitoring methods will undergo substantive changes any time soon. Districts attempting to produce communicative IEPs will no doubt be prodded in audits to provide documentation in their IEPs beyond what is explicitly required in IDEA 2004 or in their state regulations. Therefore, it would be nice to have some cover in the law, something explicit to point to. I would like nothing more than for the next reauthorization of IDEA to give explicit protection to districts wanting to produce communicative IEPs. It would be ideal for something along the lines of the following to be included in the law:

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Final Thoughts and Other Considerations The central purpose of the written IEP document is to efficiently communicate the details of a students needs and supports to those entrusted with its implementation. Content included in the IEP document for the purposes of demonstrating compliance, protecting the district from legal action, or any other administrative purpose that does not serve the stated communicative purpose of the document should not be part of the written IEP. However, districts do not need to wait for this sort of cover to transition from legal to communicative IEPs. The statements already available in congressional reports, the findings of federal commissions, surveys of state directors of special education, and IDEA 2004 are explicit in the intention that districts ought to improve their IEPs so that they would be more understandable and less of a paperwork burden. The marching orders have been given. To review, the Presidents Commission Report (2002) states: At all levels, the Commission finds that the emphasis on IDEA paperwork requirements is unnecessarily onerous. The culture of process compliance begins at the top of the IDEA implementation pyramid and has a dramatic effect all the way down through the bureaucracy to the classroom. Teachers spend far more time completing documentation and paperwork than is merited by any educational or civil rights compliance purpose. Educators spend more time on process compliance than on improving educational performance of children with disabilities (p. 11). The text of IDEA 2004 itself states: Almost 30 years of research and experience has demonstrated that the education of children with disabilities can be made more effective by focusing resources on teaching and learning while reducing paperwork and requirements that do not assist in improving educational results (20 U. S. C. 1400 (c) (5)(G)).

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A ONE PAGE IEP A recent OSEP survey of state directors of special education (Ahearn, 2011) yielded the following recommendations: Reduce paperwork for teachers. Excessive amounts of paperwork are driving teachers out of the field.IEP requirements should be reviewed to identify elements that could be reduced. This would allow increased time for classroom activities (p.6). The Senate Report on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2003) states: The committee is greatly concerned about the paperwork burdens experienced by teachers and other education personnel in connection with writing IEPs. Lengthy and complex IEPs are not necessarily beneficial to students if they create confusion and take teachers away from instructional time with children. The committee has examined a number of actual IEPs, and has discovered that many items in those documents are not required by federal IDEA law. While it has proven difficult to determine the source or sources generating this additional paperwork, the committee wants to ensure that the federal law does not contribute to this problem (p. 30). These statements make it abundantly clear that the federal government wants us to reform our system. At the same time it is also clear that they do not know how to do this; they would have told us already if they did. However, we should not be looking to them for leadership. Their nature, the nature of government, is to make rules and regulate compliance. It is not to develop improved processes for the hundreds of professional fields at work in the country. The field of special education should not wait for the government to provide innovations in process development. Congress will not be able to tell us specifically how to fix our IEPs, how to improve the system. Instead, we will have to do it ourselves, empirically demonstrate success, and then communicate that success back to them. Congress, seeing the potential benefits of an alternative, may one day endorse it

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Final Thoughts and Other Considerations with a statement such as what was idealized earlier. In the meantime, however, we need to get to work. This book presented an alternative to the damaging legal IEP paradigm at play in most of the country. It was argued that if schools reconceptualized IEPs as communicative tools, as opposed to legal documents, they would produce IEPs that are more useful in the classroom, as well as save educator resources that could be better prioritized toward service delivery. Many sample IEPs were presented that were meant to serve as examples of that realized conceptual change. However, they are limited to my own best efforts to write IEPs based on the principles presented in this book. This is not to say that other professionals could not do a better job than I at filling in the details, at improving the process. My sincere hope is that they do.

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References
A New Era: Revitalizing Special Education for Children and their Families. (2002). Report of the Presidents Commission on Excellence in Special Education. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Author. Ahearn, E. (2011). Paperwork in Special Education: Survey Findings. In Forum. Retrieved from: http://projectforum.org/docs/ PaperworkinSpEd- SurveyFindings.pdf Alabama Department of Education. (2012). Individualized Education Program. Retrieved from :http://www.alsde.edu/html /sections/doc_download.asp?section=65&id=15571&sort=4 Borreca, C. P., (2011). Supporting documentation in favor of senate bill 1778. Retrieved from http://www.senate.state.tx.us/ 75r/senate/commit/c530/handouts11/04-05-ChrisBorrecaSB-1788.pdf Bradley, M. C., et al. (2011). IDEA National Assessment Implementation Study (NCEE 2011-4027). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assis tance, Institute of Education Sciences, U. S. Department of Education. Burns, E. (2006) IEP 2005: Writing and Implementing Individualized Education Programs, (IEPs). Charles C Thomas Pub Ltd, Springfield, IL Caranikas-Walker, F., Shapley, K. S., & Cordeau, M. (2006). Texas Study of Personnel Needs in Special Education. Executive Summary. Austin, TX: Texas Center for Educational Re search.

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A ONE PAGE IEP Connecticut State Department of education (2010). IEP Form. Retrieved from: http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/cwp/view.asp? a=2626&q=322680 Delaware Department of Education. (2010). Blank IEP Form. Retrieved from: http://www.doe.k12.de.us/infosuites/ students_family /specialed/IEP_Forms.shtml Dictonary.com (2012). Definition of Plan. Retrieved from: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plan Dildine, G. (2010). General education teachers' perceptions of their role in developing Individual Education Programs and their use of IEPs to develop instructional plans for students with disabilities. Unpublished Dissertation. Henderson, A. T. & Mapp, K. L. (2002). A new wave of evidence: The impact of school, family, and community connections on student achievement. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. Illinois State Board of Education. (2007). Individualized Education al Program (IEP) Forms. Retrieved from: http://www.isbe. State.il.us/spec-ed/html /forms.htm Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA), Pub. L. No 108446, 118 stat. 2647 (2004). [Amending 20 U.S. C. 1400 et seq.]. Jeynes, W. (2005). A Meta-Analysis: Parental Involvement and Secondary Student Educational Outcomes. Evaluation Exchange of the Harvard Family Research Project, 10 (4), 6.

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References Lee-Tarver, A. (2006). Are individualized education plans a good thing? A survey of teachers perceptions of the utility of IEPs in regular education settings. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 33(4), 263-272. Michigan Department of Education. (2010). IEP Model Form. Retrieved from: http://michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-1406530_6598-236252--,00.html New Mexico Public Education Department (2012). Secondary Individualized Education Program (IEP). Retrieved from: http://www.ped.state.nm.us/SEB/index.html Ohio Department of Education. (2010). IEP PR-07 form. Retrieved from:http://www.edresourcesohio.org/index.php?slug=ohiorequired-forms Schick, A., L. (2007). Changing the IEP development process: impact on collaboration and teacher perceptions of IEP usefulness. Unpublished Dissertation Senate Report on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Congress, 1st Session, November 3, 2003. Senate Report No. 108185, at 44 (2003). State of New Jersey Department of Education (2007). Model IEP Form. Retrieved from: http://www.state.nj.us/education/ specialed/iep.htm State of Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (2011). IEP Form. Retrieved from: http://www.k12.wa.us/ SpecialEd/Data/ModelStateForms.aspx

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A ONE PAGE IEP The Federation for Children with Special Needs & The Massachusetts Department of Education (2010). A Parents Guide to Special Education. Retrieved from: http://www.fcsn.org/ parentguide/pguide2.html U. S. Office of Special Education Programs. (2001). SPeNSE. Retrieved from: http://www.spense.org/ U.S. Office of Special Education Programs. (2006). Individualize Education Program (model form). Retrieved from: http://www.ed.gov/policy/speced/guid/idea/modelformiep.doc Van Duyn v. Baker School District (9th Cir. 2007) 502 F.3d 811, 813 Vannest, K. J., Hagan-Burke, S., Parker, R. I., Soares, D. A. (2011). Special Education Teacher Time Use in Four Types of Programs. The Journal of Educational Research, 104:4, 219230.

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Appendix
Text from IDEA 2004 regarding IEP construction: ``(d) Individualized Education Programs.-``(1) Definitions.--In this title: ``(A) Individualized education program.-``(i) In general.--The term `individualized education program' or `IEP' means a written statement for each child with a disability that is developed, reviewed, and revised in accordance with this section and that includes-``(I) a statement of the child's present levels of academic achievement and functional performance, including-``(aa) how the child's disability affects the child's involvement and progress in the general education curriculum; ``(bb) for preschool children, as appropriate, how the disability affects the child's participation in appropriate activities; and ``(cc) for children with disabilities who take alternate assessments aligned to alternate achievement standards, a description of benchmarks or short-term objectives; ``(II) a statement of measurable annual goals, including academic and functional goals, designed to-``(aa) meet the child's needs that result from the child's disability to enable the child to be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum; and ``(bb) meet each of the

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A ONE PAGE IEP child's other educational needs that result from the child's disability; ``(III) a description of how the child's progress toward meeting the annual goals described in subclause (II) will be measured and when periodic reports on the progress the child is making toward meeting the annual goals (such as through the use of quarterly or other periodic reports, concurrent with the issuance of report cards) will be provided; ``(IV) a statement of the special education and related services and supplementary aids and services, based on peer-reviewed research to the extent practicable, to be provided to the child, or on behalf of the child, and a statement of the program modifications or supports for school personnel that will be provided for the child-``(aa) to advance appropriately toward attaining the annual goals; ``(bb) to be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum in accordance with subclause (I) and to participate in extracurricular and other nonacademic activities; and ``(cc) to be educated and participate with other children with disabilities and nondisabled children in the activities described in this subparagraph; ``(V) an explanation of the extent, if any, to which the child will not

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Appendix participate with nondisabled children in the regular class and in the activities described in subclause (IV)(cc); ``(VI)(aa) a statement of any individual appropriate accommodations that are necessary to measure the academic achievement and functional performance of the child on State and districtwide assessments consistent with section 612(a)(16)(A); and ``(bb) if the IEP Team determines that the child shall take an alternate assessment on a particular State or districtwide assessment of student achievement, a statement of why-``(AA) the child cannot participate in the regular assessment; and ``(BB) the particular alternate assessment selected is appropriate for the child; ``(VII) the projected date for the beginning of the services and modifications described in subclause (IV), and the anticipated frequency, location, and duration of those services and modifications; and ``(VIII) beginning not later than the first IEP to be in effect when the child is 16, and updated annually thereafter-``(aa) appropriate measurable postsecondary goals based upon age appropriate transition assessments related to training, education, employment, and, where appropriate, independent living skills; ``(bb) the transition services (including courses of

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A ONE PAGE IEP study) needed to assist the child in reaching those goals; and ``(cc) beginning not later than 1 year before the child reaches the age of majority under State law, a statement that the child has been informed of the child's rights under this title, if any, that will transfer to the child on reaching the age of majority under section 615(m). ``(ii) Rule of construction.--Nothing in this section shall be construed to require-``(I) that additional information be included in a child's IEP beyond what is explicitly required in this section; and ``(II) the IEP Team to include information under 1 component of a child's IEP that is already contained under another component of such IEP. ``(B) Individualized education program team.--The term `individualized education program team' or `IEP Team' means a group of individuals composed of-``(i) the parents of a child with a disability; ``(ii) not less than 1 regular education teacher of such child (if the child is, or may be, participating in the regular education environment); ``(iii) not less than 1 special education teacher, or where appropriate, not less than 1 special education provider of such child; ``(iv) a representative of the local educational agency who-``(I) is qualified to provide, or supervise the provision of, specially designed instruction to meet the unique needs of children with disabilities; ``(II) is knowledgeable about the

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Appendix general education curriculum; and ``(III) is knowledgeable about the availability of resources of the local educational agency; ``(v) an individual who can interpret the instructional implications of evaluation results, who may be a member of the team described in clauses (ii) through (vi); ``(vi) at the discretion of the parent or the agency, other individuals who have knowledge or special expertise regarding the child, including related services personnel as appropriate; and ``(vii) whenever appropriate, the child with a disability. ``(C) IEP team attendance.-``(i) Attendance not necessary.--A member of the IEP Team shall not be required to attend an IEP meeting, in whole or in part, if the parent of a child with a disability and the local educational agency agree that the attendance of such member is not necessary because the member's area of the curriculum or related services is not being modified or discussed in the meeting. ``(ii) Excusal.--A member of the IEP Team may be excused from attending an IEP meeting, in whole or in part, when the meeting involves a modification to or discussion of the member's area of the curriculum or related services, if-``(I) the parent and the local educational agency consent to the excusal; and ``(II) the member submits, in writing to the parent and the IEP Team, input into the development of the IEP prior to the meeting. ``(iii) Written agreement and consent required.--A parent's agreement under clause (i) and consent under clause (ii) shall be in writing. ``(D) IEP team transition.--In the case of a child who was previously served under part C, an invitation to

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A ONE PAGE IEP the initial IEP meeting shall, at the request of the parent, be sent to the part C service coordinator or other representatives of the part C system to assist with the smooth transition of services. ``(2) Requirement that program be in effect.-``(A) In general.--At the beginning of each school year, each local educational agency, State educational agency, or other State agency, as the case may be, shall have in effect, for each child with a disability in the agency's jurisdiction, an individualized education program, as defined in paragraph (1)(A). ``(B) Program for child aged 3 through 5.--In the case of a child with a disability aged 3 through 5 (or, at the discretion of the State educational agency, a 2year-old child with a disability who will turn age 3 during the school year), the IEP Team shall consider the individualized family service plan that contains the material described in section 636, and that is developed in accordance with this section, and the individualized family service plan may serve as the IEP of the child if using that plan as the IEP is-``(i) consistent with State policy; and ``(ii) agreed to by the agency and the child's parents. ``(C) Program for children who transfer school districts.-``(i) In general.-``(I) Transfer within the same state.--In the case of a child with a disability who transfers school districts within the same academic year, who enrolls in a new school, and who had an IEP that was in effect in the same State, the local educational agency shall provide such child with a free appropriate public education, including services comparable to those described in the previously held IEP, in consultation with the parents until such time as the local educational agency adopts the previously held IEP or

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Appendix develops, adopts, and implements a new IEP that is consistent with Federal and State law. ``(II) Transfer outside state.--In the case of a child with a disability who transfers school districts within the same academic year, who enrolls in a new school, and who had an IEP that was in effect in another State, the local educational agency shall provide such child with a free appropriate public education, including services comparable to those described in the previously held IEP, in consultation with the parents until such time as the local educational agency conducts an evaluation pursuant to subsection (a)(1), if determined to be necessary by such agency, and develops a new IEP, if appropriate, that is consistent with Federal and State law. ``(ii) Transmittal of records.--To facilitate the transition for a child described in clause (i)-``(I) the new school in which the child enrolls shall take reasonable steps to promptly obtain the child's records, including the IEP and supporting documents and any other records relating to the provision of special education or related services to the child, from the previous school in which the child was enrolled, pursuant to section 99.31(a)(2) of title 34, Code of Federal Regulations; and ``(II) the previous school in which the child was enrolled shall take reasonable steps to promptly respond to such request from the new school.

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A ONE PAGE IEP ``(3) Development of iep.-``(A) In general.--In developing each child's IEP, the IEP Team, subject to subparagraph (C), shall consider-``(i) the strengths of the child; ``(ii) the concerns of the parents for enhancing the education of their child; ``(iii) the results of the initial evaluation or most recent evaluation of the child; and ``(iv) the academic, developmental, and functional needs of the child. ``(B) Consideration of special factors.--The IEP Team shall-``(i) in the case of a child whose behavior impedes the child's learning or that of others, consider the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports, and other strategies, to address that behavior; ``(ii) in the case of a child with limited English proficiency, consider the language needs of the child as such needs relate to the child's IEP; ``(iii) in the case of a child who is blind or visually impaired, provide for instruction in Braille and the use of Braille unless the IEP Team determines, after an evaluation of the child's reading and writing skills, needs, and appropriate reading and writing media (including an evaluation of the child's future needs for instruction in Braille or the use of Braille), that instruction in Braille or the use of Braille is not appropriate for the child; ``(iv) consider the communication needs of the child, and in the case of a child who is deaf or hard of hearing, consider the child's language and communication needs, opportunities for direct communications with peers and professional personnel in the child's language and communication mode, academic level, and full range of needs, including opportunities for direct instruction in the child's language and

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Appendix communication mode; and ``(v) consider whether the child needs assistive technology devices and services. ``(C) Requirement with respect to regular education teacher.--A regular education teacher of the child, as a member of the IEP Team, shall, to the extent appropriate, participate in the development of the IEP of the child, including the determination of appropriate positive behavioral interventions and supports, and other strategies, and the determination of supplementary aids and services, program modifications, and support for school personnel consistent with paragraph (1)(A)(i)(IV). ``(D) Agreement.--In making changes to a child's IEP after the annual IEP meeting for a school year, the parent of a child with a disability and the local educational agency may agree not to convene an IEP meeting for the purposes of making such changes, and instead may develop a written document to amend or modify the child's current IEP. ``(E) Consolidation of iep team meetings.--To the extent possible, the local educational agency shall encourage the consolidation of reevaluation meetings for the child and other IEP Team meetings for the child. ``(F) Amendments.--Changes to the IEP may be made either by the entire IEP Team or, as provided in subparagraph (D), by amending the IEP rather than by redrafting the entire IEP. Upon request, a parent shall be provided with a revised copy of the IEP with the amendments incorporated. ``(4) Review and revision of iep.-``(A) In general.--The local educational agency shall ensure that, subject to subparagraph (B), the IEP Team-``(i) reviews the child's IEP periodically, but not less frequently than annually, to determine whether the annual goals for the child are being achieved; and ``(ii) revises the IEP as appropriate to address-``(I) any lack of expected progress

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A ONE PAGE IEP toward the annual goals and in the general education curriculum, where appropriate; ``(II) the results of any reevaluation conducted under this section; ``(III) information about the child provided to, or by, the parents, as described in subsection (c)(1)(B); ``(IV) the child's anticipated needs; or ``(V) other matters. ``(B) Requirement with respect to regular education teacher.--A regular education teacher of the child, as a member of the IEP Team, shall, consistent with paragraph (1)(C), participate in the review and revision of the IEP of the child.

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Acknowledgements
This book could not have been completed, let alone attempted, without the loving support and patience of my wife Sarah. I am also indebted to Amanda Flannery and Lori Dickerhoff for their constructive feedback during the formation of the original manuscript.

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About the Author

Richard Lucido has been practicing school psychology in Michigan since 2002. He received his Ph.D. in educational psychology from Wayne State University in 2011. His research interests and publications span the topics of special education reform, the social cognition of achievement motivation, and the philosophy of consciousness.

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