IEP

Individual Education Plan

The individual education program (IEP) serves as a planning document that provides guidance for both placement decisions and instruction. The individual education program summarizes information on the child's current levels of performance and identifies specific goals and objectives for each child. Second, the individual education program involves parents as equal partners in the educational planning process.

The IEP also provides a means of accountability. The IEP sets forth in writing, a commitment of resources necessary to enable a child with a disability to receive needed special education and related services; it establishes evaluation criteria and procedures used to assess progress toward meeting objectives; and it serves as a compliance document for the Nebraska Department of Education.

A written IEP must be completed before a child is placed in a special education program or provided services. After the initial placement, an IEP must be in effect for each year the child receives special education services.

Definition
The IEP is a written statement that includes the following components:

*a statement of the child's present level of educational performance;
*a statement of annual goals, including short term instructional objectives;
*a statement of the specific special education and related services to be provided to the child, and the extent to which the child will be able to participate in regular educational programs;
*the projected dates for initiation of services and the anticipated duration of the services; and
*appropriate objective criteria and evaluation procedures and schedules for determining, on at least an annual basis, whether the short term instructional objectives are being achieved.

The statement of the present level of performance should describe the effect of the disability on the child's educational performance. This includes both academic areas such as reading, math, or communication and nonacademic areas such as daily life activities or mobility. The statement of performance should contain information provided in objective, measurable terms. If test scores are included, they should be self-explanatory or an explanation should be included. Test scores should reflect the impact of the disability on the child's performance. Raw scores alone are not sufficient. Whatever problems the multidisciplinary team identifies in the statement of educational performance should then be addressed in both the objectives of the IEP and in the services proposed for the child.

Annual goals should describe what the parents and the rest of the IEP team expect the child to accomplish in the next twelve month period. The goals should focus on the special education and related services that the school employs to offset or reduce the problems resulting from the disability. The individual educational program does not address the total education of the child. For example, the IEP of a child with a mild speech impairment might focus only on correcting the impairment or minimizing its effect.

The IEP short term instructional objectives are measurable, intermediate steps between the child's present level of performance and the annual goals established for the child. Short term objectives are not intended to include the detail necessary for daily, weekly, or monthly instructional plans. IEP objectives provide general benchmarks for determining progress toward meeting annual goals.

The IEP is a commitment by the school to provide all the services listed, even if the school does not provide the services themselves. The IEP must also include a statement of the extent to which the child will be able to participate in the regular educational programs and any modifications necessary for the child to participate in these programs.

Nebraska Rule 51, Section 007.01 describes the IEP and provides the requirements for its content.

IEP Conference