 What is a Standards-based IEP?
Historically IEPs have focused on a student’s
acquisition of basic academic or functional skills
and have had little if any relationship to a specific
academic area or grade-level expectations.
In contrast, the process used to develop a standardsbased IEP is directly tied to the state’s content
standards. Both the student’s present level of
performance (often referred to as “PLOP”) and the
annual IEP goals are aligned with the state’s
grade-level standards, creating a plan that is
aimed at getting the student to a proficient level
on all state standards.
When did this get started, IDEA 1997 or 2004?
The 1997 amendments added requirements
related to access to the general curriculum.
Access to the general curriculum became a
MANDATED consideration in all aspects of
evaluation and programming.
How does NCLB fit into this?
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 further tied the
assessment of students with disabilities to
state accountability systems.
The student’s IEP must contain:
 A statement of the student’s present levels of academic
achievement and functional performance including how
the student’s disability affects the student’s involvement
and progress in the general education curriculum.
 A statement of measurable annual goals (academic and
functional). These goals should be designed to enable the
student to be involved in and make progress in the
general education curriculum.
 A statement of the special education and related services
and supplementary aids and services that will be provided
to enable the student to advance toward attaining the
annual goals and to be involved in and make progress in
the general education curriculum.
Recommendation:
“Prior to developing IEPs, all IEP team
members, including parents, need to be
familiar with the general education
curriculum, including the state’s
academic content standards and state
assessments.”
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Step 1: Consider the grade-level content
standards for the grade in which the student is
enrolled or would be enrolled based on age. Since
academic content standards are the foundation
of the general education curriculum, it is necessary
for the IEP team to consider how the student is
performing in relation to the state’s grade-level
content standards.
 What is the intent of the content standard?
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What is the content standard saying that the
student must know and be able to do?
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Step 2: Examine classroom and student data to
determine where the student is functioning in
relation to the grade-level standards.
Has the student been taught content aligned with
the grade-level standards?
Has the student been provided appropriate
instructional scaffolding to attain grade-level
expectations?
Were the lessons and teaching materials used to
teach the student aligned with grade-level
standards?
Was the instruction evidence-based
Step 3: Develop the present level of academic
achievement and functional performance.
 What do we know about the student’s response to
academic instruction (e.g. progress monitoring
data)
 What programs, accommodations, and
interventions have been successful with the
student?
 What have we learned from previous IEPs and
student data that can inform decision making?
 Are there assessment data (i.e., state, district,
and/or classroom) that can provide useful
information for making decisions about the
student’s strengths and needs (e.g., patterns in the
data)?
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Consider the factors related to the student’s
disability and how they affect how the students
learns and demonstrates what he or she knows.
How does the student’s disability affect
participation and progress in the general
curriculum?
What supports does the student need to learn the
knowledge and attain the skills to progress in the
general curriculum?
Is the student on track to achieve grade-level
proficiency within the year?
Provides a summary of baseline academic
achievement data indicating what the
student is currently able to perform.
 Identifies current functional performance.
 Provides a description of how the disability
affects the student’s involvement/progress
in the general curriculum. Focus on the
impact of the student’s disability on
achievement of the standards.
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Student strengths
Student needs
How skill deficits affect
involvement/progress in the general
education curriculum
Assessment data
Status of prior IEP goal (i.e., Final Progress
Report)
Input from Teachers/Parents/Students
Transition needs (as appropriate
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Curriculum based
Descriptive
Actual content to be learned
Lead to skill development
Include information related to standards
It is critical that assessment, present levels,
goals, and progress monitoring include both
the instructional AND grade levels. Why?
 Instructional level alone does not meet the
criteria of the general education
curriculum.
 Grade level alone does not meet the
criteria of an IEP based on identified skill
deficits, and grade-level as a statement
without other information is not meaningful
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The two levels together (instructional and grade)
allow the student to make progress in the
general education curriculum, while also
addressing skill deficits.
It is necessary to use grade level- (particularly for
outcome measures) in order to determine if what
is in the IEP is working.
Remember: Do not reduce the student to a
grade-level.
Good: “The Student is performing below-basic on
Algebra and Number Operations as measured
by 3rd grade Discovery Education”
Bad: “The student is performing at the 3rd grade
level.”
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Present Levels are aligned to the general
curriculum standards
Present Levels are data driven
Present Levels are understandable
Present Levels are measurable
Present Levels are meaningful
Anthony: Grade 4 (Reading)
A review of brief classroom assessments indicates that
Anthony needs to improve reading for fluency, which
will increase his reading comprehension. Anthony
can read 80 words per minute of connected text with
100% accuracy, which is within the range of words
per minute for typical peers in the 2nd grade.
Anthony is working toward automaticity by reading
passages at the second grade level for which he has
achieved a high level of accuracy in oral reading
fluency. Determining the meaning of unknown words
by reading words in context and applying word
structures (prefix, base words, and suffix) are relative
strengths for Anthony in the area of reading.
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Karen: Grade 8 (Math)
Karen’s state and classroom assessment data indicate
computational fluency with addition, subtraction,
and multiplication of integers. She can solve oneand two-step algebraic expressions on worksheets
and classroom assessments. Generalizing what she
has learned in mathematics, however, to real-world
situations is an area of need for Karen. She can do
the computations if the problems are written as
numerals and presented as math problems. It is
difficult for Karen to apply what she knows about
mathematics to situations that occur in daily life.
Karen needs to learn a process for applying what she
knows about the operations of math to problem
situations in other disciplines.
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Instructional Level and Grade Level
 The information then translates into
content for goals and specially designed
instruction in order for the student to
work toward mastery in the general
education curriculum.
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You have shown that you have
knowledge of the general curriculum
standards, and you have carefully
considered those standards.
You have spent an adequate amount of
time gathering and analyzing
information used to outline the Present
Levels of Performance.
Now you have a strong foundation for
developing goals.
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Goals should be from the actual wording
of the standards, or
Should be directly related to the
standards and everyone should be
aware of that relationship, and
Should clearly correspond to the
identified skill deficit obtained from the
present levels.
Every goal must relate to a need identified in the PLOP.
 Annual goals are written only in areas that directly affect involvement
and progress in the general education curriculum resulting from the
student’s disability.
 Therefore, science and social studies should no longer be separate
areas of need under goals & objectives, since those areas do not
directly relate to a need identified in the PLOP.
 In many cases, if needed, a science or social studies objective would be
directly tied to the specific skill deficits (i.e., reading or mathematics)
that impact mastery of a standard.
Example:
Annual goal (Reading Comprehension): Karen will use active
comprehension strategies to analyze text for fact and opinion, causeeffect, inferences, and conclusions.
Objective (Science): Given evidence from a dataset, Karen will determine
cause and effect relationships that explain a phenomenon with 80%
accuracy on 8 out of 10 scenarios as measured by standard tests,
teacher tests, and observations.
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Review Present Levels of Performance.
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Identify student’s needs (academic
and functional).
Prioritize the student’s needs.
 Determine the standard that correlates
with each prioritized need.
 Write the goal with the condition,
behavior, and performance criteria.
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What prerequisite skills/knowledge does
the student need to close the gap
between his present levels of
academic achievement and the
grade-level standards?
What are the student’s needs as identified
in the present level of performance?
 What can the student reasonably be
expected to accomplish in one school
year?
 Are the conditions for meeting the goal
addressed?
 How will the outcome of the goal be
measured?
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Sample Annual Goals/Objectives
 Anthony will know and apply the steps of
the writing process: prewriting, drafting,
and editing.
1. Given a paragraph, Anthony will select a topic
sentence for that paragraph with 80%
accuracy on 4 out of 5 trials as measured by
standard tests and writing samples.
2. Given a topic sentence, Anthony will select
details that support that topic sentence with
80% accuracy on 4 out of 5 trials as measured
by standard test and writing samples.
*Remember, regardless of whether the annual
goal addresses an academic deficit or some
other skill that requires improvement, such as
organizational skills or behavior, objectives
must be written in a manner that are strategic,
measurable, and attainable and must contain
these 5 critical elements:
 The student (who)
 Will do what (behavior)
 To what level or degree (criterion)
 Under what conditions (conditions)
 In what length of time (timeframe- begin date)
Step 5: Assess and report the student’s
progress throughout the year
 How does the student demonstrate
what he/she knows on classroom,
district, and state assessments?
 Are a variety of assessments used to
measure progress?
 How will progress be reported to
parents?
Step 6: Identify specially designed instruction
including accommodations and/or
modifications needed to access and progress
in the general education curriculum.
Remember your goal is to accelerate progress.
You are carefully analyzing present levels of
performance, pinpointing strengths and
weaknesses, prioritizing needs, establishing
appropriate goals and measures, and
designing special instruction geared toward
accelerating progress and closing the gap.
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What accommodations are needed to
enable the student to access the
knowledge in the general education
curriculum?
What accommodations have been used
with the student and were they
effective?
Has the complexity of the materials been
changed in such a way that the content
has been modified?
Properly implemented, a standards-based
approach to developing IEPs blends the
best of special education and
standards-based education. Aligning a
student’s special education program
with the learning expectations for all
students helps ensure that students with
disabilities will benefit from school
accountability and improvement
activities just as all other students.
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Be familiar with the standards for the grade level you
are teaching.
Carefully consider the entire standard and decide if
the student needs to master all of a particular
standard or only part(s) of the standard.
Analyze test results to determine the student’s present
level of performance relative to the standards for his
enrolled grade.
Include the priorities and concerns of the student and
the student’s parents.
Define the student in terms that translate directly into
instructional intervention.
Document all data sources used to develop the
student’s present level of performance.