Friends, when someone you love receives an Individualized Education Program, it is important to know it is a live, growing, evolving legal document. It is also important to carefully read and ensure that the IEP is accurate. However, while IEPs may be important, living documents, they are not written for the average person to understand at first glance. They are instead written for special educators, lawmakers, and lawyers to track whether a given student on an IEP is receiving a Free Appropriate Public Education. Because of this, IEPs can become frustratingly jargony, unfriendly to the average person and incomprehensible at times. If nothing else, IEPs can certainly be intimating.

IEP 1, the first real page of an IEP starts out with parent and or student concerns. The most important thing to know about this section is that parent concerns must be included verbatim from the parent. If the parent says, “this is the worst school in the world,” and specifies that they would like this clearly stated in the parent concerns section, the school’s hands are tied.

PLEP A: Present Levels of Current Performance. PLEP A is an extremely important page. This is where all the accommodations for the student will be listed, as well as a statement of how the disability affects progress within the curriculum areas. Strong PLEP A’s do NOT include a laundry list of every accommodation available. This page works best when it is tailored to the student’s needs. It should also clearly state the disability profile in plain language.