Special Education for Beginners | Managing Paraprofessionals, Special Education Strategies, First Year Sped Teachers, Special Ed Overwhelm, Paperwork for Special Education Teachers

IEP Alignment in Action: A Case Study Walkthrough

• Episode 284

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We’ve spent all month talking about what it means to write strong, meaningful, and connected IEPs, and today, we’re putting it all together.

In this final episode of the October series, I’m walking you through a real-time case study of a fictional student named Eric, a 5th grader with a Specific Learning Disability in reading and written expression. From the Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance (PLAAFP) all the way to the services and accommodations, I’ll show you exactly what it looks like to build an IEP that’s aligned, defensible, and most importantly—student-centered.

Too often, I see teachers going through the motions: writing each part of the IEP separately, just to check a box. But if your IEP was ever pulled for an audit or legal review, could you confidently defend that every section is clearly connected back to student needs and team input?

In this episode, we’ll cover:
✅ What a well-written PLAAFP section should include
✅ How to pull out student strengths, clearly identify needs, and write an impact statement that matters using AI
✅ How to ensure your goals are tied directly to those needs and how to explain your “why” behind each one
✅ Why your services and accommodations need to flow logically from your goals
✅ The difference between an IEP that is compliant vs. one that is effective

📘 RESOURCE HIGHLIGHT:
 To help you improve your PLAAFP statements, I’ve included my favorite tool:
 👉 Say This, Not That: PLAAFP Statements for IEPs

This resource features 179 well-written statements across 20 common areas. It’s perfect for improving the professionalism of your IEPs and helping parents, paras, and administrators understand the student more clearly.

🎧 So whether you're new to the field or a seasoned pro who just needs to see the connections in action—this episode is your blueprint.

Let’s dig into Eric’s story and see what true IEP alignment looks like.

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SPEAKER_00:

Well, hey there and welcome back to Special Education for Beginners. All month long we've been talking about how to write IEPs that are meaningful, connected, and easy to understand, not just for compliance, but for actual student success. In episode 280, we talked about present levels being the blueprint of the IEP. In 281, we built strong, measurable goals from that blueprint. In episode 282, we made sure that those goals were connected to the services and the accommodations. And last week in episode 283, we talked with Dane Parcel, my real life special education director, about what district level administrators actually look for in aligned IEPs. Today we're putting it all together. This is the final episode in our October series, and we're walking through a realistic case study so you can see what IEP alignment actually looks like in action. So let's get to it. Hey special educator. Are you overwhelmed by the absurd amount of paperwork on your to-do list? Do you wish you had the skills to build a rock solid team with your staff? Do you find yourself scouring the internet for how to meet the needs of each student on your caseload? Well, hey there, I'm Jennifer Hoffaber, an award-winning veteran special education teacher and current instructional coach who has walked in your shoes through each of these challenges. And yes, I have the metaphorical blisters to prove it. I have cried your tears and felt your pain, and now I'm here to support you in the way I wish someone would have been there to support me. Listen in each week as my guests and I dish out practical wisdom to help you handle all the classroom curveballs that are thrown at you and learn how to laugh in spite of the chaos to celebrate those small yet significant victories that only a special educator can understand. So, are you ready? Wipe your tears and put on your superhero cape because together we are going to learn how to survive and thrive in the ever-crazy, completely overwhelming laugh so you don't cry profession of being a special education teacher. So before we meet the student, I want to make sure you understand a couple of things. The first is why does alignment matter so much? When writing an IEP, it is important to recognize that your IEP could be pulled for an audit or, in rare cases, involved in a due process hearing or court case. Now, I don't want to scare you. Most likely your IEP will never be questioned in a court case, but you never know. So you should always write your IEPs with that in mind, that it could be, because you never know when a parent might be upset and file due process or file a lawsuit. It might not even be directed at you. It might be because of something a general education teacher did or didn't do. But your name is on that document and you want your IEPs to be defensible in a court of law. You also want your IEPs to be defensible to an auditor. Every year the state audits IEPs, no matter what state you are in. Of course, not every IEP is pulled, but again, you never know. So because we never know, it is best to just make sure that the IEP is as defensible as possible. A defensible IEP means there is some piece of data that was collected that ties back to every decision that was made. There needs to be a reason as to why it was included in the IEP in the first place. Each service, accommodation, or goal should clearly trace back to the student's individual needs, data, and team input. The second thing I want to make sure you understand is how to collect all the data. When we think about data, we often default to thinking about numbers, test scores, percentile ranks, standard scores. And yes, that is part of it. But data can also be parent input, teacher observations, student input, even young children can share what they like, dislike, or find hard. Informal assessments, formal evaluations, and work samples. Good data is any relevant information that helps you understand the learner and makes informed decisions. And collecting good data is what will allow you to build an IEP that makes all the connections you need in order to have a strong, defensible IEP. So let's meet the student for our case study. Eric is a fictional fifth grade student who qualifies as having a specific learning disability in reading comprehension and written expression. According to Eric's mom, he is a bright, inquisitive kid with a big imagination. He is the type of child who notices and questions everything. He absolutely loves science, animals, and Minecraft. He is obsessed with how things work and can spend hours building Lego cities or watching YouTube videos about space and engineering. According to input from his general education teacher, Eric learns best through hands-on activities, visual supports, and verbal discussions. He benefits from modeling and guided practice, especially when tackling new tasks that involve multiple steps. Eric prefers structured routines, and he performs best when expectations are clearly stated in advance. He processes information more effectively when it is presented visually through charts, graphic organizers, or images, and he often needs extra time to process written directions. Eric is more confident when he can talk through his ideas before writing them down, and he prefers assignments that allow for choice and creativity. He is highly motivated by interactive learning, including games, experiments, and opportunities to move around, and he thrives in a small group setting where he receives individualized attention and feedback. Eric reports that math is his favorite subject and he loves PE and recess as well. He likes to play soccer with his friends. He feels most proud of himself when he gets A's on his assignments. He stated he doesn't get embarrassed when he doesn't know things because he knows his teacher will help him learn it. His teacher stated that he's already memorized the majority of his basic math facts and loves solving equations, especially if they are part of a game or a challenge. But when math problems include a lot of reading, Eric rushes through to get the answer instead of reading the problem to understand what it's asking. Multi-step word problems frustrate him, not because of the math itself, but because reading and understanding the information slows him down. So while his math skills are on grade level, his reading difficulties sometimes impact his performance when he's asked to work independently. For his formal assessment data, he was given the fast bridge, a reading, and he scored a 472, which fell at the 12th percentile in the high risk area. His amplify oral reading fluency was 72 words correct per minute with 88% accuracy, which is just a little bit below benchmark. His Woodcock Johnson 4 achievement test says that he had a passage comprehension score of a 74 at the 5th percentile, a reading fluency score of an 88 at the 16th percentile, writing samples a 75 at the fifth percentile, and broad language composite a 77 at the sixth percentile. Informal survey level assessment data indicates that he struggles with multisyllabic words and inferencing questions. In writing, he can verbally generate strong ideas, but written samples consisted of three simple sentences, and he omitted punctuation and lacked logical organization. When it comes to reading, Eric is a strong decoder when supported and can tackle isolated words and sentences with ease. But longer passages, especially those with complex language or unfamiliar vocabulary, are a struggle. He loves to read graphic novels, especially funny or adventurous ones like Dogman or Hazardous Tales, but if given a long nonfiction article or a traditional novel with few visuals, he quickly becomes overwhelmed and disengaged. Writing is his least favorite subject. Eric often says he can't think of anything to write, even when he has lots of ideas. He gets stuck organizing his thoughts, struggles to spell, and dislikes how his handwriting looks. When asked why he doesn't like to write, he once said, it takes forever, and I forget what I want to say before I finish the sentence. He writes short, simple sentences even when prompted to add more details and avoids writing whenever possible. Eric's general education teacher describes him as insightful and funny, and she says he thrives in small groups and class discussions, where he can talk through his ideas. She also said he does best when given sentence starters or when he is allowed to type his responses. Phew, that was a lot of information. Okay, so now that we have collected data from the testing, the student, the teacher, and the parent, it is time to insert it into the present levels of academic and functional performance, aka the Plath. If you need a reminder or you haven't listened to that episode yet, I covered this in a lot of detail back in episode 280, but real quick, the present levels should break your data down into strengths, needs, current performance, and the impact the disability has on participating in general education. Most of the time, teachers either copy and paste data from testing without translating it for meaning, or they summarize it too vaguely, or they have one-sentence statements which drives me nuts. Or sometimes they just word vomit and their thoughts are random and nothing is cohesive. That's why I've been encouraging my teachers to start using AI tools. Not to write the IEP for them, but to help them work smarter, not harder. Because for 27 years I wrote every present level section completely from scratch, every single one. And I'll be honest, it was exhausting and time consuming. But now that we have access to AI tools like ChatGPT, we can take all of that input, those test scores, those teachers' notes, parent comments, and student data and feed it into a tool that will help us shape it into a well-organized professional sounding plath. It's still your data, it's still your interpretation, and it's still your professional judgment, but with a little support, you can make your writing clearer and more aligned. So let me show you what I mean. We're just going to do this for reading, but it would be the same for any subject or area. So I have all of that data in one Google Doc. Everything that I read to you about Eric was just on one page. And I'm going to copy and paste it into ChatGPT and I'm going to give it the command to summarize this data for the reading platf of my IEP. I need a strengths section, a needed section, a current performance section, and an impact statement for a fifth grade student with a specific learning disability and reading comprehension. Don't include math or written language at this time. And then you're going to hit generate and see what you get. I promise you'll be amazed. I now have four paragraphs full of great information organized nicely and neatly to copy and paste into my IEP. Of course, it's important to read over it and tweak it where it needs it, but you have a great starting point. So once I have my clear, organized present level statements, I can move into writing the goals. But please don't pull the goals out of thin air. Your goals should grow directly from what you just identified as needs. And this is where alignment really starts to take shape. If Eric's present level said he struggles with identifying main ideas, making inferences, and understanding longer texts, guess what? His goals better reflect reading comprehension of some sort. I once had a teacher who wrote a words read correctly goal for every single student every single time. Now was it measurable? Yes. Was it aligned to the student's specific needs? Absolutely not. And that is exactly why alignment matters. A goal should be individualized. It should clearly connect back to the needs identified in the present levels, and it should move the student forward in a meaningful way. Writing goals just to check a box or reuse something from the last kid robs that student of a plan that is tailored to their actual struggles and strengths. Now, just like before, I could spend 20 minutes trying to write the perfect goal from scratch, or I could open up my AI tool and say something like, based on the reading PLF statement, give me three measurable IEP goals focused on reading comprehension that follow the SMART framework and are appropriate for a fifth grade student with a specific learning disability and are linked to Kansas State standards. And here's what it gave me. By October 2026, given a grade level or adapted nonfiction text and a graphic organizer, Eric will identify the main idea and at least two supporting details with 90% accuracy across three consecutive probes. By October 2026, when provided with a reading passage and multiple choice questions, Eric will answer inference-based questions with 75% accuracy in four out of five data sessions. By October 2026, using vocabulary preview and visual supports, Eric will correctly define or apply 10 new vocabulary words per unit with 80% accuracy across two data points. Again, you will want to tweak them to match your exact district's expectations, your IEP software, and student needs. But come on, that's a solid starting point. And more importantly, each of these goals clearly connects back to Eric's present levels. This is alignment in action. We saw from his informal assessment that he struggles to pull out main ideas and supporting details, especially in longer texts. Goal number one directly addressed that. We learned that inferencing is tough for him, especially when he's working independently or the language gets complex. Goal two takes that into account and it added in needed supports like having the passage read aloud. And we've heard multiple times from his teacher that Eric needs explicit strategies to help him monitor his understanding, like using a graphic organizer, rereading, or asking questions when he's confused. Goal three gives us a measurable way to track whether he's actually using those strategies. So see, we didn't make up goals just because they sounded good. We based them on real data, teacher and student input, and they align with both his disability and his instructional needs. And just like with the PLAF, I encourage you to read over what the AI gives you, tweak that language, adjust the criteria if needed, and make it your own. But don't be afraid of using these tools to jumpstart your thinking. You're not replacing your professional judgment, you're just enhancing it. So now we move into his services. What services will help Eric meet those goals? Literally, type that into your ongoing AI thread. What services do you think Eric will need to meet these goals? If you need to put parameters around it, such as my school only does inclusion, or something else that restricts your services, be sure to include that. When I did this for Eric, this is what I got back. Because Eric has identified needs in both reading and comprehension and written expression, the IEP team is proposing the following services. Direct special education services for 60 minutes a day, five days per week, in a small group pullout setting focused on reading and written language instruction, and 30 minutes per day of direct inclusion support in his general education ELA block to help with the on-the-spot comprehension strategies, written assignments, and access to grade level content. These services were determined by looking at Eric's goals and asking what level of support will give him the best chance of success. The 60 minutes of pullout provides structured time to directly teach the foundational skills he needs, and the inclusion time helps him apply those skills in a natural environment with his peers, which will build confidence and bridge the gap between intervention and real world performance. Next, we're going to ask AI for our accommodations. This is what I typed in. Based on Eric's needs and the impact of his disability, what accommodations or modifications will help him be successful in meeting his goals as well as being successful in fifth grade reading curriculum? Address both the pullout and the inclusion settings. What it gave back to me was extended time on assignments and assessments, graphic organizers for reading comprehension and writing tasks, sentence starters or word banks to support written expression, verbal directions paired with visual supports, small group or one-on-one test settings to reduce distractions, and access to a word processor or speech to text tools for writing assignments. Notice these aren't just generic accommodations. They directly match the needs outlined in the PLAF statements. We're not giving Eric things that he doesn't need. We're not giving him a read-aloud accommodation on every single assignment and every single test. And we're not skipping supports that we know will make a difference. Every accommodation listed has a clear purpose and it has an imaginary line linking back to something else. And just like that, we have built a fully aligned IEP. The present levels told us where the student is, the goals told us where we want him to go, and the services and accommodations explained how we will help him get there. This is what IEP alignment looks like in real life. And if it felt like a lot, it's because it is. But I'm here to support you. If you are interested in using AI and you have a question and you want to reach out to me directly, you can email me at jennifer at spedprepacademy.com. That's Jennifer at SPAD Prep Academy, S P-E-D-P-R-E-P, A-C-A-D-E-M-Y.com. If you're not quite ready to start using AI to help you draft your PLF statements, but you still need support in writing stronger PLF statements, I've got you covered as well. I've created a resource that is called Write Better Present Level Statements for IEPs. It includes 179 well-written present level statements across 20 academic and functional skill areas, including reading, writing, math, attention, behavior, and so much more. This resource will give you clear examples of what to say and what not to say, hint hint, no concerns, and templates to guide your thinking. It gives you sentence starters to make your writing stronger, and tons of real-world language that you can tweak and use right away. This is perfect for you when you are staring at a blank screen and a blinking cursor and an empty plaf box thinking I don't know where to start. You can grab this resource in my TPT store. It's called Write Better Present Level Statements. And I will drop the link in the show notes so you can just click it and it'll take you right there. Next week I will be back with a new month and a new theme. See you then.