IEP Basics · Understanding the Document

How to Read Your Child’s IEP: A Section-by-Section Guide

IEP documents are long, dense, and written in language designed for education professionals, not for the parents who are supposed to be equal members of the team that created them. This guide walks through every major section of a standard IEP and explains what each part means, what to look for, and what should concern you.

Section 1: Identifying Information

The cover page establishes the basics: student name, date of birth, school, grade, disability category, IEP dates, and team members.

What to check:

• Is the disability category correct? Different categories unlock different services. If your child has dyslexia but is listed under a catch-all category that doesn’t reflect their actual needs, that can affect what’s offered.
• Are the IEP dates current? An IEP that expired months ago is a compliance issue.
• Is the team composition complete? Check that all required members are listed, including a general education teacher and a district representative with authority to commit resources.

Section 2: Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance (PLAAFP)

The PLAAFP is the most important section of the IEP, and the most commonly weak. It describes where your child is right now: their current academic performance, functional skills, strengths, and challenges. Everything else in the IEP should flow from an accurate PLAAFP.

What a strong PLAAFP includes:

• Specific, measurable current performance data, reading fluency rates, math accuracy scores, language sample data
• Description of how the disability affects participation in general education
• Strengths as well as challenges, the IEP should build on what the child can do
• Parent concerns (required to be included)

Red flags: Vague language like “struggles with reading” without baseline data. Descriptions that read like last year’s IEP with no new information. A PLAAFP that doesn’t match what you’re seeing at home.

Section 3: Annual Goals

Goals describe what your child is expected to achieve over the course of the IEP year. Each goal should be tied to a need identified in the PLAAFP and must be measurable.

What a strong goal looks like:
“By [date], [child] will read grade-level passages aloud at 100 words per minute with 95% accuracy in 4 of 5 trials as measured by curriculum-based measurement probes.”

What a weak goal looks like:
“[Child] will improve reading skills.” (Not measurable. Doesn’t specify baseline, target, timeline, or measurement method.)

Questions to ask about each goal:

• How will progress toward this goal be measured, how often, and by whom?
• Is this goal ambitious enough to close the gap with grade-level peers, or just to show some growth?
• Does every identified need in the PLAAFP have at least one corresponding goal?

Section 4: Special Education and Related Services

This section lists every service the school will provide, special education instruction, speech therapy, OT, PT, counseling, transportation, assistive technology, with specific frequency, duration, location, and start/end dates.

What strong service documentation looks like:
“Speech-language therapy: 2 sessions per week, 30 minutes each, pull-out small group, beginning [date]”

Red flags:

• “As needed” or “per teacher discretion” for any service, this is not a legal commitment
• Service amounts that seem disproportionately low given the documented level of need
• Missing related services that are documented as needed in the evaluation but don’t appear in the services section

Section 5: Accommodations and Modifications

Accommodations change how a student accesses the curriculum (extended time, preferential seating, text-to-speech). Modifications change what the student is expected to learn (reduced number of problems, modified grade-level content).

What to look for: Are the accommodations specific? “Extended time” is ambiguous, “time and a half on all timed assessments” is specific and enforceable.

Section 6: Placement

This section describes where the student will receive services, general education classroom, resource room, self-contained class, and what percentage of the school day is spent in each setting.

What to check: Is this the least restrictive environment appropriate to the child’s needs? Both over-restriction (too much pull-out) and under-restriction (not enough specialized support) are worth questioning.