Aligning Your Child’s IEP with the State Standards

The State Standards have been developed to prepare students for college and/or career readiness. This came from the fact that America’s students are not proving to be competitive in the global job market and more and more students are getting to college required to take remedial courses. It is necessary to align the IEP to the Common Core State Standards.

An IEP Aligned to Standards Is:

•Based on a thoughtful description of the student’s present levels and area of disability related needs (goals).
•Based on the assumption that the student can access the general education curriculum with appropriate accommodations.
•Designed to address targeted skills and/or behaviors the student will achieve based on specially designed instruction.
•Dependent upon collaboration between general and special educators.

Ways of Accessing Common Core Curriculum: General Education
•Curriculum based upon best practices and proven techniques

•Universal Design of Learning

•Response to Intervention
•Effective Use of Instructional Technology
•Curriculum Alignment
•Specially designed instruction
•Related Services
•AAC Technology Collaborative teams must be in place to work interdependently on a unified set of activities designed to ensure access to the general education curriculum for all students.

I.D.E.A. ‘04 requires ALL students with IEPs have access to the general curriculum.

The general curriculum includes all subjects that all students study:
• core academic subjects
• art, music, p.e., and career education Develop annual IEP goals based on skills and knowledge the student needs to learn in order to access grade level standards.
Annual IEP goals are not to be written using the Common Core Curriculum verbatim.
Develop goals that includes part(s) of the grade-level standard combined with appropriate grade-level standards specific to the student. The IEP can focus on lower level skills, but the focus should always begin with the grade level and work backwards.
Review the Common Core State Standards to identify what the grade level expectations for typical children are and help your school modify the standard to adequately meet your child’s needs. And in such doing, expand the curricular expectations of your child.