BCIEP Addendum - Resources by State
IEP, STATE GUIDELINES AND TRANSITIONAL IEP ADDENDUMS for
NASET’s Board Certification in IEP Development (BCIEP)
Although federal guidelines (IDEA) mandate specific information that must be included on all IEPs, states and local education agencies (school districts) have been given a great deal of flexibility about the information they can also choose to include in an IEP. For example, some states or local education agencies have chosen to include additional information to document their compliance with other state and federal requirements in the IEP. (Federal law requires that school districts maintain documentation to demonstrate their compliance with federal requirements.) Generally speaking, additional information in IEPs may be included to document that the state or school district has met certain aspects of federal or state law, such as:
holding the meeting to write, review and, if necessary, revise a child's IEP in a timely manner;
providing parents with a copy of the procedural safeguards they have under the law;
placing the child in the least restrictive environment; and
obtaining the parents' consent.
While the law tells us what information must be included in the IEP, it does not specify what the IEP should look like. No one form or approach or appearance is required or even suggested. Each state may decide what its IEPs will look like. In some states, individual school districts design their own IEP forms.
Thus, across the United States, many different IEP forms are used. What is important is that each form be as clear and as useful as possible, so that parents, educators, related service providers, administrators, and others can easily use the form to write and implement effective IEPs for their students with disabilities.
As a result, the sample IEP’s, Transitional IEP’s and guidelines for writing IEP's that we have included from every state are are only suggestions, and may not exactly reflect the actual IEP a state, district or school requires for a child in special education. We have tried to provide as many samples as possible but since there is no national uniformity in an IEP Form, we recommend you request specific IEPs from the school district in which you work in order to best gauge how an IEP looks and is formatted.