Individual Education Plans
An Individualized Education Plan, or IEP, is a document developed by a multi-disciplinary team in a public school (including, but not limited to, teachers, special education teachers, school psychologists, counselors, occupational therapists, speech therapists, specialists and administrators) in order to address the specific needs of students with disabilities. A student must have a disability as defined by the state or federal government to have an IEP.
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An IEP describes how a student’s disability impacts their learning and identifies what goals they have for the upcoming school year. The objective of an IEP is to create specific accommodations to reach those individualized goals. This document is reviewed and updated often in order to address any new or evolving needs a student may encounter as they grow older and enter new stages of development. In addition to the multi-disciplinary teams that write IEPs, the parents or guardians of a student must also approve the plan before it is officially implemented.
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If you would like to learn more about IEPs, feel free to visit the subsections listed in the “Individualized Education Plan” menu. The “IEP Codes” section breaks down the system used by the City of Cambridge that describes a student’s diagnosis, the level of need, and the specific placements where services are delivered.
iep codes
In the City of Cambridge, a three-part code is given to each IEP in order to summarize the document’s contents. The code contains a student’s disability, the student’s level of need and the environment in which services are delivered.
1.
Nature of Primary Disability
The first section of the code indicates a student’s diagnosed disability. This section will be a number from 1 to 13 that corresponds with a particular diagnosis.
2.
Level of Need
The level of need section ranks an IEP based on the amount of additional services provided and the time devoted to implementing additional services. IEPs are ranked from 1 to 4, 1 being the lowest level and 4 being the highest level.
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For example, the code 13 – 1 – 10 describes a child with a developmental delay (13) and a low level of need, that is less than 2 hours per week (1), who requires an environment with full inclusion special education support outside of the general education classroom less than 21% of the time- thus at least 80% of the time in general classroom (10).
3.
Educational Environment
The environment portion of the code indicates the setting in which the majority of a student’s services are delivered. The number listed in this section corresponds with a specific environment. Typically, the various environments listed here fall under the following: inclusion, partial inclusion, sub-separate classrooms, public and private separate programs and residential programs. The key for this section is usually listed in the document as the numbers and settings may vary depending on the organization that develops the IEP.