Building Effective and Meaningful Individualized Education Programs for Secondary Aged Students

Abstract:

For the IEP to be effective in impacting post-school outcomes, as intended and mandated through IDEA, IEP case managers must change the process used to developed IEPs.  Through this four year project funded by IES, we will develop and pilot a professional development training model, targeting IEP case managers of secondary aged students.  Their participation will result in development of more meaningful and effective IEPs.

The professional development will include content, strategies, methods, and application activities followed by extended practice.  About 30 case managers of students 16 years of age and older who are responsible for developing, implementing, and monitoring student IEPs have participated in the research study.

We have conducted document reviews of between three to five IEPs for each case manager at three time points:  before PD, after PD, and then again after a more extended time after PD.  Using a coding manual and rubric that was developed and tested over a two year period, we measured the following:  a) presence of critical components of the transition regulations (i.e., post-school goal, PLEP, course of study, goals/transition activities), and b) alignment of these components within the IEP document.  We conducted cognitive interviews with case managers to measure the degree of change in the decision-making, strategic planning processes used by case managers in developing, implementing, and monitoring student IEPs.  For analysis, we will use (a) descriptive and inferential statistical techniques, including logistical regression and HLM, and (b) qualitative data analytic techniques.  We are in the process of conducting initial analysis on an initial set of case managers and IEPs and completing professional development, data collection and analysis on a final set of case managers who have received a professional development training model informed by our earlier efforts.

Contact:

For more information about this project, please contact Brigid Flannery at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.