Sevier County Special Education Moves to Individual Education Plan Development in EasyIEP by Dr. Jeff Romanczuk

The next Individual Education Plan (IEP) meeting you attend, you will notice a lot of difference in the look of the IEP and some difference in the process. Sevier County began using EasyIEP in February of this year. It is a World Wide Web-based IEP development database. Many of the school systems in Tennessee are now using EasyIEP. The biggest change to the process is that the IEP Team must now develop a draft IEP in advance of the meeting date, finalize that IEP at the meeting, then enter these meeting updates into the database to get a final IEP.

The evaluation and re-evaluation processes are not in EasyIEP. So these and things like the Conference Summary (our famous “pink sheet”) will still be done on paper at the meeting. After the meeting, once everyone has had a chance to make changes to the IEP, the special education teacher will make these corrections and send you a final, printed out IEP.

Two features that (in my opinion) are the biggest improvement over how we have been doing IEPs are the 6-week progress reporting and what is called the “IEP at a Glance.” The progress reports will have the same number and alphabet letter to indicate the student’s progress on each goal. However, each goal also has an area for the teacher to add a few sentences about the student’s progress on that goal since the last grading period. The other feature I like, the IEP at a Glance, is not intended for the parents, but for the regular, general education teachers who work with your child. It summarizes in one or two pages what the goals are and what accommodations (if any) your child needs.

The database was developed and is maintained by Public Consulting Group and uses the same security precautions that banking sites use to protect the privacy of the students’ information. If you would like further information, call or e-mail Jeff Romanczuk (453-1036, jeffromanczuk@sevier.org).