Individualized Education Program (IEP) is a vital tool of special education dedicated to ensuring diverse need students receive student-centered and individually tailored assistance and accommodations.

Principally enabled by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990, the IEP is a transition from the medical model of disability to that of a strengths and student orientation (Yell et al., 2020). The primary objectives of the IEP model are to create individualized, measurable learning goals for the students, promote collaboration between parents and teachers, and establish inclusive learning environments (Smith, 2018).

Despite its idealistic intentions, however, the IEP model faces several practical dilemmas. Teachers, parents, and students all report obstacles to collaboration, issues of accessibility, and ongoing overemphasis on medical diagnosis rather than student strengths (Harry & Klingner, 2014). This course provided a close look at IEP implementation, history, and the ongoing issues IEPs face in school systems.

Barriers to IEP Implementation

• Medical Model Drift – Despite the emphasis placed on a strengths-based model, many IEPs remain medicine-oriented and deficit-based, with an emphasis on medical diagnosis and deficits (Lalvani, 2013).
• IEP language enrolls students in terms of deficits instead of possibilities, putting a deficit instead of an asset model into practice.
• Language and Accessibility Barriers – The technical nature of IEP documents makes them inaccessible to the majority of parents, even more so to those who are non-English speakers (Trainor, 2010).
• IEPs are not necessarily translated into everyday language as required but include technical terms that cannot be interpreted by parents, even by some teachers.
• Absence of True Collaboration – As collaborative as IEP meetings are, literature demonstrates that families often end up feeling left out of the decision-making process (Harry & Klingner, 2014).
• The majority of parents, particularly those from marginalized communities, view power imbalances in the context of IEP meetings where the teachers dictate and not develop plans collaboratively with the families (Trainor, 2010).

Before finishing this course, I felt that IEPs were effective tools of delivering equal education. Nevertheless, based on critical discourse and case studies, I understood that the effectiveness of IEPs is dependent heavily on their implementation. Although the IEP model offers a step-by-step roadmap towards individualized education, it typically does not live up to its full potential due to system limitations (Harry & Klingner, 2014).

IEPs can actually support exclusion when they prioritize medical diagnoses over the creation of an inclusive learning community (Lalvani, 2013).

Parents are often disempowered within IEP meetings, despite laws requiring collaboration (Trainor, 2010).

IEP goals are not necessarily connected to student aspirations, and as such, the students themselves are sometimes left out of the planning (Bateman & Linden, 2022).

The course has given me a greater understanding of both the promise and the limitations of the IEP model. Even though IEPs were designed to help students with disabilities by giving them individualized plans, systemic obstacles have the result of neutralizing their impacts (Harry & Klingner, 2014).

The Individualized Education Plan (IEP) model aims to support students with special needs from the perspective of individual differences. At first, IEPs were supposed to address students’ strengths broadly but failed due to the excessive medical model. From this course, I have learned that IEPs should involve educators and families with the children who need the services to create them. Parent engagement is often low, so parental decisions on the plans are not very effective. I have understood that IEPs are flexible, involve students, and are student-centered. For future Practice, I will ensure that IEPs provided are integrated and that the goals encompass the student`s dreams.