A Description of Parent Input in IEP Development Through Analysis IEP Documents.
Parent voices slip away during IEP writing—compare draft goals to meeting notes before you sign.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team read real IEP plans for students with intellectual or developmental disabilities.
They counted how often parent concerns turned into actual goals or services.
No kids were tested; the work was a paper audit.
What they found
Only two out of every three parent wishes made it into the final IEP.
One third of what parents cared about simply disappeared.
The study calls this a clear gap between talk and text.
How this fits with other research
Hamama et al. (2021) audited 126 rural IEPs and saw the same slip: forms looked correct but the real content did not line up.
Fahmie et al. (2013) asked Dutch adults with ID about their own support plans; they also felt left out, showing the problem crosses countries and ages.
Sutphin et al. (1998) found parents with ID rated community life as the top need, yet those needs rarely showed up in service plans—matching the 67 % loss here.
Why it matters
Before you close the next IEP, open the parent notes side-by-side with the draft goals.
If a concern is missing, add it or note why not.
This five-minute check can raise parent trust and keep you compliant with the spirit of FAPE, not just the paperwork.
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Join Free →Take the last parent meeting notes and highlight any item not yet written as a goal or service; add or explain the gap in the draft.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Parent input in individualized education program (IEP) development is the clear expectation in U.S. education law. Every IEP team must include parents, and their input must be equally considered when developing IEPs. The present study used content analysis of 88 IEPs of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities to explore team membership, concerns parents raised during IEP meetings, and evidence that parent concerns and priorities are reflected in IEP goals and supplementary aids and services. Findings reveal that although parents express a range of concerns and priorities, these are translated into goals or services only two thirds of the time. We provide implications of these findings for research and practice.
Intellectual and developmental disabilities, 2019 · doi:10.1352/1934-9556-57.6.485