The Present Levels section of an IEP often gets dismissed as just another box to check. But don’t be fooled—this part is crucial! Crafting a detailed statement here not only keeps everyone on the same page about the student’s current abilities but also lays the groundwork for setting meaningful goals. So let’s dive in and make sure we’re giving it the attention it deserves.
This post is a must-read for special education teachers, related service providers, and administrators. My goal is to show you why the Present Levels section needs objective, quantitative baseline data—and why it should contain well-developed paragraphs, not just a couple of sentences. Don’t be intimidated! Once you start crafting Present Levels this way, you’ll wonder how you ever managed IEPs differently.
The Present Levels section goes by many names. It was previously referred to as PLOP (present levels of performance) and PLEP (present levels of educational performance). More recently, the name was expanded to PLAAFP, which doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily! PLAAFP stands for present levels of academic achievement and functional performance. The name was extended to reinforce that we are not only talking about academics but also how the child is functioning in school overall. For brevity & clarity, I’ll refer to the PLAAFP as Present Levels throughout this blog.
One thing to keep in mind: where this information goes in the IEP may depend on your state’s specific IEP form.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) states that a child’s IEP must include:
“A statement of the child’s present levels of academic achievement and functional performance, including how the child’s disability affects the child’s involvement and progress in the general education curriculum (i.e., the same curriculum as for nondisabled children).”
The formula I’m sharing with you will cover all the bases, making it a breeze to develop clear goals and benchmarks. Say goodbye to guesswork and hello to a streamlined, effective IEP process!
There are two main issues with a vague Present Levels section: first, it doesn’t pass The Stranger Test. Second, it doesn’t help the team plan for the future.
Often, we see Present Levels similar to this: “Billy is struggling with reading. He needs to work on sounding out words and answering questions after he reads.” Does that sound like “the foundation from which all other components of the IEP will be built”? Definitely not! We have no idea which phonics skills Billy already knows or what his approximate reading level is. Based on this statement, Billy could be struggling with multisyllabic words or he could be working on CVC level text like Sam has jam on a bun. Without data to support the statement, we can’t tell!
The Stranger Test asks you to imagine that a stranger is reading the IEP. Does the IEP give the stranger a clear picture of the student? Or does it leave the stranger wishing for more information about the child’s ability?
Imagine that Billy is in third grade. His family moved midyear and he enrolled in a new school. His new special education teacher, Ms. Honey, is the stranger. She looks at his Present Levels to start thinking about how to address Billy’s needs. However, all it says is that he struggles with reading! There’s no data in his Present Levels to tell Ms. Honey where to begin. Hopefully, his goals will offer her useful information but if the goals were not created from baseline data, there’s a decent chance that the goals are not appropriate for Billy’s individual needs. Miss Honey is going to need to do some legwork to get to know Billy and figure out what he needs. Ideally, his IEP would’ve been written more clearly, so that even a “stranger” would understand Billy’s learning profile with ease.
The second reason we need a strong Present Levels section is because it forms the basis for the goal and the services implemented to address that goal. IEPs are intended to result in meaningful progress toward goals. If we don’t have a clear idea of what skills a child is starting with, how can we choose benchmarks and annual goals? How can we determine if meaningful progress is being made? The answer: We can’t!
Imagine that you hire a personal trainer. You’d really like to be able to do 10 pull-ups by this time next year. The personal trainer doesn’t ask many questions about your current physical capabilities and he doesn’t ask you to perform any exercises. He gives you a plan and suggests that you start by doing three pull-ups a day. He tells you to aim for 4 pull-ups next week, 5 the following week, and so on. What the trainer doesn’t realize is that you can’t even do a single pull-up yet! The plan he made for you is not individualized and will likely not result in effective progress because it doesn’t address your current capabilities.
It’s the same with Billy’s Present Levels: we can’t write an effective goal or choose appropriate services for him if we don’t know what he can do.
To write a quality Present Levels section that passes The Stranger Test, we need a complete view of the child’s ability. If the IEP is coming as a result of an evaluation or reevaluation, then the evaluation results should provide much of the information you need. If the evaluation did not provide you with the information you need or if it’s an annual IEP review year, you’ll need to collect data from a variety of sources. The sources may include your own informal assessments, teacher surveys, and assessment data from the general education setting.
The information will be organized into five general topics:
Let’s look at each of those topics in more depth. Then, we’ll review some sample Present Levels for two imaginary students, Billy and Lilly.
The first section of the Present Levels statement should describe what the student can currently do in the goal area. Describe the student’s strengths and weaknesses. Touch on both academic skills and classroom functioning as it relates to the goal area. Include quantitative data!
The data you include will depend upon the goal area. For decoding goals, you may include data about phonemic awareness, letter names & sounds, word-level decoding skills, and oral reading fluency. If it’s a comprehension goal, you may include data about oral reading fluency and comprehension instead. If it’s a phonemic awareness goal, you might only include data specific to phonemic awareness skills. The data you include here is your baseline for the goal, which means it helps you choose your goal and benchmarks.
2. What are the grade-level expectations?
The next section of the Present Levels statement briefly describes the grade-level expectations for the student’s current grade. The Common Core Standards are a good starting point. You can also refer to district-wide expectations in the skill area. For example, if your school uses mCLASS, you can include the benchmarks associated with this assessment system. This section helps the team (including the parents) understand the gap between what the student can do (previous section) and what the student is expected to do.
This section is one that you can easily complete with some copy/paste action. I have a paragraph saved for each grade level and content area I’ve ever written a goal for. This is a paragraph that will be the same for many students, so save yourself some time by making a document with grade-level expectations by goal area!
3. What is the student’s annual goal?
The goal will reflect the child’s starting point (see number one above) and help the child move towards meeting the grade level expectations (see number two above). This does not mean we expect the child to meet the grade level expectations in one year’s time. We simply want them to make meaningful progress towards the grade level expectations. What constitutes meaningful progress will be individual to each child.
4. What instruction will the student receive to work towards this goal?
This section of the Present Levels statement describes the evidence-based instruction the student will receive to help them meet the goal. Most districts ask their staff not to mention specific programs by name, but we can describe the programming a child requires. If your student has been thriving with a structured literacy program, you can consider a statement like: “(Name) will participate in a structured, sequential, and cumulative reading and spelling program that uses multisensory techniques.”
Think about who the student will work with next year, if it’s not going to be you. This paragraph tells that teacher exactly what you know about what type of instruction this child needs. It sets that teacher up to start on the right foot from the beginning, and it keeps the child on the path to success.
5. How does the student’s disability impact their ability to make progress toward this goal and the expectations of the general education curriculum?
In this section, you will acknowledge potential hurdles to success that must be considered when instructing this student. For example, weaknesses in processing speed, attention span, or fine motor may indicate the need for accommodations. Here, you also note how the student’s disability impacts their involvement in and access to the general education curriculum.
Remember: All of these paragraphs will be woven together with information about the same skill.
If it’s a phonemic awareness goal, each paragraph will relate to phonemic awareness. If it’s a decoding goal, you’ll discuss reading skills that contribute to decoding ability, like phonemic awareness, letter/sound knowledge, and knowledge of word patterns. It may be pertinent to discuss other skills but try to stay on topic and specific to the goal.
So what does this Present Levels formula look like for an actual (albeit imaginary) student?
Here’s Billy, our third grader. His previous Present Levels statement said, “Billy is struggling with reading. He needs to work on sounding out words and answering questions after he reads.” Here’s his remodeled Present Levels statement:
Given a one-minute timed oral reading fluency passage within third grade expectations, Billy read at a rate of 13 Words Correct Per Minute (WCPM) with 86% accuracy. He read in a word-for-word manner and stopped frequently to attempt to decode unfamiliar words. Billy did not demonstrate the ability to self-correct his errors. He can blend and segment three phonemes with 90% accuracy. When asked to blend and segment words with four sounds (including initial or final consonant blends), Billy’s accuracy is 60%. Given a list of CVC words with digraphs, he can read with 80% accuracy and 30% automaticity. Billy recognizes 29 of the first 50 Fry words with automaticity.
Students in third grade can manipulate individual phonemes in words, which includes substituting and deleting phonemes in various positions. They are expected to read and spell one-syllable words across the syllable types, as well as multisyllabic words with common prefixes and suffixes. Third grade spelling curriculum shifts from phonetic patterns to morphological patterns. In the winter of third grade, students at the 50th percentile read at a rate of 97 WCPM with at least 98% accuracy to support comprehension.
By the end of the IEP period, given ten decodable sentences that include closed syllable words with up to five sounds and a controlled number of high frequency words, Billy will read with at least 95% accuracy and increasing fluency. The special education teacher will complete curriculum probes in the resource room setting at least two times per month.
In order to meet this goal, Billy will receive daily instruction in phonemic awareness skills. He will work on blending and segmenting phonemes in words that align with his current phonics instruction. Billy will participate in a structured, sequential, and cumulative phonics and spelling program that uses multi-sensory techniques. He will learn explicit strategies for decoding and encoding words in isolation and he will work on generalizing his skills to decode and encode words in the context of a sentence/paragraph. Billy will build his bank of automatically recognized high-frequency words through multi-sensory activities designed to help him orthographically map words for efficient retrieval. He will have frequent opportunities to read controlled, decodable text to build fluency and confidence.
Billy’s specific learning disability is characterized by weaknesses in phonological awareness and rapid naming. These weaknesses impact his ability to recognize, decode, and spell words in isolation and in context. Billy’s processing speed also impacts his ability to learn new skills and to read with fluency. He will require frequent reteaching and review of previously learned skills to commit them to long-term memory. Billy’s specific learning disability presents a challenge when he is expected to read grade level material independently across the content areas. It also impacts his ability to express his knowledge and ideas when writing independently.
If Billy were added to your caseload tomorrow, do you know which group you would place him in and where to begin his instruction? Yes! You might need an update on his progress towards his annual goal if the IEP was written a few months ago, but you can narrow down your focus with the information provided in this Present Levels statement.
Here’s Lilly, a kindergarten student. Her Present Levels statement focuses on phonemic awareness.
Lilly can blend and segment the syllables in compound words with 100% accuracy. Given two-syllable words that are not compound words (e.g. napkin), she can blend the syllables into words with 90% accuracy but segments words into syllables with 60% accuracy. Given closed syllable words with three sounds, (CVC pattern) Lilly can identify initial sounds with 90% accuracy and final sounds with 50% accuracy. She is not yet able to isolate medial sounds. She can blend three sounds into a word with 30% accuracy. She is not yet able to segment CVC words into their individual phonemes.
Students in kindergarten are expected to demonstrate an understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds. They can recognize and produce rhyming words and count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words. Kindergarten students can blend and segment onsets and rimes of single-syllable spoken words. They can isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds in CVC words and add or substitute individual sounds in simple, one-syllable words to make new words.
By the end of the IEP period, given ten words that follow the CVC pattern, Lilly will isolate, blend, and segment individual phonemes with at least 90% accuracy. (This goal would include benchmarks to address individual skills of isolating medial and final sounds, blending three sounds into words, and segmenting words into three sounds.) The special education teacher will complete curriculum probes in the resource room setting at least once per week.
In order to meet this goal, Lilly will receive daily instruction in phonemic awareness skills in the small group setting. She will learn to identify and manipulate individual sounds with the use of manipulatives (e.g. cubes) and transition to completing the tasks without manipulatives as her accuracy increases. Phonemic awareness skills will also be woven into Lilly’s phonics curriculum through reading and spelling words that follow the CVC pattern and completing activities like word chains.
Lilly’s developmental delay is characterized by delayed expressive language and pre-academic skills, which has impacted her development of early reading skills. Her awareness of the sounds of spoken language is reduced when compared to same-age peers, and she continues to develop her awareness that spoken words are represented by written language. She requires specialized instruction in phonemic awareness at her developmental level to help her acquire these skills, which will form the foundation required for early reading and spelling skills. Lilly’s developmental delay has impacted her acquisition of letter/sound knowledge, which is currently affecting her participation in the kindergarten curriculum. She requires frequent reteaching and review of phonemic awareness and phonics skills, as well as adult support when completing grade-level reading tasks in the general education setting.
A child like Lilly would likely also have a goal related to letter name & letter sound knowledge. The Present Levels section for her phonemic awareness goal would be complemented by the Present Levels section for her phonics goal. If Lilly were added to your caseload tomorrow, do you know which group you would place her in and where to begin her instruction?
Let’s think about where all of this information will come from. If it’s an evaluation year, the evaluation should provide your baseline data. You may need to compile it from various sources (cognitive evaluation, academic evaluation, teacher survey, etc) but it is likely available to you. If it’s an annual IEP review year, you need to take new baseline data but hopefully, you’ve already been doing that for all of your annual reviews. You can give a questionnaire to the classroom teacher to gain information about the student’s functioning in the general education setting. The rest of the information is the type of stuff you can build your own “bank” of.
Personally, I have a Google Doc where I save anything and everything I might need to put in an IEP: Accommodations sorted by content area, nonparticipation justification statements, Extended School Year statements, sample Present Levels, sample goals, and more. My IEPs are always individualized for each child, but I rarely need to start from scratch. Even if it’s not something I can copy/paste, I can refer to the notes in my Google Doc to get me started.
Let’s look at where your information comes from for each section:
I make sure not to lose sight of the individualized aspect of the IEP. Overall, my IEP Template doc saves me a lot of time and offers me the structure I need to complete each child’s Present Levels statement.
To wrap things up, think of the Present Levels section as the cornerstone of the IEP. When it’s detailed and thorough—not just a couple of sentences—it sets the stage for crafting appropriate goals and benchmarks. I hope this post made the process feel manageable and gave you some strategies you can implement in the next school year!
