An Individualized Education Program (IEP) is a legal document under United States law that is developed for each public school child in the U.S. who needs special education. IEPs must be reviewed every year to keep track of the child's educational progress. Similar legal documents exist in other countries.
An IEP highlights the special education experience for all eligible students with a disability. It also outlines specific strategies and supports to help students with disabilities succeed in both academic and social aspects of school life. An eligible student is any child in the U.S. between the ages of 3–21 attending a public school and has been evaluated as having a need in the form of a specific learning disability, autism, emotional disturbance, other health impairments, intellectual disability, orthopedic impairment, multiple disabilities, hearing impairments, deafness, visual impairment, deaf-blindness, developmental delay, speech/language impairment, or traumatic brain injury. The IEP describes present levels of performance, strengths, and needs, and creates measurable goals based on this data. It provides accommodations, modifications, related services, and specialized academic instruction to ensure that every eligible child receives a "Free Appropriate Public Education" (FAPE) in the "Least Restrictive Environment" (LRE). The IEP is intended to help children reach educational goals more easily than they otherwise would. The four component goals are: conditions, learner, behavior, and criteria. In all cases, the IEP must be tailored to the individual student's needs as identified by the IEP evaluation process, and must help teachers and related service providers (such as paraprofessional educators) understand the student's disability and how the disability affects the learning process.
