Ep. 56: How to Prepare for an IEP Meeting: Timeline, Tips, and Parent Collaboration

Planning an IEP can feel like a whirlwind—deadlines, data, collaboration, and student needs all rolled into one big meeting. In this episode, Caitlin and Audra walk through a practical timeline for IEP prep, from parent check-ins to drafting goals and reviewing behavior plans.

Whether you’re a teacher, BCBA, or case manager, this one’s packed with real-talk and ready-to-use tips to make your IEPs more effective and less stressful.

🔑 Key Takeaways
📅 Start early—draft a prep timeline 4–6 weeks in advance if possible
📬 Reach out to families before the meeting to check in on their priorities and updates
✏️ Don't blindly carry over goals—use progress data, probe skills, and adjust accordingly
🔄 Always review behavior plans—don’t let them autopilot year to year
🧑‍🎓 Involve students when appropriate—yes, even younger learners!
🗣️ Drafts are okay—just be clear it’s a starting point, not a final plan
💬 No surprises! Build trust with families by keeping communication open and collaborative

📚 Resources and Ideas
📌 Download the free IEP Prep Timeline Visual
📌 Related Episode: Ep. 29 – Functions of Behavior

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Transcript

Ep. 56: How to Prepare for an IEP Meeting: Timeline, Tips, and Parent Collaboration

Caitlin: Welcome back to the Misfit Behaviorists. Tonight we are talking about IEPs and developing IEPs. So I put together a timeline that it's it, and I'll also put it in the Facebook group. So reminder to join our Facebook group, the Misfit Behaviors Podcast, if you haven't already, because we dump all kinds of freebies in there.

What I did was I think I have five kind of bullet step points here. And of course these are all subject to, maybe there's some overlap in the order. And then I also listed it in things that I always learn to do first to prepare for upcoming IEPs. But again, the order may change a little bit. And then how all, how many weeks before the IEP definitely a subject to change, because I know when I worked at an out of district school, we started like six weeks in advance, in a public school with a caseload of how many, you can't always do that for every learner, so that part is subject to change by student and by teacher.

But the first thing that I like to do, once we have the IEP date set or roughly set, or if I just know that annual review is creeping up, I like to either send home the parent guardian, maybe the learner themselves, whether it's a formal survey or just a check-in email or just a little brief phone call meeting and say are we on the same page, the annual's approaching, I know you have the date. Are there things that you're hoping to see in this meeting? Are there new goals you're looking for? And that in addition to my own data from the prior year, if I've had the student is gonna help me create like an assessment plan. 

Audra: How do you and your team where you are, decide on the date? That can be really tricky. 

Caitlin: Great question. I have heard that this is different everywhere. We should take a step back because in my school, I'm in New Jersey, so we have either our learning consultant, our social worker, or our school psychologist is the case manager. What that person does is sends out like a tentative email to the immediate team, like the special ed teacher, maybe the behaviorist, anyone else who's like on the team needs to be there kind of thing. And we'll say, "Hey, I'm looking at this date of Tuesday, April 4th in the morning for IEP. Let me know if that works." And then once she has like the team's consent, then the office sends out a notification to parents and says, can you make this date or not? Is that anything close to how you do it? 

Audra: The structure is the same, but I've never been in a place where somebody else's scheduling it. The case manager's always been the special education teacher. That just would be amazing to have somebody that's in charge of setting that all up, 'cause I can tell you as a teacher, adding that to the pile of stuff that we have to do and try arrange with the team and we'll go to the weekly I don't remember what it stands for, PLC or whatever, professional, whatever it is, where we meet once a week. We talk about all the IEPs that are coming up and everybody who's required to try to find those days and stuff. But then you have to go and coordinate with the family. This isn't where they have to go back to the team. It's hard. 

Caitlin: I cannot imagine. I knew, but I always forget . I think maybe we're one of the only states that does it that way. I know we're one of the only state that has learning consultants. So that's wild to hear how different it is out there. 

Audra: I love that first step that of, and I did that too, I love contacting family. Once you have a date, or even if that's part of what you're talking about, is contacting them to find out, has anything changed at home? Have there have any home life changes, medication changes? These were the goals that we talked about and I'm talking about their personal family goals. These are the things you wanted to see him be able to do by the end of the year. Is this still important to you? Are you thinking other things? Are we having different developments? Has outside therapy changed, before you even get to writing the IEP, I think that's brilliant.

Caitlin: Just a little check-in. It can be formal, informal, and if you know the family, you know oh, I need to make that phone call. Versus it's just a check-in email. But like you said, so often before doing this, we would sit down at IEP and then, oh my gosh you guys are moving and the counselor change and then you find yourself spending half of that IEP meeting talking about things that aren't even related to the actual IEP. So are there things going on that we need to know about in general and then also to prepare for this current annual IEP? 

After reaching out, what I like to do is put together for myself, somewhat of an assessment plan. So again, if I've had the benefit of having this learner at all so far I am gonna look at their current goals, obviously. Let's just say I have a self-contained kindergartner who's learning to identify letters or something like that. I wanna see, okay, are they close to mastering this goal? Are they not at all close? What information do I need to make sure their next year's goal is really the best fit for them? So I don't just wanna copy and carry over all the goals that weren't achieved because maybe there's a big reason that they weren't achieved. And I also wanna make sure I'm looking through each area. Maybe they achieved three outta four of their reading goals, but zero of their math goals. So I don't just wanna dump in all the goals that weren't achieved. I wanna make sure I have that really well-rounded and I'm covering reading and math and social skills and all kinds of things. 

Audra: I love that. I can't tell you how many times I've had a parent tell me these goals were on there last year and they're not on here this year, and I have no idea what happened to 'em. And they may not even notice, whether they get the draft or the end of the meeting, they're not gonna necessarily remember everything that was on last year. So they may not pop up until later on and then they're like, what happened to this goal? Now we're having problems in this. But the goal was there and now it's not. And I can tell you that parents do not like that. 

Caitlin: No, and we really should not be doing that. We should not just be saying, that didn't work. See you never. We have to be addressing that somehow. So let's go with the letters example. So if I had a student learning to identify letters and they really struggled with this, and maybe they got four letters, but it wasn't as much progress as I'd hoped, I'm not just gonna abandon that letter goal and then say, you know what, I'm just gonna really put all our eggs in math. I'm gonna maybe modify it. Sometimes I'm trying to teach identification and I realize I bit off more than I can chew, but I'm gonna focus on matching. So now I'm just like recalibrating, and I'm saying in the present levels I'm writing, "student have made very slow progress with identification. We're going to move back to matching. The goal of identification will be readdressed once matching is attained." So I'm somehow addressing it always if I'm changing or discontinuing a goal. And I'm trying to also make that clear at the meeting, so I'm being really transparent with that family. And by the same token, if that student only identified four outta 26 letters, I'm not just gonna blindly copy that over that, in itself, gives me a lot of information. If that really was a full calendar year and they only learned four, why would I think that they would magically attain 22 in the next year? 

Audra: I've seen goals stay on for too long and sometimes they stop being developmentally appropriately. I remember seeing a high school goal for a student to do a shape sorter. Like the colorful rings and I'm like, oh, can we use the same skill but not use toddler toys? But it had been a skill he wasn't yet mastering, which is fine, but let's make it more age appropriate. Let's really analyze that specific goal and is this appropriate for the student? And like you said, whether you're changing it or there has to be a reason behind it. And then I'm sure you're gonna talk about progress reports and each time you do that every three months, you really shouldn't just put making progress or almost there or anything. Really look at that because then you can look at the very last progress report that you made. And if you made it nice and detailed with data, then it's really easy to look at now, the IEP, we've seen the progress that we've made over time or we getting to where the actual annual goal is gonna be able to be mastered. Do we need to make a change because we're not seeing the trajectory?

Caitlin: Look through their learning history, see what it tells you. So my next step is once I have a loose plan of goals that I may or may not wanna include, I actually wanna probe those skills with my learner. So I try to set aside a day, could take two days over the course of a week, and actually work through all of these future goals that are either staying in their IEP or I'm adding. I really wanna make sure one, that they can't already do them, because if it's like a brand new skill I don't just wanna say, oh, they're moving into first grade. It's about time they learned how to, answer questions about their home life or something like, maybe they already can do that. So I wanna probe those skills with them, maybe using myself and some other staff members in the room to make sure if I do think they have it, that they really haven't mastered. And then if not, it also gives me an idea of let's say I'm gonna start having them identify bills or coins or something like that. If they are so far from the mark that it's hard for them to even discriminate or choose from an array of six, it will give me good ideas of, okay, I wanna keep this goal in, but I have a better idea of how I wanna frame it. Maybe they need to start with two bills before the next objective is chooses from an array of four bills or something like that. So I find that probing all those skills beforehand really helps me define not only which goals are going in, but how I'm going to write those goals. 

So the next thing that I'm gonna do is actually sit down and create those goals and objectives and I'm gonna write, we call it the present levels, the academic achievement, functional performance. I've heard it's also referred to as the PLP or the PLOP and we do have, so we use IEP Direct, for example, I know there's a bunch of different software programs out there. We have a goal bank, but, especially if I'm working in our self-contained autism classrooms, I like to free write my goals because I find it's just much easier to individualize for that student. If I am wording it a certain way, if I'm breaking up my objectives, like they're gonna identify bills, but first in an array of two, then four, then generalization, I'm really crafting exactly how I want it to look. And then in their present levels, I'm doing like a broad outline of what they've achieved this past year, a summary of their performance in the classroom, their social skills, things like that. And then what's coming up down the pike for them. And then commenting on anything that has been changed or added or discontinued along the way. After that, I am potentially writing a behavior plan or tweaking a behavior plan if the student is in need of one. And that's where I'm tapping into my resources. So when I was the teacher, I was going to my behaviorist, as the behaviorist, I'm sitting down with the teacher and writing that, making sure I have everything in that IEP that reflects the behaviors they're having, if they need support, if it needs to be a formal behavior plan, and how we're gonna monitor that. So again, just holding ourselves accountable. We're not just saying yeah, they have this behavior, hope it gets better. We're really writing out step by step what we're gonna do about it and also how we're gonna track it. And potentially if you are working with an older learner over 16 or 14, in some states you may also be working on a transition plan.

Audra: I think what you said is spot on and I've seen a lot of behavior plans just get passed over, like the goals that we were talking about, just get passed over year to year without really analyzing is it working or not, every single annual you should be looking at that behavior plan. Is this still is still appropriate? Do we need to change it? Do we need to get rid of it? So I think that's a really good time to do it. 

Caitlin: And then, perfect segue right after that I'm starting to look at the rest of the IEP and making sure do they need accommodations, modifications, support, so outside that structured setting of ABA or autism or whatever student class placement I'm looking for, I might be writing things about state testing. I might be writing things about calculators or a specific software they need on their Chromebooks or anything assistive technology. So I'm really checking every box like that and again, going through and making sure that they needed a modified chair from four years ago and they haven't needed that since, all of that should be deleted and looked at with fresh eyes each year. 

Audra: You mentioned the transition plan. How early are you getting your student there to participate with you? And thinking about how early, know, it says 14, but I definitely have students as early as they're able to participate, Hey, we're having this meeting. It's about you. About what's really hard for you, but what's really great about you? Do you wanna sit with us? And in fact, I really like to have the student come in, even if they're just able to say who they are, introduce the teacher to the parent, even if they already know each other. Any sort of interaction that they can have within that meeting I think is really important.

Caitlin: Where I am is just having them come in at even younger than 14, just for that like meet and greet. Do you wanna sit, do you know anything? And as appropriate, of course, as it makes sense for their family and themselves but especially as they are getting older so that they learn that they have a voice at that table.

Audra: I remember even as early as 10 or so, we'd have our son come in and say, Hey, what's really easy for you at school? What works really well? What do you need help on? He had an aide too, he said, how's it working with Mr. So-and-so? Does he help you? Does it make you feel stronger? So I think it's really important to do that.

Caitlin: Do you share a draft of the IEP with the family beforehand? 

Audra: Always. 

Caitlin: Very interesting. So I've heard people very passionately say, yes, I always share a draft. They deserve to see it before the meeting. And then I've heard people just as passionately say, no, if I share any kind of paperwork before the meeting, it's like I'm saying to the family, I don't want your input, and I wanna go to that meeting and have them be in the traditional sense of when IEP meetings first started we're gonna brainstorm the goals together. But I feel like we've moved so far beyond that, that it's not really feasible. 

Audra: I can never imagine that I would send a draft home without talking about that, Hey, this is just a draft. And I've always got their input before I created the draft, anyway. Hey, will you look at these goals in particular, these ones were really important to you. Do you like how they're worded? Does it fit what you were looking at? Because I can tell you as sitting as a parent coming into a meeting and you're given this 25 page document and everybody's trying to read all these things and it's so confusing. I a hundred percent give it back to the family, with enough time and not like the night before, like a good week or two if I can get it to them, to give them a chance and I think that's important to make sure that they understand that this is a draft, this is only a draft, this is a chance for us to talk about.

Caitlin: No, I love that. And I would be really curious if you're in our Facebook group, I'll drop something the week that this airs so you can share this 'cause I find this varies hugely from district to state. So I'm just curious to see what everybody else is doing out there. Okay. And then, yeah, once the IEP's up and rolling, I think what you said too about sharing the draft, it all goes back to the relationship you're cultivating with that family. And bottom line is whether you're sharing the draft or not, however your district is telling you to do it, you just don't want surprises. You don't want anyone to come to that meeting and be presented this 55 page document and it's outta left field. There's goals they weren't expecting, there's placement, oh, but did I mention having a behavior plan because they're doing X, Y, and Z. That's the last time you want a parent or family member to feel blindsided. And then after that, your progress monitoring four times a year minimum. And you're sharing those really detailed updates. And that's where it goes back to where I love to free write the goals rather than choose from the bank. Because now I'm almost choosing in advance how I'm reporting progress on them. So if I'm saying they're gonna complete an activity schedule four to five times a week independently, I already have in my mind, come the first progress report, I'm gonna mark how often outta five times are they doing it or whatever the case may be. 

Audra: I was in one team where I really liked doing this, when they had their meeting, they had the person who was talking about the section, they had a chair sitting next to the parents that was empty, and whoever was talking about their section would go and sit next to the parent and basically talk side by side to the parent about the goals 'cause everybody else is there and they can read too. But they basically just had a one-on-one conversation with the parent about their section, and then when they were done, they'd go and sit in the other place and somebody else would come sit next to the parent. I love that. 

Caitlin: I also like when I see case managers open the floor to the parents first because I feel like sometimes there's so many of us, and first of all, it must be so overwhelming, and you see that mom like just maybe glaze over okay, there's been a lot of talking and like maybe they just something pressing to share from home. And sometimes parents also, similar to the student, don't always know that their voice is an equal member of that team, the most important, in fact. 

That's it. Like I mentioned, head over and join our Facebook group, The Misfit Behaviorists podcast and I am gonna drop this visual for a little freebie for that week and also sound off in comments about how you guys prep for your IEPs and maybe what next you'd like to see us talk about in an episode.