Special Educators Look to Tie IEPs to Common Core

Standards Adoptions Buoy Long-running Efforts to Tie IEPs to Academic Benchmarks

The widespread adoption of common-core academic standards is expected to accelerate a growing movement among educators to link individualized education programs for students with disabilities directly to grade-level standards.

“Standards-based” IEPs allow individualized instruction in pursuit of a common goal: helping students with disabilities move toward meeting the same grade-level academic standards that general education students are supposed to meet.

Though such IEPs have been required for more than 10 years in federal law, “it’s still a learning process,” said Meredith Cathcart, a special education consultant for the California Department of Education’s special education division. “It’s a hard thing to make...