Post 2 / Research / "What does your IEP look like?"

 

 "What does your IEP look like?"

    The way that students with disabilities, or learning differences, are treated and sometimes overlooked in schools should be an issue with more effort behind it. These students are often perceived as “gifted students” or seen as "troublemakers," or in the middle. These students are left to their own devices, sliding through school unnoticed as an “average student” who could excel with the right help. Representation is a crucial aspect of normalizing neurodivergent students and individuals in general. This representation is still lacking despite recent efforts. Last week, my research led me to ask not only why disability representation in children’s media is still so limited, but also how schools themselves represent and support students with disabilities. When representation does appear in the media, it is often framed through stereotypes or treated as a “difference” to be laughed at rather than respected. This made me wonder: how does this compare to the way students are represented in educational spaces through their IEPs? Are their needs clearly recognized and supported, or are they reduced to labels and checkboxes? These questions pushed me to look at sources beyond my initial two media-focused articles, toward education policy (like IDEA), studies on the quality of IEPs, and the perspectives of families and students. Together, these sources helped me see both the progress and the ongoing gaps in how disability is represented, whether in pop culture or in the very documents that shape a child’s education.

    This led me to find things like ”Embracing Disability Identity: Representation in Literature as a Tool Towards Inclusivity” . A listing of testimonies from professionals in classrooms fighting and reflecting on the importance of disability in literature for wider understanding and normalization. This also feeds into the overall topic of representation, which led me to think, How many people know what an IEP or 504 plan looks like, or even what they are? These questions led me to the IDEA website and a few articles. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act official website gives good baseline information related to my chosen issue. The website also has many sources I can follow. I found the article “Satisfaction With Individualized Education Programs Among Parents of Young Children With ASD.” This will help me determine what is missing in the context of IEP's for thsoe with ASD. My main goal is to help represent students who are not neuro typical. This article will help them be seen, and helo spread the lnowledge of what an IEP even looks like. There was also an article titled “Evaluating the Content of Individualized Education Programs and 504 Plans of Young Adolescents with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder” and “Quality of IEPs for Students with Complex Support Needs: Is There Alignment Across IEP Components?” That will help with the same issues both thoughtfully and analytically. In this article, it says, “These negative academic and social outcomes often extend into adolescence as adolescents with ADHD tend to receive lower grades, are more likely to be placed in lower levels of classroom placement (e.g. remedial vs. honors), and have higher rates of course failure relative to their peers (Kent et al., 2010).” While this does cover the main issue. To marry these topics I wanted to get some more answers, so I wanted to find the IEP regulations as per the IDEA. Outlined here was the article “Special Factors in IEP Development” for parents to understand and people in general.

    For my art intervention project I would really like to focus on the idea of IEP’s and 504s and really raising the awareness of information that supports children. Therefore, I am using the characters designed for my BFA to help support this cause. My BFA project focuses on a class of 9 little monsters in third grade. They get into different antics and act like any other group of 8 and 9 year olds. Some struggle with speaking, some with writing, and some with socialization. For this assignment I want to draft an IEP or 504 for each character, along with a small school portrait to show the little student that needs the help, who is so much more than a statistic or piece of paperwork. I will be designing and paying close attention to the process of filling out these forms, and attaching a school photo of each student. Once these forms are printed they will be posted up around the NJCU campus and on the top of each page they will say “What does your IEP look like?”

Works cited

U.S. Department of Education. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). U.S. Department of Education, n.d., https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/individuals-disabilities/idea.

Slade, Nicole, Amy Eisenhower, Ann S. Carter, and Jan Blacher. “Satisfaction With Individualized Education Programs Among Parents of Young Children With ASD.” Exceptional Children, vol. 84, no. 3, 2018, pp. 242–260. ERIC, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED598698.pdf

Spiel, Craig F., et al. “Evaluating the Content of Individualized Education Programs and 504 Plans Prepared for Middle School Students with ADHD Conformed to Best Practices.” School Psychology Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, 2014, pp. 452–468. PubMed Central (PMC), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4285444.

Hicks, Sophia. “Embracing Disability Identity: Representation in Literature as a Tool Towards Inclusivity.” Voices of Practitioners, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), Dec. 2023, https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/vop/dec2023/embracing-disability.

Kurth, Jennifer A. “Quality of IEPs for Students with Complex Support Needs: Is There Alignment Across IEP Components?” Exceptionality, 2025, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09362835.2024.2389079.

Parent Center Hub. “Special Factors in IEP Development.” Parent Center Hub, n.d., https://www.parentcenterhub.org/special-factors.