“Appears Fine” Is Not a Present Level

Monday morning, the IEP is already live. Not a draft for October. Not a file that lives in a cabinet. IDEA says each public agency must have an IEP in effect at the start of the school year, and that IEP has to be accessible to the teachers and providers who implement it.

The starting GPS is not a grade, a score, or a hallway impression. It is present levels of academic achievement and functional performance. If that statement only records how the student “appears fine,” the map is already wrong.

The IEP is live this morning — present levels are the starting GPS

34 CFR §300.323(a) is not a suggestion. At the beginning of each school year, the IEP has to be in effect. §300.323(d) adds the other half: regular education teachers, special education teachers, related service providers, and anyone else responsible for implementation have to be able to see it. They also have to know their piece — the accommodations, the modifications, the supports.

Present levels are how that document starts. §300.320(a)(1) requires a statement of the child’s present levels of academic achievement and functional performance, including how the disability affects involvement and progress in the general education curriculum. Academic and functional. Both. A reading level without the afternoon crash is half a GPS.

Saturday’s collapse post is the missing functional data: the crash after a “great day” belongs in present levels, not in a parent comment that never reaches the document.

“Appears fine / no behavior concerns” is masking data

“Appears fine” is the mask; a PLAAFP that only records the mask produces an IEP that “works” at school and fails the actual student.

Hull and colleagues asked 92 autistic adults about camouflaging — “putting on my best normal.” That is an adult sample. The short-term cost they named most often was exhaustion. Camouflaging hid the work. It did not remove it.

“No behavior concerns” can mean the same thing. The student is holding eye contact that does not come naturally. The body is not stimming. The voice is answering on cue. The room is seeing the performance. It is not seeing the cost.

If the only present-level line is “appears fine in class,” the IEP is describing the costume.

Functional performance is co-equal with academics

IDEA does not rank academic above functional. §300.320(a)(1) names both. §300.324(a)(1) says the IEP Team must consider the academic, developmental, and functional needs of the child. And. Not or.

A goal that only tracks decoding, while the student cannot eat lunch, cannot use the bathroom, cannot get the AAC device out of the bag, is not a complete IEP. ASHA’s August 13 classroom tip is one sentence long enough for this: where the student goes, their AAC goes. Access that never leaves the backpack is functional data.

Gormley and colleagues asked 109 people in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland — 65 non-autistic educators, 34 autistic non-educators, and 10 autistic educators — which IEP goals they would prioritize. All three groups deprioritized goals about improving eye contact and reducing stims. They treated those goals as harmful to more meaningful work. That finding is not a U.S. legal holding. It is still a useful check on a present-level line that treats “looks typical” as progress.

Parent input is not a courtesy

§300.324(a)(1) tells the IEP Team to consider the concerns of the parents for enhancing the education of their child. The same section says the Team revises the IEP, as appropriate, to address information about the child provided to, or by, the parents.

A parent who writes what 3:30 looks like is not adding color. They are supplying functional performance. Weekend homework that costs Sunday recovery is the same kind of data. The Team does not get to file that under “home issue” and keep a present-level sentence that only describes the mask.

What to send this week

Tonight, write one page. Not a 20-item checklist. Not a diagnosis. A present-level one-pager the Team can paste.

• What “appears fine” looks like at school, in the school’s own words.

• What the same afternoon looks like at the door, in yours.

• Eating, bathroom, AAC out of the bag — what happened, and what did not.

• Weekend homework cost, if there is one. Sunday recovery counts.

• The sentence you want in the present levels, written so a substitute can read it Monday.

Send it this week. Ask that it be written into present levels of academic achievement and functional performance, not parked in a comment. The IEP is already live. The GPS can still be corrected.

Sources

34 CFR §300.320 defines an IEP as a written statement that must include present levels of academic achievement and functional performance, including how the child’s disability affects involvement and progress in the general education curriculum. https://sites.ed.gov/idea/regs/b/d/300.320

34 CFR §300.323(a) requires each public agency to have an IEP in effect at the beginning of each school year; §300.323(d) requires that IEP to be accessible to each teacher and provider responsible for its implementation, and that they be informed of their specific responsibilities and the accommodations, modifications, and supports in the IEP. https://sites.ed.gov/idea/regs/b/d/300.323

34 CFR §300.324 requires the IEP Team, in developing each child’s IEP, to consider the concerns of the parents for enhancing the education of their child and the academic, developmental, and functional needs of the child; the Team revises the IEP, as appropriate, to address information about the child provided to, or by, the parents. https://sites.ed.gov/idea/regs/b/d/300.324

Laura Hull and colleagues published “Putting on My Best Normal”: Social Camouflaging in Adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders in 2017. The sample was 92 autistic adults. Short-term consequences included exhaustion. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3166-5

Laura Gormley, Devon Ramey, Carrie Grennan, and Nathalie Koka published “Individual Education Plan Priorities: Insights From the Autistic Community and Educators Supporting Autistic Learners” in the European Journal of Education in 2024. The sample was 109 people in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland: 65 non-autistic educators, 34 autistic non-educators, and 10 autistic educators. All groups deprioritized goals about improving eye contact and reducing stimming. The authors state those priorities are specific to that educational context, not a U.S. legal holding. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12800

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association published “Back-to-School: Tips for Supporting Students Who Use AAC Devices” on August 13, 2026, including the classroom rule that where the student goes, their AAC goes. https://www.asha.org/news/2026/back-to-school-aac-classroom-tips/