Embedded Files
Common Errors to Avoid
Common Errors to Avoid
Failing to complete a thorough and individualized evaluation on the concerns and needs of the child.
Failing to include all of a student's educational needs in the PLAAFP that were identified from the evaluations
Failing to use the PLAAFP to create goals, identify services, and supports.
Description of Content
Description of Content
The Present Levels of Academic Achievement & Functional Performance (PLAAFPs) summarize all aspects of a child’s present levels of performance. PLAAFPs must include three parts:
Current performance
The impact of the exceptionality
Baseline data for identified needs.
These three parts of the PLAAFPs move from broad to very specific information about the student’s academic achievement and functional performance. Information must be sufficient to enable the team to design good instruction and make appropriate service decisions.
Current Performance: Some examples of the types of information that are considered “current performance” are:
Learning strengths
Parent concerns
Standardized assessments like the state or district assessments
Universal screening and progress monitoring data
Instructional preferences
Learning rate
Strengths and weaknesses
Social/emotional Issues
Vocational/career interests and skills related to those interests
Impact of Exceptionality: The description of the impact of the exceptionality needs to clearly describe how the student’s exceptionality manifests itself. Guiding Questions:
What does one see about this student that is different from typical peers that is a result of the exceptionality?
How is the student’s exceptionality getting in the way of being involved in or having access to the general curriculum?
How is the student’s exceptionality getting in the way of progressing in the general curriculum?
EXAMPLE 1: Ann’s disability in the area of auditory processing and auditory memory causes her to have difficulty processing problems and remembering information presented orally. This impacts her comprehension and her ability to follow multi-step directions and recall complex concepts. This also impacts her academic success in all instructional settings with oral presentations, including reading, written language, and math, and to a lesser degree, science and social studies.
EXAMPLE 2: Kevin has a disability in the area of math that limits his ability to participate in grade level instruction. Kevin can add and subtract single digit numbers with 90% accuracy. He can add double-digit numbers with 50% accuracy but he is unable to subtract double-digit numbers that require regrouping. The fourth grade standard for math requires the following computation: Add, subtract, multiply three-digit by two-digit factors, and divide two-digit dividends by one-digit divisors to solve problems.
Baseline Data: Baseline data are typically collected for needs that are seen as the most significant. These data provide the starting point for measurable goals to be written for the student. Examples of baseline data would include: words read correctly, percent of problems solved correctly, number of times behavior occurs, and mean length of utterances.
Compare and Contrast PLAAFP Statements
Vague: Micah’s GRADE report shows that he is performing well-below the 8th grade level in reading comprehension. He received a stanine of 2 which is considered poor. He was rated in the 9th percentile which is significantly below his grade-level peers. His overall reading comprehension is at a GE 3.9
Descriptive: Based on the GRADE assessment, Micah has difficulty in overall reading comprehension. This includes the ability to understand the meaning of a sentence and the meaning of several sentences in a reading passage. For passage comprehension, Micah’s stanine score is 2 which is considered poor or below the average (4-6). Micah was rated in the 9th percentile when compared to his peers which means that Micah performed as well as or better than 9% of his peers who are the same age and grade level. For reading comprehension, he received a GE 3.9 which means that his performance is equivalent or similar to a student in the 3rd grade and 9 months of school.
His weakest areas in reading comprehension included clarifying (22%) and summarizing (22%). He also showed difficulty when presented passages that included fiction (20%), history (20%) or authentic media types (20%) (e.g., flyer, news article) in short (20%) or medium-sized (20%) passages.
Page updated
Report abuse