Gathering What Matters: Functional Assessment & IEP Development for Students with Moderate-to-Profound Intellectual Disabilities

In everyday school practice, the students who most need finely tuned assessments are often the least well-served by traditional tools. For learners with multiple or severe disabilities, standardized instruments and record review can confirm significant delays but rarely specify the when, where, and how of successful learning. Teams are left with well-intended but vague Present Levels and broad goals that do not guide instructional time. This is “the conundrum” that sparked the LIQ: record review alone fails to capture functional learning conditions, and our job is to ensure IEPs are instructionally useful.