Integrating AI-Enhanced AAC into the IEP: Supporting Indepe…

details, and a conclusion.” Writing goals should foster written communication, not rote, laborious tasks like tracing, which can be taxing for students with complex motor needs and limited upper-limb endurance, and have no academic rigor. Consider the case of a ninth-grade student using AAC with WordPower 60 via eye gaze. When I asked her mother about her daughter’s writing goals, the answer was, “We don’t have any writing goals...she can’t use her hands.” This highlights a critical oversight: the absence of writing goals for students who cannot produce written work through traditional means. WRITING GOALS The first step is to ensure that the IEP includes true writing goals that promote meaningful written expression. Even with well-crafted written language goals, students often face significant barriers to producing authentic work. These challenges include selecting vocabulary, maintaining authorship, and ensuring access to the same expressive opportunities as peers. In one instance, a charter school (affiliated with a public school district) was asked whether a student who uses switches and eye gaze could leverage AI to improve the efficiency of her participation. The request was escalated through multiple levels, only to be denied on the grounds that “AI is cheating.” Observation revealed that while this student participated in general education classes (e.g., math, science, social studies, and robotics), she was not provided the same general educational access and placed in a special education English class because writing tasks were deemed too labor-intensive. When I asked how she generated original written content, the staff explained they typically offered her three predetermined choices and she would select one. From an IEP standpoint, this meant her present level of performance involved choosing among ideas provided by others. To be effective, her paraeducator would need deep content knowledge in subjects as diverse as algebra, biology, U.S. history, and literature (the current English focus being Edgar Allan Poe). This dynamic limited her to exercising choice rather than voice, an essential distinction when the goal is authentic authorship. Under these conditions, all of her writing was effectively co-authored with her paraeducator. While co-authorship itself is not inherently problematic and certainly not “cheating”, it becomes limiting when the student cannot access the breadth of vocabulary and ideas available to her peers through the internet and AI tools. General education students regularly co- construct their work with the support of these tools, and this is not seen as a violation of academic integrity. When the English class assignment required students to write a paragraph reflecting on Poe’s work, I provided an AI-generated list of six statements describing Poe’s style. The student chose one, which included the term macabre. While her teacher and

When AT and AI are meaningfully integrated into these key sections, the IEP becomes a clear, actionable plan that supports the student’s growth in independence, authorship, and active participation. REFRAMING WRITING GOALS FOR STUDENTS WITH COMPLEX COMMUNICATION NEEDS When reviewing IEPs, have you ever paused (really looked at?) at the writing goals? It is not uncommon for these goals to read like: “Student will trace his name. Student will write the letter of the week,” or “Student will complete a sentence with the carrier phrase ‘I like…’” While these may reflect penmanship, spelling, or sight-word copying objectives, they do not represent true writing goals. In fact, we know tracing doesn’t equate to writing.

Example of what not to do. Student tracing his name.

Authentic writing goals focus on the creation of meaning, such as: “The student will generate a complete sentence with subject, verb, and predicate” or “The student will compose a paragraph including a topic sentence, three supporting

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