Goals drive services, supports, and placement when properly integrated into your child’s IEP.
Goals give parents and educators a way to measure the student’s progress. Clear and specific baselines, combined with measurable goals, tell the IEP Team if the student made sufficient progress over the observable period. If the student made sufficient progress towards the specific goal, this allows parents and educators to set new, more ambitious goals for the next year. If the student did not make significant progress towards the goal, parents and educators are better able to assess the areas in which the child needs additional support and services.
Problems With Goals
Aspire Advocacy’s foremost complaint with IEPs: the goals are not measurable. This means we read the goals and cannot quantify them because they are written in vague, qualifying language. We see a lot of goals each year and, while many of the goals are vague, the baselines can often be worse (see Baselines Are Crucial below).
SMART Goals
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact reason behind poorly-written goals. It is possible that educators may be encouraged to write vague goals and baselines to limit the resources expended on fulfilling the student’s IEP or 504. In some instances, the educator writing the goals may not have enough experience writing measurable goals. Regardless of circumstance, work collaboratively with your school district to push for meaningful, measurable goals.
ALL meaningful goals are SMART:
S Specific
M Measurable
A Use Action Words
R Realistic and relevant
T Time-limited
An example of a poorly-written goal: “By February 2019, the student will show understanding of studied vocabulary in sentences (e.g., nouns, verbs, word associations, word categories, Boehm’s concepts of space, time, and quantity) by moving/marking items at 75% accuracy over several sessions as measured by LSH. Baseline: TOLD testing = Receptive Vocabulary & Syntactic Understanding = below the average range.”
This goal does not describe how the student will demonstrate understanding, does not have a quantity of vocabulary, and does not list the grade level for the vocabulary, the minimum or maximum scope of the goal, or a clear number of times the student must demonstrate their understanding.
The quality of the baseline is similarly poor. We know the student is below average or they would not have a goal to increase their vocabulary proficiency. How far is the student below the average? How do we measure the progress or lack thereof?
Baselines Are Crucial
IEPs can have goals that are somewhat measurable. However, when the educator writes the baseline, the measurability of the goal to the baseline can get lost in translation. An example: “Johnny will read a passage and answer two questions correctly 80% of the time. Baseline: Johnny dislikes reading.” How did that baseline come from Johnny’s goal? The baseline MUST directly relate to the goal or we cannot measure how far Johnny has come if we do not have a clear indicator of where he started.
Well-Written Goals And Baselines
A complete stranger should be able to pick up your child’s IEP and know exactly what the goal means, how to implement and measure it, and where the student started the IEP year. Is your child’s IEP this clear? If not, it is time to help the school district set up measurable goals and baselines.
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As parents, we understand. As advocates, we can help.
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