Properly written IEP goals and baselines are one of the most important sections of your child’s IEP. The IEP comes together and determines what specific skills your child targets, what data is tracked, and assesses what kind(s) of special education services your child needs. Each proposed goal must be attainable within one calendar year, so they should be tailored to your child’s current progress instead of taken from a predetermined IEP goal bank.
When writing IEP goals and baselines, your child’s IEP team should use information from recent assessment scores and present levels of performance. If there are deficits that impact your child’s ability to academically, socially, or emotionally progress through school, the IEP team should design a goal to bridge those gaps. It is important to consider if any underlying issues affect multiple areas where your child could use help improving their skills. For example, if your child is struggling in math and hasn’t mastered their number identification or foundational math skills, the IEP team will likely propose a goal for the foundational skill rather than one for computation or identification.
IEP teams determine the most impactful goals and spend time breaking down those goals into specifics. Who will teach and support the goal? When is the goal considered achieved? Most goals are designed for one full year. While the goals can be discussed at annual IEPs, meetings can be held at any time to discuss your child’s progress and rewrite goals as necessary. If your child achieves an annual goal in 6 months time, we recommend bringing the IEP team together to talk about a new goal to further support your child’s newly acquired skill.
For any proposed goal, the baseline should be directly related to the goal’s target and show your child’s current capability in that area. A baseline measure is a positive statement about your child’s current ability and is generally a restatement of the proposed goal at a lower standard. For example, if a goal is about reading 30 sight words at grade level then the baseline should be something along the lines of: the student can currently read 7 sight words at their grade level. Baselines should be similar to their corresponding goals because it gives us a clear and accurate measurement of growth during the year.
The most important thing to remember about the IEP goals, they should be specific, positive, measurable, attainable, and have a timeline. These goals will then help guide the discussion for the IEP team to determine appropriate service levels to ensure each goal is met within the outlined timeframe. For expert help writing IEP goals and baselines for your child’s next IEP, reach out to an advocate from Aspire Advocacy!
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