Are These Good IEP Goals?

03/19/12
by Sue Whitney
My child is a freshman in high school. Her IEP includes this goal and objectives.
Judy will improve reading comprehension skills by using graphic organizers to
access the curriculum with 70% accuracy per quarter.
The short term objectives are:
1. Judy will summarize or bullet important information in a variety of reading material
with 70% accuracy.
2. Judy will recall specific facts, information & details after reading a variety of texts
with 70% accuracy.
3. Judy will summarize a passage or story, relating essential components with 70%
accuracy.
4. Judy will use vocabulary to identify the characters, setting, events, problems &
solution in a story passage with 70% accuracy per quarter.
This goal doesnt make sense to me. It seems vague. Shouldnt an IEP goal include
the childs present levels of academic achievement or functional performance?
Writing Measurable Goals
You are right. This IEP goal makes no sense. Yes, before you can create any goal,
you need to know the childs present levels that is the starting point.
Your child has problems with reading comprehension. How can teachers work to
improve her reading comprehension skills by using graphic organizers to access the
curriculum with 70% accuracy? Even if this goal was appropriate, how would you
and the IEP team know if she improved to 70% accuracy? What will happen if her
improvement in using graphic organizers was 62% or 57%? What do these numbers
mean?
Change the facts. Assume that a goal states that the child will type 40 words-perminute. She currently types at a rate of 38 words-per-minute. While improving typing
skills by 2 words-per-minute may be acceptable as a weekly goal or objective, it is
completely inappropriate as an annual goal. If a childs present level of performance
in typing is 20 words-per-minute, then an annual goal of 40 words-per-minute
may (or may not) be appropriate.

How will a child summarize with 70% accuracy? How will we know that she didnt
summarize with 40% accuracy? In addition to being inappropriate, you cannot
measure progress with this goal.
Resources
Barbara Bateman wrote an excellent book about Writing Measurable IEP Goals and
Objectives.
She also wrote Writing Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) for Success.
Check out this material about Writing IEP Goals this is from a school district so it
may be more acceptable to the IEP team members.
Youll answers to your questions about present levels of performance and how to
write IEP goals in Wrightslaw: All About IEPs.
Comprehensive Evaluation
Has your child had a comprehensive psycho-educational evaluation recently?
When you review her recent evaluations, you may see that the comprehension
goals in her IEP should really focus on weaknesses in decoding, oral language, or
phonological awareness.

Do the most recent evaluations confirm that reading comprehension is the

primary problem, and that your childs decoding, phonological awareness and
oral language are not problem areas?

Do the most recent evaluations indicate that your child has problems in
spelling and written expression?

When you re-read the evaluations, you must understand the test results. If you have
not had a private sector evaluation on your child recently, I recommend that you
arrange to have an evaluation completed.
The Wrightslaw Multimedia Training on CD-ROM Understanding Your Childs Test
Scores will help you understand the bell curve, mean, and standard deviations on
tests. You will also learn about standard scores, percentile ranks, subtest scores,
composite or cluster scores, and subtest scatter. You will learn how to draw the bell
curve and how to use your childs test scores to create powerful progress (or lack of
progress) graphs
- See more at: http://www.wrightslaw.com/blog/?p=6751#sthash.KArSeKUW.dpuf Are
These Good IEP Goals?