Goals are the driving force of the IEP. They are the most important concepts and skills your child needs to learn in order to prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living. Goals are taught by the special education teacher or other related service providers, and they must be tracked throughout the year to determine if your child is making progress. But how do goals actually work? How are they worded? How do teachers determine what goals your child should have?
Every IEP has a ‘goals’ page. Goals are the driving force of the IEP. They are the most important concepts and skills your child needs to learn in order to prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living. Goals are taught by the special education teacher or other related service providers, and they must be tracked throughout the year to determine if your child is making progress. But how do goals actually work? How are they worded? How do teachers determine what goals your child should have?
First, let’s talk about the basic structure of how a goal is written in an IEP. IEP goals must be ‘SMART’ goals. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.
Specific: The goal must be clearly worded and specific to a skill or concept your child needs to improve.
Measurable: Goals must be measurable with quantitative data. This means the goal can be objectively tracked to determine if your child is making progress without any subjectivity or bias.
Achievable: The goal should be within reach for your child. We want to set them up for success, so the goal should not be too lofty.
Relevant: The goal should be a skill or concept based on your child’s unique needs that will prepare them for further education, employment, or independent living.
Timely: IEP goals are written for the calendar year. The goal should be achievable by the end of the IEP year. The goal and benchmarks/objectives may also have specific end-dates written within the goal.
Your child may have multiple goals in their IEP, but each goal should have all of these components.
When looking at your child’s IEP goal page, you may have noticed that each goal seems to repeat itself multiple times. That’s because the goal page of the IEP shows the annual goal, and three benchmarks or objectives. The benchmarks/objectives help your child build the skills they need in order to reach their annual goal. They are the smaller steps along the way that makes the big annual goal achievable. This is the same concept adults use in their own lives. For example, if I have a goal of running a 9-minute mile, I am more likely to succeed if I start with a 12-minute mile, then work towards an 11-minute mile, then a 10-minute mile, and eventually, I will be able to run a 9-minute mile. If I go straight for the 9-minute mile, I’ll probably fail and want to give up. Benchmarks and objectives help us break up big goals into achievable steps.
In order to know where to start the benchmarks/objectives and what the goal should be, we need to know some baseline data. This information – your child’s current levels of performance- will be explained in the IEP. You may see it right there on the goal page, or it may be in a different section. Sometimes it’s both. This information and data help teachers and related service providers know what your child should work on and where to start. Using my running goal as an example, a 9-minute mile might be a perfect goal if I can currently run a 13-minute mile. But what if my current mile time is 18 minutes? Is a 9-minute mile reasonable? Maybe eventually, but a 14-minute mile might be a better goal to start with. On the other hand, if my current mile time is 10 minutes, I might hit a 9-minute mile pretty easily. That goal might not be challenging enough, or it’s an indication that it is not the most important goal I should be working on. Knowing your child’s current levels of performance helps teachers determine what their goals and benchmarks should be.
Using my running example, here is what my SMART goal and benchmarks would look like. Let’s say I can run a 13-minute mile right now.
Annual Goal: By September 2022, Dr. Jo will run 1 mile in 9 minutes.
Benchmark 1: By December 2021, Dr. Jo will run 1 mile in 12 minutes.
Benchmark 2: By March 2022, Dr. Jo will run 1 mile in 11 minutes.
Benchmark 3: By June 2022, Dr. Jo will run 1 mile in 10 minutes.
My goal is specific (run 1 mile), measurable (time in minutes), achievable (if I can run a 13-minute mile now, I should be able to run a 9-minute mile in a year with training), relevant (this is a personal goal for a future 5K race), timely (there are benchmarks with dates and an end date for the overall goal).
The same structure and concepts apply to your child’s IEP goals.
What are some goals your child has? Are they SMART goals? Are they the most important concepts and skills your child needs?
If you’re not sure if your child’s goals are best for them, let me know! I can review your child’s IEP and goals and provide suggestions for improvement.
Send me a message or set up a free consultation to talk about your child’s IEP goals!