IEP goals

Quick answer

An IEP goal is a sentence that says what your child should be able to do twelve months from now, and how anyone would know. Four parts make it work. Where your child is starting, the thing your child will do, how well and how often it has to happen, and the date the year runs out. Goals cover schoolwork. They also cover the rest of the day, which the regulation calls functional, meaning skills like asking for help, finishing a transition, or crossing a parking lot safely. A goal nobody can measure is a goal nobody can miss. Below are the four parts, four worked examples with the numbers filled in, and what to do when this year's goals are last year's goals with a new date.

What the regulation asks for

Every IEP has to carry goals, and the requirement runs one sentence. Under 34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(2)(i), the IEP must include "a statement of measurable annual goals, including academic and functional goals designed to" do two things.

• (A) Meet the child's needs that result from the child's disability to enable the child to be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum
• (B) Meet each of the child's other educational needs that result from the child's disability

Three words in that sentence do the work.

Measurable means somebody can put a number on it and check the same number again in March. Annual means twelve months, not a lifetime and not next week. And "including academic and functional" means the goals are not only about reading and math. Functional covers the parts of the day nobody grades, and clause (B) is what lets you ask for a goal on organization, communication, or safety when the report card looks fine.

One rule sits underneath that. Benchmarks and short-term objectives, the smaller steps some parents remember from older IEPs, are required at § 300.320(a)(2)(ii) only for children who take alternate assessments aligned to alternate academic achievement standards. For everyone else the federal rule does not ask for them. States add to the federal floor and never subtract from it. Your state rules or your district's IEP software may put the boxes on the form anyway.

What the regulation leaves out is longer than what it sets. No wording, no format, no minimum number of goals, and no list of areas an IEP has to cover. That is why two districts in the same state hand you goals that look nothing alike.

What makes a goal measurable

Schools call these SMART goals. The regulation never uses the word, and the acronym has five parts that do not line up with anything IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) requires. Four things do the real work, and you can check all four in about a minute.

• A baseline. The number your child produces today, with the date it was collected and the method it came from.
• The behavior. Something a substitute teacher could watch happen, under a stated condition. Given a graphic organizer. On an unpracticed passage. During recess.
• The criterion. How well and how often, such as 8 of 10 problems on three probes in a row.
• The date. Almost always the annual review date, which turns the goal into a twelve-month promise.

A fifth thing belongs next to the goal rather than inside it. How progress gets measured, which the regulation asks for separately and which has its own section below.

Here is one goal before and after.

The weak version is not bad because it is short. It is bad because no week of school could disprove it. Read the second column and you can lose the argument, which is the whole reason to write it down.

A measurable goal can still be the wrong goal. Eight of ten is worth nothing to a student who was never taught to regroup and needs the teaching rather than the target.

Four goals, and what each one is doing

These are filled in, with names and numbers, because the numbers are the part that gets argued about. None of them was written for your child.

Read the condition before you read the number. Unpracticed is doing real work there, because the same child scores higher on a passage the class went through on Tuesday. Six scorable items, three answers and three pieces of evidence, so 5 of 6 is a count and not an impression. The weak version of this one reads "improve reading comprehension to grade level." Grade level is a place, not a score, and it never says which part of comprehension broke.

Legible needs a judge. An adult who does not know him is the judge, and naming one stops the occupational therapist and the classroom teacher from scoring the same paper differently. Then ask what the number does when Theo writes faster, because speed and legibility trade against each other and this goal only counts one of them.

The first half says what Marcus does instead. A behavior goal that counts only what stops happening gives the team nothing to teach, and the child usually finds another way out of the work. The second half is a rate, 6 per school day, because a percentage hides how many chances there were. If the behavior is dangerous, or it is the reason your child keeps getting sent home, a goal is not the answer on its own. Ask for a functional behavioral assessment first.

This is a functional goal and it is not a lesser one. Section 300.320(b) requires measurable postsecondary goals beginning no later than the first IEP in effect when your child turns 16, and earlier if the team decides it, and annual goals like this one are how the IEP gets there. The data comes from a job coach or a transition teacher rather than a gradebook, so ask who writes it down and where it is kept.

Forty-nine more, grouped by area with the numbers left blank so you can fill in your child's, are in the IEP goal bank.

Where goals sit in the document

Goals do not stand alone. The IEP is built in an order and each part feeds the next.

Present levels come first, at § 300.320(a)(1). That section describes what your child can do now, and it is where the baseline inside every goal is supposed to come from. If a goal's baseline appears nowhere in present levels, ask which data produced it and on what date. Your child's strengths live in that same section.

Services come after, at § 300.320(a)(4). That paragraph ties them to the goals in so many words, requiring the special education, related services and supplementary aids and services to be provided to enable the child "to advance appropriately toward attaining the annual goals." That clause is the argument for minutes. A goal everyone agrees on, with nothing scheduled behind it, is a sentence. How minutes, provider and setting get written down is on services and supports, and the full contents list is on what must be in an IEP.

Nothing in § 300.320 requires one goal per need. A team can answer a need with an accommodation or a service and write no goal for it at all, which is a legitimate answer and worth making them say out loud.

What the IEP has to say about progress

Measuring is a separate requirement from the goal. Under § 300.320(a)(3) the IEP must include a description of two things.

• (i) How the child's progress toward meeting the annual goals described in paragraph (2) of this section will be measured
• (ii) When periodic reports on the progress the child is making toward meeting the annual goals (such as through the use of quarterly or other periodic reports, concurrent with the issuance of report cards) will be provided

The method and the calendar. Both belong in the document, where you can read them in September rather than discovering them in May. The parenthetical names quarterly reports as an example and not as a floor, so the schedule is your district's to set and yours to check.

A progress report is a summary written by the school. The data behind it is a school record. Under 34 C.F.R. § 300.613(a) the district must let you inspect and review your child's education records without unnecessary delay and before any meeting regarding an IEP, and no later than 45 days after you ask. Forty-five days is the ceiling, not the target. Section 300.613(b)(1) adds a right worth using, which is a response to reasonable requests for explanations of what the records say.

What honest progress reporting looks like across a year, and what to do after three weak reports in a row, is on progress monitoring.

When the goals are last year's goals

This is the most common problem with IEP goals, and there is a Supreme Court case about it.

Endrew F. was a boy with autism in Douglas County, Colorado, whose IEPs "largely carried over the same basic goals and objectives from one year to the next." His parents pulled him out of public school in April 2010. On March 22, 2017, a unanimous Supreme Court sided with them. A school must offer an IEP "reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child's circumstances," and a child's "educational program must be appropriately ambitious in light of his circumstances." The rest of that standard, and what it does not reach, is on what FAPE means.

The regulation you use in the room is shorter. Under § 300.324(b)(1) the team must review the IEP at least annually "to determine whether the annual goals for the child are being achieved," and revise it "as appropriate" to address "any lack of expected progress toward the annual goals."

In practice the copying is the software's doing. District IEP systems roll last year's document forward into this year's draft, so a goal survives unless somebody deletes it, and the date updates on its own. Nobody sits down and decides to recycle a goal. It happens because deleting one takes a reason and keeping it does not.

Four things to do, in this order.

1. Put the last three IEPs side by side and read only the goals. Identical wording two years running, over a baseline that barely moved, is the pattern to name out loud.
2. Ask for the final data point on the old goal and the baseline on the new one. The same number twice answers the question for you.
3. Ask what the team will change, and get the answer into the IEP or the meeting notes rather than the conversation. A repeated goal with the same services behind it produces the same result.
4. If the team refuses, ask for prior written notice under 34 C.F.R. § 300.503. The refusal then has to be explained in writing, with the data behind it.

This is where an advocate is worth the money, because the argument runs on records instead of opinion. They line up three years of goals next to the progress reports, mark the places the number stalled, and send the district that page before the meeting rather than reading it out at the table. Advocates are not attorneys. They cannot file a lawsuit or represent you at a due process hearing. Most on our directory charge $75 to $150 per hour, and you can find advocates in your state to see who works near you.

What a goal cannot do

Five limits.

• Measurable is a floor. A goal can pass every test on this page and still ask too little, which is the argument Endrew F. settled and the one a wording check cannot reach.
• A goal is not a service. Minutes, provider and setting live at § 300.320(a)(4), so a well-written goal with nothing scheduled behind it changes nothing about Monday.
• Missing a goal is not by itself a violation of IDEA. What § 300.324(b)(1) requires is that the team review the goal and revise the IEP as appropriate. The failure worth acting on is a team that reviews and changes nothing.
• Benchmarks are not required for most children. Short-term objectives belong to children who take alternate assessments, at § 300.320(a)(2)(ii), so a district can decline to write them for a child on the regular assessment.
• We cannot tell you the target. A reasonable one-year number comes out of the evaluation, the baseline the team holds today, and the rate of progress your child has actually shown, and no web page can supply it.

A goal is the only part of the IEP with a date on it. Read this year's in September, not in May.