Rewriting Goals for an IEP: Let's Fix Those Goals!

If you have an IEP meeting coming up, having access to the draft goals beforehand can be helpful. But if that doesn’t happen, don’t worry! You're not signing anything at the IEP meeting, so you'll have time after to review all proposed goals and notes from the meeting. This will give you time to troubleshoot the goals and even consult your Undivided Navigator, an IEP coach, or a special education advocate.

You can also create and send to the IEP team, ahead of time, a priority list of things you want to cover in the IEP meeting, such as your suggestions for changes to goals, and take it with you to the IEP meeting, rather than taking up valuable time doing edits during the meeting itself. As Undivided Education Advocate Lisa Carey tells us, “It’s like an agenda for myself. It helps me make sure that everything that I wanted to cover is covered, in case we get sidetracked or I forget. And most of the time, when you get to the end of the meeting, the person leading the meeting will ask if there are any other concerns. And that's usually a moment where I say, ‘Hang on, let me look at my list and make sure that everything was covered.’”

We’ll have some more parent tips and key takeaways at the end of the article, so stay tuned!

Is there such a thing as a “bad” goal? Absolutely. If a goal isn’t ​​clear, specific, meaningful, measurable, achievable, appropriate, or well-written (see: what is a “SMART” goal?), a student may appear to “meet” it on paper without making any actual meaningful progress in the classroom. But before we start deconstructing bad goals, let’s review what an IEP goal consists of. This will help us identify what a well-written goal looks like and how to tackle the different parts of a goal we want to fix.

In a nutshell, an IEP goal contains six parts:

• Time frame: by what date should the goal be met?
  • The time frame is usually one year for an annual goal. It may be specified in the number of weeks, or a certain date for completion.
• Condition: what conditions need to be met for the student to meet this goal?
  • The condition can include a variety of information depending on what skill the goal is targeting, such as environment or setting, related service or supports, specific situations/scenarios, etc.
• Skill: what specific skill should the student master in the time frame?
  • It may help to think of the skill as something actionable that you can see, hear, and measure, often with a specific behavior listed in the goal. This can include practicing self-advocacy skills by using behaviors such as “will ask for a break by raising their hand” or “by practicing deep breathing exercises.”
• Supports: what supports are embedded in the goal to improve your child's success?
  • What will help your child be successful with the target skill? This can be where you specify accommodations or modifications, and can look like “by using a magnifier or large-print materials.”
• Accuracy/Evaluation Criteria: how accurate does the student need to be to demonstrate mastery of the goal?
  • Evaluation criteria can be measured by accuracy, frequency, or consistency: how much, how often, or to what standards the behavior must follow to demonstrate the goal has been met.
• Evaluation/Measurement: how will the student's performance be measured?
  • This is how the data will be collected on the goal to determine whether or not the goal was met. Evaluation can include observations, permanent products, recorded data, and more.

The goal itself should be accompanied by other important information:

• The baseline tells you what the starting point is and should report a measurable score on the criteria being measured in the goal (the baseline and the goal should match).
• Goals should also indicate if they are tied to a state curriculum standard (such as California Common Core State Standards) or are related to another need arising out of the child’s disability.
• The goal should also specifically assign responsibility to an IEP team member for the goal by their role (such as Speech Language Therapist) rather than by name or a general assignment (such as “district staff”). Note that more than one member of the IEP team can share responsibility.

When writing a goal for an IEP, keep in mind that although each goal should contain a time frame, a condition, a skill, supports, accuracy, and evaluation, the best goal will be determined by the child’s unique circumstances. Here, we’ll show you how you can make changes to goals to improve them depending on your child’s needs and strengths. Let's practice rewriting goals!

What did we change?

The condition! In the original goal, the condition included a setting “in a small group.” You want your child to be able to generalize the skills they’re learning in a variety of environments — both small and large — and leaving that phrase out allows the teacher and service provider to practice and test this goal in a variety of settings.

Reader note: Some advocates will recommend that the condition be the setting, such as “in the gen ed classroom” or “across a variety of settings,” so everyone is on the same page about what is expected and nothing is left to the imagination. Others will say not to because it might limit the situations/settings where the skill may be practiced. For continuity, we’re choosing not to include a specific setting in this goal, but depending on your situation, you can.

In this goal, the condition also included support and instructions, but "when given verbal prompting/cues" is not very specific. The goal is very close to the actual kindergarten standard (print many upper-and lowercase letters), so if this child is in kindergarten, you want to make sure they have the support to reach the goal.

Providing a visual cue as part of your assessment allows Susie to show that she can write the letters if she is given a little help to reach the standard. If your child has a strength in visual learning, visual cues are especially effective. Notice that changing the condition really changes the skill being taught to “copying” rather than “remembering the letter shape independently” when writing it. Goals need to be appropriately ambitious but also attainable. In this case, Susie’s baseline shows that she currently can write very few letters with verbal prompts/cues, but she is able to trace and write letters if a model is provided. The next logical step in Susie’s writing development is to give her a visual cue to copy.

Reader note: Conditions can also be used to target generalization, such as “during naturally occurring opportunities” or “with a range of media.” It is important to ask how often such a condition will occur, but bear in mind that while a goal needs to be measured in this condition, the skill can be practiced in a variety of settings.

As we mentioned earlier, the condition can include a variety of information depending on what skill the goal is targeting. Dr. Natalie Holdren, PhD, Education Specialist Credential Coordinator (ESN) at the UCSB Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, shares her suggestions on conditions for inclusive settings:

What are some other possible conditions for a goal?

• Activities or tasks such as “when given a topic,” “when provided verbal directions,” “during science,” or “when engaged in fifth-grade history/social studies”
• Materials to be used, such as “given a calculator,” “given a graphic organizer,” “provided with a phonics-based curriculum,” “given math manipulatives,” “given a speech-generating device,” or “given choices of novel games or toys”
• Other people, such as “given staff support” or “when among same-aged peers”
• Level of support, such as “when provided 1 teacher prompt” or “when given a word bank”

What did we change?

The skill! The original goal listed multiple skills, making it difficult to break down why Lucy might not meet a particular goal. Did she not use the toy appropriately, did she not take turns, or did she not demonstrate joint attention? At the end of the year, if Lucy can use the toy and/or game appropriately and take turns 100% of the time, but she is still not demonstrating joint attention, she will have made substantial progress but might not meet the goal. Not everything that the SLP is working on has to be in the goal — only what the IEP team wants to measure.

In this case, we removed “demonstrating joint attention via eye contact, gesture, or verbal/AAC comment related to the activity” from the skill, partly to simplify the goal and partly to avoid imposing unnecessary neurotypical standards of social interaction. Some children are uncomfortable making eye contact, or aren’t able to engage communicatively yet. That doesn’t mean they aren’t able to socially engage with peers. Discuss with your IEP team the need for peer education to explain that Lucy might be just as engaged without making eye contact. This may allow Lucy to develop her own method of communication with her peers. But if communication or demonstrating joint attention is something you want Lucy to specifically work on, that can be its own goal and would include multimodal forms of communicating.

We also changed the evaluation criteria in the baseline to be more specific to each skill being measured. Parents can ask for more specific information in the baseline by breaking up the data to reflect individual components of the skill. You may also ask for data measuring a different skill. If the baseline needs to be changed, or a new one is required, you may have to wait a couple of weeks for the teacher to collect the data.

What did we change?

The evaluation! In this example, the measurement “by student observation" is unclear. Who is observing the student? Or maybe the student is observing? We could switch it to “teacher-collected data,” or perhaps the teacher wants to use peer review and has a rubric asking peers to evaluate these aspects of each other’s speeches which the whole class participates in. If we are concerned that the peer evaluation might be too subjective, we can add teacher evaluation and have both sets of data. You might also ask for the rubric used by either a teacher or the peers to be attached to the IEP (and make sure it is specific to the goal being measured).

In 2004, the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) was updated to stipulate that goals must be measurable. The raw data used to measure goals is useful to the IEP team — including you, as the parent and a key member of the team. Encourage your IEP team to write goals that are specific about how the data is recorded and reported, and whose responsibility that is. You can ask for the collected data as part of your progress report.

Here are a few examples of how goals are measured:

What did we change?

The evaluation criteria! This goal listed too many measurable behaviors. What if the student gets 8 out of 10 problems correct but does not show their work or use appropriate vocabulary? We added a second goal to separate the behaviors being measured.

The accuracy in the original goal is also a concern, which we changed from 100% to 80% when we created our second goal. 100% of opportunities should be used only in safety goals. In all other areas, we should expect progress, not perfection.

Ask the teacher what criteria they will use to determine whether the child used appropriate math vocabulary, for example: looking for certain math terms. This might be evaluated using a task, test, quiz, or work sample. The goal should note the accuracy expected and the frequency, rate, duration, and level of support. This needs to be reported in the data provided with your child’s progress report. It might seem picky to focus on this now, but it will help you evaluate your child’s progress more effectively over the year.

Here are some examples of evaluation criteria:

In addition, we changed the baseline by adding more data! The original baseline does not provide data to show whether the child can do multiplication or division problems. It’s important to ask for the relevant data in the baseline.

What did we change?

The support! We added support for Samantha in the form of a visual reminder to set her up for success in achieving the goal .

Here are some examples of support:

We also shifted the evaluation criteria when it comes to accuracy and consistency to recognize her improvement over the year rather than requiring her to master the behavior over five consecutive days. For behavior goals we are looking for consistency, not necessarily perfection. If the teacher measures this behavior goal every day for five days, Samantha may have a bad week or there may be days that are especially difficult. As written to meet the goal, Samantha will have to succeed at the goal perfectly for a whole week! A goal generally indicates how skills are performed over longer time frames — usually over days, weeks, or months. You don’t want the goal met based on a fluke of a lucky day; you want it met because Samantha has truly learned how to enter the room promptly and quietly.

Here a few more examples of evaluation criteria: • ”In 4 of 5 school days” • “For 5 consecutive school days” • ”Once a week for a period of 4 weeks” • “Twice per month”

What did we change?

The support! We added support for Valerie’s visual impairment. Accommodations and supports that do not change the standard being assessed should be listed in the IEP section for accommodations. However, you may want to add them to the goal to make it clear that you expect your child will be taught how to do this skill using the support available.

Bear in mind that this means any measure of whether the goal is met should reflect that she is using the magnifier or large print, and if she finds it difficult to use those supports because they are new to her, she may not meet the goal even if she were able to identify the text in some other way. If you add “as needed,” be sure to ask for the progress to be reported indicating the use of supports.

What did we change?

The condition, skill, support, and evaluation criteria! We wrote a whole new goal for Joseph! The original goal only highlighted the skill of using a writing utensil to attain the state standard. The ability to draw basic lines and shapes is a prewriting skill, and many OTs will use a goal like this to start teaching a child to write. It’s a great skill to work on. However, for some children, the physical ability to control a pencil might not be the only thing preventing them from attaining the state standard, which in this case, is writing and expressing their opinion. Some children might never be proficient at writing with a pencil, so you can at the same time work on other ways to enable your child to express an opinion, which is what the state standard is really teaching.

It is important that IEPs are “standards-based” as explained in this article with Dr. Caitlin Solone. But it can’t just be a check box without any real connection! When a state standard is attached to an IEP goal, make sure that the goal is in fact a scaffold to that standard. Are there other ways to lift your child’s ability up to meeting that standard? In this case, we asked to write another goal in which the condition, skill, support, accuracy, and evaluation criteria better matched the state standard to encourage Joseph to express his opinion by choosing two cards to work toward this core standard. We also added more measurable data to the baseline.

It is important to question what skill is being addressed by the goal and how pivotal the skill is in opening other opportunities for the child’s learning. A skill in an IEP goal can be academic, pre-academic, and/or functional. It may be aligned with your state standards, or it may address other needs arising out of the child’s disability.

Here are a few examples of skills to work on in a goal:

As we saw in our first workshop goal, the target skill or performance indicator was very close to the actual Kindergarten standard. You don't need an IEP goal that is a grade-level CCSS standard — these are already your child’s goal. The goals do not replace the general education standards, they supplement them. Providing a visual cue as part of your assessment allows Joseph to show he can write the letters if given a little help to reach the standard. More information on creating a standards-based goal using Common Core State Standards can be found in our article on writing goals for IEPs.

Benchmarks, or short-term objectives, can be very useful in measuring progress and breaking down the steps towards the main annual goal. Not all children will have benchmarks listed in their IEP, but since they have progress measured in regular intervals, usually quarterly or three times a year, data will be provided to show how close they are to meeting their goals.

What did we change?

The support! The fading of support over the year allows us to increase the level of independence in the skill being worked on. When it comes to toilet training, we don't want to leave room for mistakes, so we need 100% accuracy. But we can increase independence by fading the prompts using short-term objectives, or benchmarks.

Benchmarks allow you to determine the expected progress and can vary in the way the team gradually moves toward the main goal. For example, instead of varying the success criteria (i.e. 4 ⁄ 5 opportunities or 70%.), you can vary the skill itself (start with tracing, then near point copying, then far point copying), or vary the level of independence by fading the number or type of prompts (physical, verbal, visual).

Reader note: some districts provide short-term objectives for all IEPS but they are only mandatory in California for students on the California Alternative Assessment.

When you’re working with your IEP team to develop your child’s goals, keep these tips in mind:

• Ask for a draft IEP before the meeting (at least draft goals).
• Pay attention to the setting for each goal.
• Pay attention to the other conditions in each goal.
• Know what the state standards are for your child’s grade level. Remember that your IEP may span two grade levels. Here are the California standards for math, reading & writing, and science.
• Determine if the goal appropriately reflects the state standard.
• Watch out for goals that require multiple behaviors to be measured and contain too many skills.
• Determine whether the baseline tells you whether the student can currently meet the goal.
• Ensure the baseline matches the goal and presents progress in the same form of measurement as the goal is written, or else meaningful progress will not be proven.
• Evaluate whether the goals are pivotal. Do the skills open up to other skills? Are they future-oriented? Do they foster independence?
• Determine whether benchmarks or short-term objectives can better help your child meet their goals.
• Ask the teacher how they will measure progress on the goal and how they will share the data with the IEP team.

For more information on goals, check out our article with expert tips about questions to ask about goals!