Learning how to write goals and objectives for your child’s IEP is a CRITICAL skill to insure your child makes adequate yearly progress.

Does your child have LOUSY IEP goals you can’t measure?
Do your child’s IEP goals and objectives give you NO CLUE as to whether your child is “on track”?

Simply put, you need to KNOW HOW to write goals and objectives for your child’s IEP so YOU’ll KNOW whether your child is making adequate yearly progress. If your child has lousy IEP goals, then YOU will not be able to tell whether your child is making GOOD progress educationally.

And guess what? Your child’s teacher won’t be able to tell EITHER if neither of you knows how to write goals and objectives that are measurable!!

Everybody will just rock along assuming your child is making some amount of progress simply because he has an IEP in place.

Unfortunately, MANY, MANY, MANY kids fail to make adequate yearly progress year-after-year. The reach high school without usable reading or writing skills.

Why? Because no one was actually MEASURING the child’s annual educational progress.

That is why it is CRITICAL for you to know how to write goals and objectives for your child’s IEP that are measurable.

Why YOU Need to Know How to Write Goals and Objectives For An IEP

As your child’s parent, YOU are the only one who will be consistently overseeing your child’s education from one year to the next. Your child’s teachers will change, and he’ll even change schools as he grows up.

Therefore, you are the one consistent person who oversees your child’s education. YOU must be able to determine whether your child is making educational progress. How do you do that? By making sure your child has GREAT IEP goals that YOU can look at and determine if your child’s education is measuring up.

You can learn how to write goals and objectives if you complete this whole unit on writing great IEP goals. It will help you know how to write goals and objectives that enable you to determine if your child is making adequate yearly progress in his education.

Unit Objectives for How to Write Goals and Objectives for IEPs.

By the end of this unit, you will be able to:

– Accurately answer the question, “What areas of disability should IEP goals be written to address?”

– List at least 5 out of 7 primary areas of disability which IEP goals typically address.

– Construct an objective, measurable IEP goal in each of the seven primary disability categories.

– List four steps to writing an objective, measurable IEP goal or objective, and detail the measures for each step.

Goals and measurable objectives are critical for determining if your child is actually making progress in his program. The goals are the primary means of determining if a child’s needs are being appropriately met.

Many IEPs contain goals that are useless for measuring progress with standards such as “80% mastery”, but 80% of what is not defined. It is critical to know how to write goals and objectives that are both observable and measurable. One of the best means for making a goal measurable is by basing mastery upon a specific standardized test measurement or detailed data collection.

Data collection is preferred because it can be used to measure achievement across all learning environments. You can measure progress at home and at school. While a child may have mastered a skill in the limited environment of a small group or a single classroom setting, the skill is not “Mastered” until it is carried out in a variety of settings under varied circumstances.

Also, a standardized test can measure if a child meets competency levels in line with his ability. However, any day of testing can easily be affected by the child’s disposition or the teacher “support.”

Different tests can be selected to measure a specific subset of skills, but you must make sure the test actually reflects your child’s ability that you want to measure. For example, all “Reading Comprehension” tests are not created equal. Some may measure vocabulary understanding more than reading comprehension.

So, Are you ready to learn what kinds of goals should be written and how to write goals and objectives? Let’s move on…