Annual Yearly Progress Monitoring on your child’s IEP is CRITICAL if you and school personnel are going to know if your child is making adequate annual yearly progress.

Annual Yearly Progress : IEP Progress Monitoring Tutorial Section Objectives

By the end of this lesson about annual yearly progress, you will know:

– What types of data can be used for objective IEP Progress Monitoring.

– Why Annual Yearly Progress measurements must be objective.

– The main purpose of objective goals for IEP Progress monitoring.

– How to identify good annual yearly progress measures and poorly written IEP progress measures.

Objective measures of annual yearly progress can mean the difference between you being able to determine if your child has actually progressed, or not.

If your child has objective IEP Progress measures, anyone — at any time — can determine if your child is on target for meeting his goals.

Some school districts, like ours, routinely use goals that are vague and unmeasurable. When your chld’s annual yearly progress comes under scrutiny, measures which are not data-driven can lead to debates over IEP progress. Schools will say progress is being made, but the parents are pretty certain there is no progress. Without DATA, you can’t prove your child isn’t making annual yearly progress.

IEP Progress Monitoring : How Debates Happen Over Annual Yearly Progress

Here’s a situation similar to one we’ve encountered. Please consider this scenario:

J.C.’s goal specifies: “J.C. will read fluently and will increase reading speed by 70%.”

At first glance, it looks like a decent goal for IEP progress monitoring. Many children have annual yearly progress goals just like this.

Is the 70% adequate as a data measure? 70% of what? What is the starting point?

When the time for IEP progress monitoring and review rolls around, you know your child still reads laboriously, slowly, and with no fluency whatsoever.

The school says, “J.C. is doing wonderfully and has met this goal.”

You are perplexed and say it’s not possible.

The school explains that each time J.C. rereads a text three or more times, he is very fluent and this is a great improvement over last year!

This is not at all what you expected for your child’s annual yearly progress. Issues of debate over what kind of IEP progress was SUPPOSED to occur DOES happen, especially when goals are not SPECIFIC and measurable. It is essential that your child’s IEP progress measurements are objective.

Are standardized tests an objective measure of annual yearly progress?

They can be. At the very least, you’ll want to track and compare your child’s standardized test scores from each school year to the next. By comparing results over time, you can figure out if your child is making ACTUAL annual yearly progress.

To learn more about HOW to write measurable goals, and the requirement that your child makes ADEQUATE Yearly Progress, use the Forward button below to learn about this critical aspect of your child’s IEP progress monitoring.

As a side note, you might find it interesting to read about NCLB’s modified standards for annual yearly progress for students with disabilities.