IEPs must include measurable academic and functional annual goals (IDEA §300.320). These goals serve two purposes, both of which are responses to disability-related challenges students face. The first purpose is to enable students to access and make progress in the general education curriculum. The second is to address students’ other educational needs, including functional skill development that promotes academic achievement and preparation for independent, productive adult lives. Annual goals are not restatements of expectations, standards, or curriculum. Rather, they are statements that target important skill clusters that enable the student to achieve grade-level academic standards and develop functional skills.
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) website at http://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/index.shtml provides the standards, skill clusters, and essential skills and knowledge for all academic courses taught in Virginia’s public schools. Virginia does not have a functional skills curriculum; however, the document entitled Workplace Readiness Skills for the Commonwealth (http://www.cteresource.org/attachments/atb/WRSRepositoryFiles/WRSList.pdf) includes many functional competencies.
Useful PLoPs (Present Levels of Performance) summarize baseline data that relate to academic and functional demands students will encounter during the IEP cycle. Annual goals target difficulties for which students will require special education services in order to meet the demands. To determine the focus of annual goals, educators must first review the baseline data that identify skill cluster difficulties most likely to impede the student’s future achievement and performance. They must also come up with answers to the following questions:
The following example illustrates the process of using these questions to determine the focus of one student’s, Grady’s, IEP annual goals.
(Grady is a sixth-grade student who has an autism spectrum disorder.)
Baseline data indicate that Grady can make inferences when he reads nonfiction material, especially when he is asked to identify cause-effect relationships (SOL 5.6h). When he reads works of fiction, Grady has difficulty making inferences from figurative language, especially in the component skills of identifying, comprehending, and using similes, metaphors, clichés, and idioms (SOL 5.5i); neither does he incorporate these literary devices into his writing. Grady can identify and state attributes of a character that an author explicitly describes in a work of fiction, but he has difficulty inferring character traits (SOL 5.5i). He also struggles to infer cause-and-effect relationships in works of fiction (SOL 5.5j), specifically when he is asked to predict or explain the logical consequences of a character’s words or actions.
His difficulty in comprehending cause-and-effect relationships impacts Grady’s interpersonal relationships as well. While Grady interacts with classmates during small or cooperative learning group activities, he often does not comprehend the cause-and-effect relationship between his adaptive behaviors and the manner in which others respond to them. For example, he has difficulty accepting ideas and suggestions offered by others during brainstorming activities, he makes it difficult for groups to reach consensus when potential decisions do not mirror his ideas, and it is hard for him to share with others the responsibility for completing group assignments (English Standards of Learning Student Performance by Question report, June, 2012; reading portfolio, September, 2011-June, 2012; paraprofessional observation reports of cooperative learning group activities, December-April 2012).
Question 1: Does Grady have a documented history of difficulty acquiring inferential comprehension cluster skills due to his disability?
Question 2: Will these cluster skills be taught or retaught in classes Grady will take or through experiences he is provided during the IEP cycle?
Question 3: If YES, will the instruction provided to all students adequately address this particular student’s difficulties?
Question 4: If the answer to Question 3 is NO, will these difficulties significantly limit Grady’s ability to achieve grade-level academic standards and/or master functional skills that support success in his learning, living, and working environments?
Since the answer to Question 4 is YES, the IEP team should write annual goals to address these challenges.
Short-term objectives address subskills needed to close the gap between students’ present levels of academic achievement and functional performance and the annual goals the IEP team has written for the IEP cycle (Gleckel & Koretz, 2008). Objectives describe in sequential order the essential skills and knowledge students must acquire, but they are not restatements of the general education curriculum. Rather, they illustrate the individualized instructional plans students will receive to address their disability-related challenges in ways that will lead them toward accomplishing those grade-level academic standards and performance expectations. Although IDEA requires short-term objectives only for students who participate in an alternate curriculum, all students with disabilities benefit from having short-term objectives.
Annual goals describe in broad (skill cluster) terms the individualized curriculum students require (Price & Nelson, 2007) and the expected results of the special education and related services students are to receive during the IEP cycle. Short-term objectives identify the essential prerequisite knowledge, skills, or behaviors that students must acquire in order to achieve their annual goals. Both annual goals and short-term objectives include the following components:
The following examples of annual goals and short-term objectives illustrate these components.