Good Goals / Objectives Are Special Education’s “Keys to the Kingdom”

BY DORENE J. PHILPOT, ATTORNEY AT LAW

DORENE PHILPOT is a private practice attorney licensed in Michigan, Indiana and Texas. She devotes her 25-year+ practice entirely to representing special needs children and their parents under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. She is the recipient of a national award for her advocacy work for students, i.e. the 2012 Diane Lipton Award for Outstanding Educational Advocacy from COPAA (Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates).

She is the author of “Do-It-Yourself Special Education Due Process: An Educational Guide” which is available at www.learningenabledpublications.com.

She is a member of Mensa. She gives presentations to parent groups and other organizations on a regular basis about special education law rights of children. Before becoming a lawyer, Dorene was a journalist for 13 years, most recently serving as an editor at The Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis News. Before that, she worked as an editor at other newspapers and magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post.

AS AN ATTORNEY who has represented families in special education matters for more than 25 years, I assert that including robust goals and objectives in your child’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is the single most important step in having an IEP that will best serve your child’s needs now and in the future.

The “IDEA requires an IEP to confer a meaningful educational benefit gauged in relation to the potential of the child at issue... the intent of Congress appears to have been to require a program providing a meaningful educational benefit towards the goal of self-sufficiency, especially where self-sufficiency is a realistic goal for a particular child.” Deal v. Hamilton Department of Education, 392 F.3d 840, 862, 864 (6th Cir. 2004)

The Supreme Court has called the IEP “the centerpiece of the statute’s education delivery system for disabled children.” Endrew F v. Douglas Cnty. Sch. Dist. RE-1, 580 U.S. 386, 390-91 (2017) [1]

And the centerpiece of the IEP is the section that contains the child’s goals and objectives.

First, let’s look at what are the required elements of goals and objectives: 1. They must contain “present levels.” This means they must state the level at which the child is currently performing on a particular skill.[2] Why do we need to know what the current skill level is? Because without knowing that, we won’t know later whether the child has regressed, remained at the same level on skill, or made progress on that skill. It’s analogous to joining Weight Watchers, where you are asked to weigh in when you start and at intervals going forward. If you didn’t, how do you really know where you started or how much weight you had lost? Present levels can be ascertained via formal and informal evaluations, observations, and trials as to the skills in question.

They must state annual and shortterm expectations: They must cite what the expectation is in terms of progress expected to be made on a yearly basis and at intervals throughout the school year. The child will need a specific, articulated goal to shoot for. What specific skill do we want the child to be able to perform after working on the goal and/or objective for the stated amount of time?

They must be measurable [3] It must be articulated in a manner that makes it possible for us to measure if the child has lost ground on the skill, stayed the same, or advanced in the skill in question. In order to know the answer to this, we need to be able to challenge the student on the skill and see how he performs on it. This tells us the answer to whether he has made progress or not. For example, “Johnny will read better” doesn’t really tell us what specifically we are working toward or how we will know when the goal has been achieved. One test for deciding whether an IEP goal is objective and measurable is that a well-written goal should pass the “stranger test,” i.e. a person unfamiliar with the IEP could implement the goal and implement the assessment of the student’s progress on the goal.[4]

They must state annual and shortterm expectations: They must cite what the expectation is in terms of progress expected to be made on a yearly basis and at intervals throughout the school year. The child will need a specific, articulated goal to shoot for. What specific skill do we want the child to be able to perform after working on the goal and/or objective for the stated amount of time?

They must be written in all areas of need and deficit. If the child has dyslexia or another specific learning disability in reading, a parent should expect to see goals and objectives that work on teaching the child the skills associated with learning to read or learning to be a better reader. If the dyslexic child has no reading goals, but instead has goals and objectives that pertain to other areas, such as organizational skills, the IEP needs to be revised to include specific goals and objectives in reading (plus any other areas of need). How do we decide what all the areas of need are? Sources of information about the child’s deficit areas can be gleaned from the child’s evaluations, prior IEPs, notes sent home from the classroom teacher, emails from school staff, discipline referrals, and things the parents have noticed at home and in the community. Sometimes, students have a personal services plan in the IEP, but almost never are there goals and objectives written to address the specific deficit areas listed in the personal services plan part of the IEP. If the child needs personal services, then all of those deficit areas listed, of course, need to be worked on at school through the child’s IEP. When I say all areas of deficit, I really mean all areas of deficit. Good goals and objectives are not just for academics. If your child is not toileting appropriately, there needs to be goals and objectives in the IEP to teach your child how to toilet appropriately, for example. If your child has trouble remembering to turn in completed work, that skill needs to be worked on with goals and objectives.[5] Skills that the child hasn’t picked up on his or her own need to be directly taught through goals and objectives.

5. They must be written before the rest of the IEP. In a well-written IEP, the goals and objectives are written

FIRST. Why? This is because the rest of the child’s IEP should be built around these appropriate goals and objectives. For example, no decisions about the rest of the child’s services can properly be made without first establishing what, exactly, we are working toward in the goals and objectives.

Likewise, no decisions about placement can be properly made without first establishing what, exactly, we are working toward in the goals and objectives. The goals and objectives are devised, and then the team asks, “Now that we have decided what we’re going to be working on, what is the Least Restrictive Environment in which these goals and objectives can be worked on?”

So, if your school district is in your IEP team meeting and trying to decide what services will be in the IEP, or what placement your child will be in, prior to writing the goals and objectives, they are doing it backwards.

My child mastered a goal: Now what? What happens once a child masters a goal in an IEP? The IEP team should reconvene and write another goal for the child to work on. You do not have to wait until the annual IEP team meeting to do this. New IEPs can be written several times during the school year, and they should be if the child is mastering goals. That is great news. Now let’s work on some other goals to help the child perform at the same level as peers, or as closely as the child possibly can.

My child has not made progress on the goal: Now what?

Perhaps the goal was poorly written, or maybe something in the way the goals and objectives are being delivered needs to be adjusted. Do the staff working with your child fully understand how to implement the goals and measure progress? Are the services intensive enough? Do staff members need additional in-service training to better understand the services or your child’s needs? These are the kinds of questions that should be discussed in the IEP team meeting to identify what is happening and determine how to address it.

A final word

Keep in mind that the express purpose of federal education law is “to ensure that all children with disabilities have available to them a free appropriate public education that emphasizes special education and related services designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living.”

20 U.S.C. § 1400(d)(1)(A). You may need to remind your IEP team of this from time to time.

Do everything you can to make sure your child’s IEP goals and objectives are written with that purpose in mind. They should prepare your child for further education, employment and independent living. Your child deserves the opportunity not only to work toward those outcomes but also to achieve them.

[1] The IEP is a written plan, which must include “a statement (1) of the present levels of educational performance of the child, (2) of the annual goals, including short-term instructional objectives, (3) specific educational services to be provided, (4) projected date for initiation and anticipated duration of services, and (5) evaluation procedures. Buser ex rel. Buser v. Corpus Christi Indep. Sch., 51 F.3d 490, 493 (5th Cir. 1995) (citing 20 U.S.C. § 1401(a)(20)).

[2] Goals and objectives must be based on present levels of performance and must state annual and short-term expectations. 34 C.F.R. §300.320.

[3] 34 C.F.R. §300.320.

[4] Mason City Cmty. Sch. Dist., 46 IDELR 148 (SEA IA 2006).

[5] Educational performance is not limited to academics, but also encompasses behavioral and social skills progress, for example. Venus Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Daniel S., 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 624 (N.D. Tex. 2002). “Behavioral modifications, for instance, immediately come to mind as an example of an IEP strategy that may remediate a disability while also being necessary to confer educational benefits.” Klein Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Hovem, 690 F. 3d 390 (5th Cir. 2012.)