IEP Vocabulary..What Does It really Mean?

Today all the IEP Vocabulary is based on Your child's IEP Goals. These are the terms that will be on each goal presented in an IEP Meeting. They sound good when you hear them. I often have parents say I didn't understand what the school was sharing. Today, let's take some time to talk about each part of the goal page and what all the terminology means.

Common Core Standard : The Common Core State Standards Initiative is an educational initiative in the United States that what K-12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade.

Grade Level Benchmark benchmarks provide a learning target for a span of grades, such as grades 3-5. The Core Content Benchmarks are aligned with the Core Content Standards.

District Standards and Benchmarks are written by the local school district. They will align with the state common core standards in literacy and math and literacy.

Baseline- A description of "present levels of performance" is part of the required content for an IEP document. However, defining what that means in a practical sense can be difficult.

"Baseline data" is a way of referring to the where the child is performing on a specific skill currently before IEP goals are developed. It is a "starting place" based (hopefully) with concrete, understandable information. The purpose of including the baseline is to help the IEP team write clear, measureable goals that produce results. it is always a good idea to ask where the baseline data came from.

Progress Monitoring is the same thing as data collection. It is usually done weekly on all IEP goals. It is collecting data from assessments (much like tests in general education) to see if the child is making progress toward IEP goals.

Progress monitoring Procedures are the outline of how the progress monitoring will occur. Questions need to be answered in this area of

• How will data be collected?
• When will data be collected?
• What is the method of data collection?
• What is the standard to measure progress monitoring?

This section is very important because if it is not well written the data is meaningless. Are the things being measured the correct things to see if there is progress toward the goal? What is the decision procedure to determine if the goal is met? This sounds picky but not positive will occur if you can't trust the data being collected.

Measurable Annual Goal is a statement in the IEP that projects what knowledge, skills or behavior is expected to be attained by the time of the next review scheduled. This is time goes from the IEP meeting until the next one that is typically expected. This is normally a calendar year.

Next week we will look at ways for parents to assess if proposed goals well written and how to propose better goals.

 

 

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