I had a fellow LD parent come to my home this week to go over her daughters IEP. There were questions regarding the accomodations and aid section that she just didn’t understand. We worked through it.
I was reading her daughter’s goals, when I noticed they sounded very familiar. They were word for word the same as my son’s in his IEP. I continued to read her goals and found that another students name was in the IEP. So, that makes at least three different students with the same goals. :?
I have contacted the principal with my concerns that these are individual IEP’s if the goals are the same word for word.
My question is this common practice? What do you as a ld community feel about this. I think for the most part I am still in shock. :shock:
IEP objectives
Where I teach we are required to use the state curriculum objectives for our IEP objectives. These are the objectives tested on our state tests. I imagine that if we compared IEP’s many of the objectives would be the same for many different students. If I have 5 students who have 4th grade level reading goals then they will have the same objectives. There may be some differences in the section that deals with how they are assessed or the percent of accuracy. I think when we are talking about LD kids accessing the regular ed curriculum then you will see IEPs that are very similar.
Re: 3 ld students with same goals word for word
Yes, it does happen, and I’ll support the practice to a degree, partially because of state curriculum requirements, and partially because there are a certain heirarchy of skills that I teach to students in essentially the same order. My instructional delivery does change, based upon the student’s learning style, however, but I was never able to figure out how to quantify the way in which material was presented, only the way in which learning was measured. Since G & Os on IEPs are outcome-based, there is justification for very similar, or identical goals for students at the same level.
What I did find upsetting, however, was when I received IEPs from other schools and realized that the goals that I had written a few years ago were being mindlessly (and inappropriately) copied in boilerplate fashion. As the school system I used to work for is now using computer-generated IEPs with a standardized bank of goals, I doubt that this practice has diminished.
Karyn
Re: 3 ld students with same goals word for word
Our IEPs (middle school) were extremely similar too — I made a point of putting *something* individual in the goals if only to better communicate reading and writing levels, but academically, we were working on exaclty the same things in the content areas.
What was Orwellian was when an admin noticed the similarities and declared that in order to make sure the IEPs were “individual,” we needed to handwrite those identical goals, and spend more time less efficiently with something inadequate rather than address the real issue.
At the very individualized private school where I taught, many of the goals and objectives were exactly the same since we did go through the same sequence; it was the other parts of the IEP that included an intricate individual analysis of that student’s learning strengths and the specific skills that had proven difficult (and patterns inferred from that). Learning the sounds of the syllables though, is pretty universal.
Re: 3 ld students with same goals word for word
More importantly than the actual goals/objectives are the PLEPS or the present level of educational performance. Your child’s teacher needs to have this accurate, up-to-date data in order to even write appropriate goals. I don’t feel it is that big of an issue that the goals are duplicated, just as long as the child’s needs are being addressed. For example, in my reading class, I have several students who have very similar PLEPS and are at the same level of reading, so their goals are also similar.
Same here....
Many of my IEP’s have identical goals. :( In defense, I have three students who are working on reading at the approximate same level. I use the same Reading Mastery program and because of the number of children I work with, cannot have three different reading groups. They are close to having the same needs and therefore end up with the same goals….. This is just an example, it happens with every child who will ultimately be ‘grouped’ with another child. The differences are in the PLOP/PLEP. This is the fine tuning if one child has a specific need. However, sadly, I do not have time to fine-tune the PLOP as often as I would like. I ask for input from the general ed staff, but they seldom are not able to identify specific needs.
I went to our DPI a couple years ago and argued that by putting STANDARDIZED goals on IEP’s they could no longer be called individualized. I won my argument (actually they agreed with me 100% but they had to convince our administration). So, I do not put state standards into my IEP’s.
goals on iep
I work in a district where we can chose goals from a bank because we do our IEP’s on the computer. We have been instructed to individualize each goal after we have selected it. I often find that some of my students who have similar needs do have the same goal, especially when it comes to reading decoding. I would worry about another student’s name appearing on the IEP though.
Michele
Unfortunately, I think it’s very common. The ieps I have in my desk basically have the student’s name on them and then have a checklist of accommodations. The CST just checks off what accommodations that child will need—does not write a whole new thing for each one. I have heard of one case in our district where the wrong name is on the iep on one page but not the other. It was clear they just changed the name for the other student. I do think this is negligent and as a parent I would find it very upsetting.