The Special EDge
Autumn 2009
Volume 23, Number 1 Insert
Infusing IEPs with Content
By Meredith Cathcart, MS, Special Education Consultant, California Department
of Education, Special Education Division;
Sharen Bertando, MA, Special Education Resources Development Specialist, California
Comprehensive Center at WestEd; and
Silvia L. DeRuvo, MA, Special Education Resources Development Specialist, California
Comprehensive Center at WestEd
Overview
Since the passage of the first special education law in the 1970s, special
and general education teachers have worked to meet the challenge of providing
equal access to the general education curriculum for all students, with and
without disabilities. Access is especially critical in helping students with
disabilities close the achievement gap and succeed in school. Almost 30 years
of research and experience have demonstrated that two efforts—holding high
expectations for these students and ensuring them access to the general education
curriculum in the general education classroom, to the maximum extent possible—go
far toward helping them meet the developmental goals that have been established
for all children.
According to Larry Gloeckler, Executive Director of the Special Education
Institute at the International Center for Leadership in Education, “The vast
majority of students identified as needing special education—about 80–85 percent—are
in categories that by definition involve at least average intellectual capability.
Given this population, there appears to be no reason why academic performance
is so low, other than the low expectations that prevail in the systems that
serve them, the limited opportunities provided to them to be challenged, and
the strategies that have been used to meet their educational needs.” While
the legal obligation to focus on improved performance for these students is
persuasive, Gloeckler notes, the world of work provides an equally strong reason
for doing so: “In fact, the average income for an adult identified as Learning
Disabled is $20,000/year; less than 5% of individuals with disabilities own
their own home; and the unemployment rate is 60% compared to 6% overall.”1
And Michael Hock, Program Associate at the Northeast Regional Resource Center,
writes, “Doesn’t it make sense to design IEPs [Individualized Education Programs]
that help students meet standards so they can do their best on standards-based
assessments, pass from grade to grade and eventually graduate, and in the process
help prove that their schools and teachers were indeed accountable?”2 There
is no reason why students with disabilities should not be given the same opportunities
to learn—and be supported in learning—the same general education content as
their chronological peers. The legal and moral mandates for helping struggling
students in the short term (to do well on tests) and in the long term (to advance
in their education so that they become employable and self-supporting) have
led teachers and administrators to link IEP goals for these students to the
state’s content standards and thus promote access to the general education
curriculum.
The IEP team has a serious responsibility to take into account exactly how
a child will access and make progress in the general education curriculum when
developing the student’s educational plan. A well-designed IEP ensures access,
helps a student make progress, sets high standards, and measures student outcomes;
it defines and documents how students with disabilities will participate and
progress in the general education curriculum, and it describes exactly how
they will participate in statewide assessments. Specifically, linking standards
to the IEP accomplishes the following:
- Aligns IEPs to grade-level standards
- Gives students with disabilities access to standards-based curriculum and
to grade-level subject matter and skills
- Focuses instruction to meet challenging (grade-level) goals
- Involves collaboration between general and special education teachers
A carefully thought-out IEP will ensure students’ appropriate access to
school curriculum and to participation and progress in the California content
standards and in the general education curriculum. This practice unquestionably
improves student outcomes. It helps close the achievement gap for students
with disabilities. And it helps them move into their future as adults with
improved possibilities and greater promise.
The following three pages are designed to give teachers and parents a clear
overview of how standards-based goals and objectives are written for the IEPs
of students with disabilities. A flow-chart is followed by specific examples
of goals and objectives written for students at the elementary, middle, and
high school levels.
- In Improving Performance for Special Education Students, 2005; available
at www.leadered.com/pdf/Improving%20Spec%20Ed%20excerpt.pdf.
- In “Ten Reasons Why We Should Use Standards in IEPs,” 2000; available at www.k8accesscenter.org/documents/iep/MichaelHockArticle.pdf.
Steps for Developing Standards-Based Goals
This flow-chart demonstrates the process for writing grade-level, standards-based
goals. All goals are based on a student’s present levels of performance, as
seen in student assessments and data. The standards that will have the greatest
academic impact are selected for the IEP goals. Those standards are broken
down into sub-skills for goal development and then analyzed to determine which sub-skills will accelerate student progress in
meeting grade-level standards.
- Use present level of performance.
Use multiple measures to determine the student’s present levels of performance.
Identify areas that will have the greatest academic impact, based on the
data.
- Choose a grade-level standard.
Identify the grade-level standard that will accelerate the student’s progress to grade-level skill.
- Unpack the standard.
Unpack the grade-level standard by breaking it into sub-skills.
- Analyze the
sub-skills.
Based on the student’s needs and strengths, identify which sub-skills will have the greatest academic impact for helping the student meet grade-level standards.
- Develop an IDEA-compliant goal that
includes:
- When? A reporting date
- Given what? Specified conditions
- Who? Identified student
- Does what? Observable behavior
- How much and how often? Criteria/mastery
- How measured? Methods of measurement
- Write the short-term objectives/benchmarks.
Address prerequisite skills by writing short-term objectives/
benchmarks that scaffold the skills necessary to master the
grade-level goal.
- Monitor the goal.
At regular reporting periods, monitor and report progress on goals and short-term objectives/benchmarks.
Developing Goals: What It Looks Like
Elementary Student: Jane
- Use present level of performance: Jane has been receiving special education
services since kindergarten, when she was identified as an individual on
the autism spectrum. She is currently in fourth grade and demonstrates deficits
in auditory processing, which has been affecting her reading comprehension
and written-language skills. On the Diagnostic Online Reading Assessment
(DORA), she scored at the second-grade level for reading comprehension, with
weaknesses in both literal and inferential questions, while scoring at the
fourth-grade level on the decoding subtests. On the district’s third-grade
writing assessments last year, she scored 1, 2, and 1 on a 4-point rubric
for content. Jane is a native English speaker and receives speech- and language-related
services.
The Data: Assessment data show that concentrating on Reading Comprehension
and Writing
Strategies, with an emphasis on organization and
focus, would do the most to accelerate Jane to grade-level ability. The grade-level,
standards-aligned curriculum will address all other areas
of her academic weakness.
- Choose the standard: Jane’s teacher examines the California English
Language Arts Standards for Reading Comprehension and Writing Strategies
and identifies the standard that will accelerate Jane’s learning toward grade-level
skills. The teacher selected the following standard:Reading Comprehension:
Structural Features of Informational Materials: 4.2.1. “Identify structural
patterns found in informational text (e.g., compare and contrast, cause and
effect, sequential or chronological order, proposition and support) to strengthen
comprehension.”
- Unpack the standard:
- Identify compare-and-contrast patterns.
- Identify cause-and-effect patterns.
- Identify a story sequence or chronological order pattern.
- Identify the author’s proposition.
- Identify statements that support a proposition.
- Analyze and identify
sub-skills based on Jane’s needs and strengths:
- Completes a graphic organizer using a compare-and-contrast pattern
- Completes a cause-and-effect graphic organizer
- Completes a story sequence graphic organizer
- Lists the statements that support the proposition
- Explains an author’s proposition orally or in writing
- Develop the goal: “By October 8, 2010, when given grade-level passages,
Jane will list statements that
support the author’s proposition with a minimum of
six correct statements from each text passage on regularly scheduled, curriculum-based
reading comprehension assessments.”
6. Write the short-term objectives/benchmarks: “By January 15, 2010, when given grade-level passages, Jane will identify the
author’s proposition from the text correctly in four out of five attempts,
as measured by classroom discussion, daily reading journal entries, and work
samples.”
“By June 8, 2010, when given grade-level passages, Jane will identify and
highlight statements within a text that support the author’s proposition, with
a minimum of four correct statements for each text passage during daily reading
assignments.”
- Monitor the goal: At regular reporting periods, monitor and report
progress on goals and short-term objectives and benchmarks.
Components of an IEP-Compliant Goal
When? By October 8, 2010,
Given what? given grade-level passages,
Who? Jane
Does what? will list statements from the text that support the author’s proposition
How much? with a minimum of six correct statements from each text passage
How often? on regularly scheduled
How measured? curriculum-based reading comprehension assessments.
Middle-School Student: Davey
1. Use Present Level of Performance.
Davey has a specific learning disability that impacts his performance in math.
He is a seventh-grade student who has been receiving special education services
since fourth grade. On the Diagnostic Online Math Assessment (DOMA), Davey
had partial mastery of eight of the fourteen pre-algebra skills assessed.
He showed mastery or partial mastery of the following: integer operations,
estimating and rounding, ratios and proportions, interpreting data, simple
probability, simple geometry, and linear functions and number patterns. These
strengths show that Davey has a fairly strong conceptual knowledge of math
constructs, but he struggles with functional math, such as fraction and decimal
operations, including converting and comparing, evaluating exponents, and
simplifying expressions. Davey is an English language learner at a CELDT1
level 3.
The Data: A focus on the goal of Algebra and Functions would have the greatest
academic impact on accelerating Davey to grade-level skill. This focus requires
a concentration on equations, as this skill incorporates the functional math
skills that Davey will need to continue to develop his mathematical
competency. The grade-level, standards-aligned curriculum will address all other areas of weakness.
2. Choose the Standard: Algebra and Functions.
7.1.0 Students express quantitative relationships by using algebraic terminology,
expressions, equations, inequalities, and graphs:
7.1.2 Use the correct order of operations to evaluate algebraic expressions,
such as 3(2x + 5)2.
3. Unpack the Standard.
- Identify the order of operations
- Evaluate algebraic expressions involving +
- Evaluate algebraic expressions involving –
- Evaluate algebraic expressions involving x
- Evaluate algebraic expressions involving /
- Evaluate algebraic expressions involving parenthesis
- Evaluate algebraic expressions involving exponents
- Analyze the Sub-Skills.
Analyze and identify sub-skills, based on Davey’s needs and strengths.
- Develop
the Goal.
“By October 8, 2010, when given a calculator, Davey will solve algebraic
expressions involving +, -, x, /, parenthesis, and exponents with 70-percent
accuracy in six out of eight common assessments.”
- Write the Short-term Objective/Benchmarks.
“By January 15, 2010, when given a calculator, an order of operations chart,
and a mnemonic, Davey will correctly solve expressions involving parenthesis,
x, and / with 70-percent accuracy on weekly, curriculum-based measures.”
“By
June 8, 2010, when given an order of operations chart and a calculator,
Davey will correctly solve expressions involving +, -, x, /, and parenthesis
with 70-percent accuracy on weekly, curriculum-based measures.”
- Monitor the
Goal.
Tenth-Grade Student: Evelyn
- Use Present Level of Performance.
Evelyn is a tenth-grade student who has been receiving special education services
since fifth grade. She has specific learning disabilities that have impacted
her decoding and reading comprehension skills, as well as her skills in written
expression. On the DORA she scored at the mid third-grade level for decoding
and near the fourth-grade level for comprehension. She has been receiving
intensive reading intervention services for the past two years. She has gained
three years of growth in reading since that time. However, she struggles
with understanding content in her reading and benefits from audio text to
support her comprehension of grade-level materials.
The Data: A concentration on Reading Comprehension, especially informational
material, would have the greatest impact to accelerate Evelyn to grade-level
skill, since her core content classes focus on informational text. Her intervention
reading program and the grade-level, standards-aligned curriculum of the
core content will address all other areas of weakness, including her decoding
difficulties.
- Choose the Standard: Reading Comprehension.
10.2.0 Reading Comprehension
10.2.6 Demonstrate the use of sophisticated learning tools by following technical
directions (e.g., those found with graphic calculators and specialized software
programs and in access guides to World Wide Web sites on the Internet).
- Unpack the Standard.
- Follow technical directions for electronic devices
- Follow technical directions for software programs
- Follow directions on World Wide Web sites
- Access technical directions via the World Wide Web
- Effectively use sophisticated learning tools
- Effectively use electronic
devices
- Effectively use specialized software
- Analyze the Sub-Skills.
Analyze and identify sub-skills based on Evelyn’s needs and strengths.
- Develop
the Goal.
“By October 8, 2010, given text-to-speech software, Evelyn will use sophisticated
tools to annotate Web-based and electronic text to improve reading comprehension
of core content curriculum, as evidenced by obtaining a grade of ‘C’ or better
in content-area classes on quarterly progress reports.”
- Write Short-term Objectives/Benchmarks.
“By January 15, 2010, given text-to-speech software, Evelyn will navigate
and operate the software applied to Internet-based and electronic text, as
evidenced by demonstrating step-by step
procedures independently on daily classroom reading assignments.”
“By June
8, 2010, given text-to-speech software and access to the Internet, Evelyn
will access technical directions and other information pertinent to her core
content classes, as evidenced by obtaining a grade of ‘C’ or better in her
content area classes on quarterly progress reports.”
- Monitor the Goal.
1. California English Language Development Test