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Tool 30: “Will Improve Reading Skills”: Forcing a Baseline, a Number, and a Date

THE RULE

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires measurable annual goals (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(2)(i)). It requires the IEP to describe how progress toward each goal will be measured, and when you will be told about it (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(3)(i)-(ii)). And it requires the goals to be built from the needs that result from your child’s disability, so your child can be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(2)(i)(A)).

“Will improve reading skills” meets none of that. It states no starting point, no target, and no way to check. It is not a goal. It is a topic.

Three more rules make the repair possible without a fight.

The team must revise the IEP as appropriate to address any lack of expected progress toward the annual goals (34 C.F.R. § 300.324(b)(1)(ii)(A)). You do not have to wait for the annual review to raise this.

After the annual IEP meeting for the school year, you and the district may agree to amend the IEP in writing, without convening a meeting (34 C.F.R. § 300.324(a)(4)(i)). A one-sentence fix can often be made by email.

If the district refuses to change a goal you asked it to change, that is a refusal to change the provision of FAPE. It must give you prior written notice explaining the refusal, the data behind it, and what else it considered (34 C.F.R. § 300.503(a)-(b)). A refusal on paper is a usable thing.

One caution about the rewrite itself. The number you propose has to come from your child - from the evaluation, the present levels, the work samples, the progress data. Not from the diagnosis. Goals and services follow the individual need, not the label. That is the same principle the evaluation rules state when they require an evaluation comprehensive enough to identify all needs, “whether or not commonly linked to the disability category” (34 C.F.R. § 300.304(c)(6)).

WHY IT MATTERS

Here is what a vague goal costs, in order.

In September, nobody can tell the teacher what to teach toward, because the goal names no skill and no number. In January, the progress report says “making progress,” and that sentence cannot be checked. In June, the goal is marked met, or continued, and either way your child has moved however far your child happened to move. In the fall, if you ask for compensatory services, you have no number to compare against.

The number is not paperwork. The number is the only part of the goal that anyone can be held to.

There is a second cost, quieter. Services are written to enable the child to advance appropriately toward the annual goals (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(4)(i)). The IEP must also state the frequency, location, and duration of those services (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(7)).

When the goal says “improve reading skills,” 30 minutes of anything counts as service toward it. When the goal says “read a 4th-grade passage at 90 words correct per minute with 3 or fewer errors,” the room has to talk about what instruction would get a child there, and how much of it. The number changes the conversation about minutes.