IEP Goals

Every person who receives special education services has an Individualized Education Program, or IEP. It is a concept that has been kind of burned into my mind. IEPs are written by a team which includes the special education teacher, parents, school principal, and other service providers such as the school psychologist, speech language pathologist, occupational therapist, etc. Specific goals for the student's progress are written in with the hopes that the student will reach these goals by the end of the year. These skills are typically academic, though if students with severe disabilities also have functional skills (such as dressing oneself) written in. An example of an IEP goal may look like this:

Given a sheet of paper and a writing instrument, Stetson will write his name with at least 80% accuracy over 10 trials, and maintain the skill for at least 3 weeks.

The thing with IEP goals is that they have to be observable, measurable, and... crap I can't ever remember the other one. But the point is, you can't use vague stuff. "Stetson will learn this" or "Stetson will know that" aren't good cause you can't measure if someone's actually learned or knows something. But you can measure what someone verbally states or writes or whatever.

After writing these goals over and over (as well as doing FUBA/BIPs which basically have the same kinds of goals with behavior) I seriously started to think that God probably has IEP goals for us. I think it makes sense...


Given a copy of the standard works, Scott will read his scriptures each day with at least 80% accuracy over 30 trials, and maintain the skill... for the rest of his life.

The thing is though, is that God actually can measure if we "know" or "learn" something or other abstract things like that. So His IEP goals for us don't have to be all super observable.

Scott will love other people without prompting with at least 80% accuracy over 10 trials, and maintain the skill for eternity.






Yeah. I've got a long way to go before my next IEP meeting.