We Don't Know How to Write IEP Goals!

Special Educators report, "We are not being trained on how to write IEP goals that align with legal requirements."

In a review of participant surveys from our professional development trainings across the nation for 8 years of data, 98% of special educators and related services providers reported they lacked training on IEP goal development that aligned with legal mandates.

From 2016-2023, Kelly Ott and Lara Wakefield presented professional development trainings in a variety of formats to special education staff such as: webinars, live trainings, 1-1 trainings, and written coursework. The focus of these trainings was to show participants how to write IEP goals using a an easy-to-remember acronym that prompted them to include the 13 federal mandates in goal development. These trainings reached staff in every state of the United States. A total of 6,050 surveys were reviewed and 5,929 participants stated they had never received any type of training on how to develop IEP goals so that they were aligned with the 13 federal mandates of IDEA.

Further analysis of the data indicated that participants stated the following concerns with drafting IEP goals:

1. We don't know how to set up an easy way to measure goals that is meaningful to student, parents, and other team members.
2. We struggle with creating specific, discrete skills to prioritize and measure.
3. We lack training on how to have a structured format that prompts on each step of how to develop the goal.

Participants stated that the Prioritization Worksheet and the Annotated IEP Template from Smarter Steps were their most preferred strategies of the Smarter Steps Consultation Tools.

by Lara Wakefield, PhD, CCC-SLP