Glossary · Fluency and assessment
What is an IEP reading goal?
Definition
An IEP reading goal is a measurable target in a student's Individualized Education Program, stating what reading skill will improve, by how much and by when.
A good goal names the skill, the measure, the starting point, the target and the date. For example: “By May, when given a grade 2 passage, the student will read 70 words correct per minute with 95 percent accuracy, up from 42 words correct per minute in October.”
Goals should be ambitious but reachable. Published norms and typical rates of improvement help set the number. Very low goals waste a year; impossible ones discourage everyone.
The goal is only as good as the monitoring behind it. Regular checks, graphed against an aimline, show whether the student is on track and give the team evidence for changing instruction before the year is gone.
In a lesson
A team sets a decoding goal: by the annual review, the student will read 18 of 20 silent e words correctly on two of three probes, up from 7 of 20 now.
Why does this matter for the record?
Keep the goal wording next to the progress data. When the data and the goal use the same measure, progress reports almost write themselves.
Rate each skill as you teach it
Needs support, Developing, Secure. The rating schedules the review and builds the report.