By Sheila Wolfe IEP Services
THE ABCs OF IEPs Progress It is the end of the first semester. What should parents be thinking about at this stage of the school year? PROGRESS. If you have not already done so, it is critical that you review all available data to determine if “meaningful progress” (as we discussed in last month’s issue) is being made on each IEP goal. Depending on the type of goal (academic, social, behavioral, etc.), the data should look different but should still be objective and appropriate for that specific goal. If the school has not provided
Do you need help getting your child with special needs the services they NEED and DESERVE at school? Professional Parent Advocate with 20 Years Experience Specializing in Developing IEPs that WORK Experienced in All Disability Categories Autism Expert Helping families receive a meaningful education for their children in public schools
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18 Special Needs Living • December 2021
the raw data that was used to generate each progress monitoring report from the first semester, ask your teacher of record to send it to you now. Progress reports that provide only one data point are not appropriate or meaningful. Obviously, if a student’s progress is being measured across a nine-week period (which is typical), and the school only collected data once, we are only seeing a snapshot of the student’s performance on one day at one point in time. To appropriately report on progress, data needs to be collected on numerous occasions during each nine-week period. By graphing that data across time, we get a more accurate picture of the student’s performance. Graphing data is important for many reasons. First, it can provide a “trendline” indicating the rate of student progress across time. The steeper the slope of the trendline, the more dramatic or quicker the student’s progress. The flatter the trendline, the slower the progress. Worst of all, a downward sloping trendline indicates regression, or a loss of skills over time. For information on how to graph data and insert a trendline using Excel, please visit: https://youtu.be/L9wW3vdRkg4 Secondly, graphing all data collected allows us to eliminate any outliers in the data. For example, perhaps the school collected data on reading fluency on a day the student did not feel well or was extremely tired. If we have 15 data points that range from 80-100 and one data point that is 25, we can safely assume that the 25 was a result of a “bad” testing day and not a valid measure of the student’s ability overall. Be sure to eliminate any outlier data points from the graph before adding a trendline. Be careful when evaluating what data is “good” and what data is “bad” or an outlier. Data that is scattered over the collection period and shows no grouping or growth pattern may be a sign that the data collection method is flawed. Perhaps different people are testing the student using different instructions or prompts which may influence student performance. There are many reasons why data may look scattered and meaningless … including a student who performs very differently from day to day depending on attention, mood, relationship with the tester, etc. It is critical to evaluate and identify why data is not showing a pattern over time to correct any testing error that may be occurring. This is usually done through direct observation of the testing by an independent person to try and determine why there is so much variation in test results. By accurately graphing valid data and evaluating the resulting trendline, a parent should be able to tell if it is likely for the student to achieve the goal by the end of the IEP period. If it is not likely, the parent should schedule a case conference for the beginning of the second semester to make necessary changes to the IEP so that progress can be improved, and the goal met. This may include increasing the time spent on the skill, changing the methodology being used to teach the skill, increasing the intensity of the instruction (1:1 instead of small group), or some other means as determined by the case conference. However,
