Writing Standards-Aligned Measurable Annual Goals for Secondary IEPs

Speaking: Michael Stoehr, Rosemary Nilles

October 9, 2012

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Goals of this Session

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SAS and IEP: Content

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Standards-Aligned IEPs

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Standards-Aligned MAGs

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MAG Examples

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Three Key Concepts

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ROSEMARY NILLES: Good morning and welcome to today's webinar, Writing Standards Aligned, Measurable Goals for Secondary IEPs. My name is Rosemary Nilles, and my colleague and co-presenter today is

Michael Stoehr. We are both educational consultants from PaTTAN Pittsburgh. We both serve as statewide leads for the secondary transition initiative. Many of you know us from this role, as we have led

the Indicator 13 trainings across the state, along with webinars, video conferences, and live trainings. As a reminder, the mission of the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network,

PaTTAN, is to support the efforts and initiatives of the Bureau of Special Education, and to build the capacity of local education agencies to serve students who receive special education services.

And so today's webinar is part of that service. As another reminder, PDE's commitment to the least restrictive environment. Our goal for each child is to ensure that IEP teams begin with the general

education setting with the use of supplementary aids and services before considering a more restrictive environment. Today's training may provide IEP teams with additional ways to provide -- ideas for

ways to provide access to the general education setting and general education curriculum through the use of standards aligned IEPs. About today's session. We know that we have a very large number of

participants today from special educators, including speech language pathologists, to administrators, to parents, to school psychologists, agency staff, and other service providers, others that I may

not have mentioned. Our focus today is IEPs for students ages 14 and older. And that's why we said it's helpful if you have had some prior background in Indicator 13 training because secondary

transition is truly the framework for today's content. Since this is a webinar format and we do have a large number of people, all participants will be muted. However, you may submit written

questions. We will review the questions and stop at appropriate breaking points to answer those questions related to the topic at hand, and we'll provide time at the end of the session to address

further questions. The PowerPoint handout is in PDF format and it's located on the PaTTAN website, www.pattan.net, under the Training tab. And under that tab, go to Training Calendar and click the

February 9 date with the title of today's session. So if you haven't downloaded the handout, it's not too late to do that. The goals for today's session, we'd like participants to be able to describe

the relationship or make connections with measurable annual goals and the secondary transition process. We have found that there remains confusion in the field related to this as well as the other

goal areas. We would also like our participants to be able to explain the meaning of and the rationale for standards aligned, measurable annual goals for students ages 14 and older. We'd like you to

practice developing standards aligned, measurable goals for skill deficits. So we would like you to become more comfortable actually developing meaningful, useful standards aligned, measurable goals

that are based on identified skill deficits as evidenced by assessment data, but goals that truly assist the student not only in improving his or her academic achievement, but also in reaching his or

her post-secondary goals. And this is a good place to remind you that we say measurable annual goals and we will be saying that, but you will see the abbreviation MAGS throughout the PowerPoint simply

for space saving purposes. Today's recorder is -- today's webinar is being recorded and will be closed captioned for later viewing by participants who aren't able to be here today. Today's session

will be presented in segments. And our advanced organizer is we'll begin with secondary transition, the context. My colleague, Michael, will be providing that content. The next segment, background

segment, is the standards aligned system in IEPs, a brief connection. And then the next segment is measurable annual goals and the IEP, the basics. In other words, these three segments will give you

the background that is essential to being able to go on to the next session -- section, standards aligned, measurable annual goals, the process. And that will be the largest segment of today's

content. We will provide clarification around some of the points of confusion related to this topic. We will provide demonstrations of developing a standards aligned, measurable annual goal based on

assessment data in the present levels. And then we will give you an opportunity to develop a measurable annual goal based on assessment data that we provide. At the very end, we will provide examples

of how we develop measurable annual goals for these your turn examples. And as I said, we will be answering your questions throughout. Michael's going to continue now with the context. MICHAEL STOEHR:

Good morning. We're going to now just look at some background as to why there's an importance behind looking at writing measurable annual IEP goals that are aligned to the standards, as well as how

this frames into the transition process in the state of Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, we take seriously this charge of intending that all students develop proficiency in core subjects and graduate

from high school ready for college and career. So we need to consider that when we're preparing students for life after high school, that we take into account how best to achieve those three

post-secondary goal outcomes of going on for further training, employment, and living independently in the community. We also strive to ensure that each student achieves equitable outcomes regardless

of background, condition, or circumstances, and regardless of zip code or regardless of whether they have a disability, or whether it's a mild disability or a more significant or complex need.

Equitable outcomes include accessing all areas for students that are in our programs from ages 14 to 21. When we look at the primary purpose of IDEA 2004, and if we look at that first paragraph of the

federal law, you'll notice that it states that we are trying to prepare all students to be ready to go on for further education, employment, and independent living. We want all our students with

disabilities to leave high school with the skill set that prepares them best for the future. So what is secondary transition? And again, if we reference back to IDEA 2004, secondary transition is a

coordinated set of activities that does result in students being successful to go on for further training, employment, and independent living. And the programs in school, and again starting at age 14

until that student graduates, are leading them for success for further training, employment, and independent living. So you may be asking yourself, how do measurable annual goals fit into this big

picture of secondary transition? Well, measurable annual goals are part of that coordinated set of activities. Measurable annual goals represent those skills that are essential to not only academic

achievement, but also to success in the workplace and the educational setting, and in the community setting of that individual's choice. These next two slides are looking at the secondary transition

process for students ages 14 to 21 who have IEPs in Pennsylvania. And when we look at the six-step process, you'll notice that step five is really looking at determining the measurable annual goals

that address the skill deficits for those students. I like to look at the map itself because I think it's a good presentation of this process. And just to quickly walk through this, we're starting

with a basis of assessment and looking at what that individual student is interested in doing once they graduate from high school regarding going on for further training, employment, and independent

living. Based on that assessment information, we help that individual student and their family determine those post-secondary goals of going for further training, employment, and independent living.

And then we look at where that student currently is functioning regarding their aptitude and abilities. So we're looking there at academic and functional skills. Then based on that information, we

look at developing the IEP. So starting with looking at the present education levels, making sure that we're documenting information regarding that student's assessment. And not just documenting the

assessment, but we are looking at the information and we are analyzing it and coordinating that information to then develop the student's needs. Based on the student's needs, we look at then

developing the transition section of the IEP, or section three, also known as the grid in Pennsylvania. And in looking in that particular section, we look at what that student wants to do as far as

going on for further training, employment, and independent living. And then we include those related activities in that section. Included in those related services and activities are references to

that student's measurable annual IEP goals. And then we're monitoring progress for that student. Next we're going to turn and look at kind of an overview of that standards aligned system and the IEP.

And Rosemary is going to continue with this section. ROSEMARY NILLES: Most of you know that standards aligned, measurable annual goals are not required by regulation for all students. In fact,

standards aligned, measurable annual goals are only required in reading or math for students who take the PSSA-M in reading or math. So teachers ask, why is it important that I write standards

aligned, measurable annual goals for my students? Some teachers state that standards aligned, measurable annual goals are required in their district, but they're not quite sure how to do it. Some

state that it takes extra time in an already busy schedule. I'd like you to take about 20 seconds and jot down on your handout why you think it's important to write standards aligned, measurable

annual goals. These next two sections will provide rationale for standards aligned, measurable goals. And the fourth section actually will provide some guidance on how to approach this important task.

But really, standards aligned, measurable annual goals are about accessing the general curriculum. So they represent effective practice. The first thing we need to do is take a brief look at the

standards aligned system in Pennsylvania. If we were to poll you, we would probably find out that most of you have been introduced to the six circles of PA standards aligned system. Remember that the

standards aligned system is a collaborative product of research and practice that identifies six components, which, if used together, will provide schools and districts a common framework for

continuous school and district enhancement and improvement. And all six of these impact the development of IEPs. Have you noticed the newest circle on the top-left? Some supportive schools supplies

resources and exemplars to promote active student engagement in a safe and positive learning environment in order to maximize student learning. The other circles are standards; including assessment

anchors; assessment, fair assessments; the curriculum framework including big ideas, concepts, and competency; instruction, which is really the heart of special education and the heart of education;

materials and resources, all of which help to support student achievement. Let's just take a few minutes to look at how these components impact the delivery of education for all students, but in

particular special education students and special education services for those students. This is a screenshot of PA Standards Aligned System portal, otherwise known as the SAS portal. And you can see

the web address in the center there. And hopefully you've all taken time to navigate. There are constantly upgrades and updates being made. But this is really the answer to the question. The standards

aligned system is the base for content. And what is to be learned and what is to be taught? As well as how to most effectively teach that content for all students. It's not just a website. It's making

sure that all students receive instruction according to the general education curriculum. Since 1997, IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Act, has emphasized the importance of access to the

general education curriculum. Statewide assessments under No Child Left Behind tests content that's aligned with the standards framework of the general education curriculum. In the professional

literature from both the general and special education perspective, an overriding concern is to use methods that result in progress relative to general education standards. At this point in time,

special educators are recognizing the need to be more systematic in their thinking about the relationship between IEP goals and objectives and the general education curriculum. And that's why it's

effective practice and we recommend that academic goals, particularly reading, math, and writing skills, are aligned to the PA academic standards assessment anchors and other content on the standards

aligned system. And we'll talk about that now. The standards aligned system does provide different ways of representing the content. We, of course, have the content standards and the assessment

anchors. And the assessment anchors give us guidance on those skills that are prioritized for assessment on the PSSA all the way to the eligible content, which shows the limits of assessment. Most

helpful on the SAS portal are the actual views, and I'm going to step forward and show you an example that's not in your handout, but you could easily see this by logging onto the SAS portal and

clicking Standards. And I selected Algebra I as an example because we're going to use that in a couple of examples. And so this represents a screenshot, and you can see the area of mathematics and the

number, numbers systems and relationships, Algebra I. And you can go ahead and see the standards and assessment anchors and eligible content. But look over to the right. You'll see materials,

resources, and assessments for these two particular areas of eligible content, as well as this next anchor descriptor. So again, another tool on the SAS portal is the vertical viewer. And that shows

skills across the grade levels. And that's particularly helpful if you have a student who's working below grade level, which many of our students with IEPs are, of course. That shows how the skills

change, but the content remains very similar across the grade levels. So a student who is perhaps instructionally at a fourth grade level in a skill such as numbers and -- well, let's use a reading

skill. A skill such as main idea and supporting details, you would see how that skill progresses across the grade levels. The other part of content that is unique to Pennsylvania is our curriculum

framework. And that specifies what is to be taught at each grade level, and contains some important concepts such as big ideas, concepts, and competencies. And I'll explain those and give you some

examples of them. And again, the reason I'm explaining these is because these can help us build our measurable annual goals. So the big ideas are declarative statements that describe concepts that

transcend grade level. Big ideas are essential to provide focus on specific content for all students. Many times teachers will use big ideas as the basis for measurable annual goals aligned to the

standards for students with very complex support needs. Big ideas for -- in 9-12 reading, there's one big idea, and that's comprehension required and enhances critical thinking, and is constructed

through the intention -- intentional interaction between reader and text. Whereas for algebra, there are eight big ideas. Concepts describe what students should know, key knowledge as the result of

this instruction. In 9-12 reading, there's one concept: essential content, literary elements, and devices inform meaning. Competencies describe what students should be able to do, key skills as a

result of this instruction. And they are specific to grade levels. And they would be very helpful for teachers in addition to standards in selecting language that would inform measurable annual goals,

because they're behaviorally oriented. There are many competencies for 9-12 reading. I'll just review a few. Identify and evaluate content between and among texts. Listen to the next one, very

behavioral. Use and cite evidence from the text to make assertions and to draw conclusions. Another one would be summarize, draw conclusions, make generalizations from a variety of mediums. So again,

we can use the big ideas, concepts, and competence along with the standards and the assessment anchors in looking at content and [inaudible] for developing measurable annual goals. Next part of the

standards aligned system is assessment. The standards aligned system provides examples of differentiated assessment in the four types of assessments that we would like all student to experience. That

includes summative assessments and, of course, assessments such as PSSA, Keystone. Formative assessment. Please, if you're on the call, please mute your microphones and your phones. Formative

assessment, we call that assessment along the way. That gives us feedback to inform instruction, things we see in classrooms. Might be [inaudible] out the door, the actual classwork, responding in

class. But it also includes progress monitoring of measurable annual goals. Very important part of formative assessment. And these are things, again, we like to see in the present levels of a well-

written IEP. Then there are the benchmark assessments, which assess progress towards grade level standards. Examples commonly used in Pennsylvania are ForeSight, Assess to Learn, AIMSweb. And lastly,

we have diagnostic, which may or may not appear in your IEPs, but these are specific assessments that look at specific strengths and weaknesses before and during instruction. So examples of diagnostic

assessments are GRADE, GMADE, KeyMath3, and also the Comprehensive Diagnostic Tools. And I'd like to just talk about that assessment for a moment. The Comprehensive Diagnostic Tools, you may see them

shorted as CDT, you may hear people refer to them as CDT, are free online assessments. They're relatively new in Pennsylvania. They're designed to provide diagnostic information in order to guide

instruction. So they will give you an idea of where your students are functioning. They assist PA educators in identifying students' academic strengths and areas of need. And then they provide links

to classroom resources to actually help instruct on those areas that are in need. And they're totally integrated and aligned with the standards aligned system. Again, we recommend strongly that these

types of assessments, wherever possible, are referenced in the present levels of your IEP. Okay, and just quickly moving through the other circles, the standards aligned system contains additional

resources in order to help students reach standards. The standards aligned system on the web portal, you'll see an Instruction tab, examples of many different techniques, including videos, including

interventions to ensure meaningful access to the curriculum. And when you think about interventions, think about systematic attempts by educators to provide students with research-based support that

ensure meaningful access to the general curriculum. These database interventions ensure that students are provided with the supports they need to meet and exceed grade level standards. Interventions

are conducted in addition to grade level standards- based core instruction. And often these interventions are tiered and based on student assessment data. And for more information about that, you

would want to look on the PaTTAN website for Pennsylvania's response to instruction and intervention model. But again, for our students with IEPs, many of them are receiving interventions. So the web

portal will give you additional information. Also, another tab and another important component is Materials and Resources. And some of the things that you will find there are voluntary model

curriculum for certain grade areas and content areas. Learning progressions, which are roads or pathways that students travel as they progress towards mastery of skills needed for career and college

readiness. So that would be something to review. Just an answer to a question. CDT stands for comprehensive diagnostic tool. We had a question about that. Again, on the Materials and Resources, you

may find unit plans that contain objectives, essential questions, formative assessments. And you'll know if these things exist when you look at the standards. As I showed you that screenshot, you'll

see little icons for materials and resources. And again, I've already reviewed the safe and supportive schools, but think about how school climate does impact all students, and particularly our

students with IEPs. The safe and supportive schools is designed to minimize barriers to learning, and includes information on engagement, safety, and school environment. So again, in summarizing, the

standards aligned system represents effective practices in teaching, in learning, in the curriculum of what is to be taught. It really represents the general education curriculum. So using the

standards aligned system for our IEPs makes sense if our students are going to access. Remember that the general education is not just the what we teach, not just the standards and curriculum

framework, but also the how. And the standards aligned system provides for that instruction, intervention, materials and resources that allow students to access the curriculum. And of course, for our

students with IEPs, that how is often described in the specially designed instruction. And you'll see it here on your screen shortened as an SDI, as an acronym. So the process for developing standards

aligned IEPs begins with standards aligned assessment, using the four types of fair assessments that we discussed. You'll see our examples that we used today do include standards aligned assessment.

And then we write the present levels of academic achievement, as Michael had gone through, on the road map. We develop our standards aligned measurable annual goals. We select specially designed

instruction that supports the individual student's needs. We can't emphasize enough the importance of individualized specially designed instruction. As students get older and prepare to leave high

school, their specially designed instruction will look very different. It should look very different from the way it looked at lower grade levels because we're actually preparing the students to take

ownership for their accommodations. They'll need to do that as they move into post-secondary education. So specially designed instruction will change over time. And of course, progress monitoring on

the measurable annual goals, and progress in the general curriculum. And then the cycle begins over again. So Michael is going to review with us now some basics of measurable annual goals in the IEP.

MICHAEL STOEHR: To start this section, I think some of the questions that folks may be thinking about as they're viewing today's webinar is, how can standards aligned systems help me in writing my

IEPs? And what is a good starting point for writing good measurable annual goals? I think these are some considerations to take. And when we look at how the standards aligned system can help in

writing the IEPs, I think the primary answer to that is really looking at where currently that student is functioning, and then looking at that skill area. So for example, in math, if the student is

in ninth grade, what are those standards for math based on the standards aligned curriculum? And then matching that or looking at where the student's current skill levels are, and then seeing where

alignment can take place. When we look at measurable annual goals, it's important to keep in mind that the intent of secondary transition is to demonstrate a coordinated set of activities. And that

includes not only the activities that we traditionally have in secondary transition, but it also includes looking at the measurable annual goals for that student. It's important to note too that for

students ages 14 to 21, every measurable annual goal and short-term objective supports the student's post-secondary goals. We have a really, and we've said this earlier, a high expectation of rigor

and access to the general education curriculum for all students. To state this another way, we look at effective practice that we're stating in the transition grid, a reference to all of the

measurable annual goals that that student has. So in addition to the activities the student is involved with, we're also looking at including a reference to their measurable annual goals. It's

important when we're looking at writing measurable annual goals that we're addressing all of the skill deficits that the student has and that we're prioritizing those needs, that we're looking at

which areas that the student needs to work on for that IEP year which will have the greatest impact, and really focus on those particular areas for that student. It's important in writing the IEP goal

that we're communicating expectations and projecting that student's perform for that -- student performance at the end of one year. And it's also important when writing the IEP goal that it contains

countable, measurable data, that we're able to progress monitor that particular goal. When we look at measurable annual goals, it's also important to consider what they are not. And I think this

particular slide is really important so we can define how best to look at the student's specific needs, their skill deficits, and determine the basis for the goals. So when we look at what measurable

annual goals are not, first of all, they are not the curriculum for that school or that grade level. If we just are looking at the curriculum, it's not specific enough. It does not address that

student's skill deficits. Measurable annual goals are rarely course specific unless the course corresponds to the specific need of that student. So for example, a math goal for a math course.

Measurable annual goals should address, again, the specific skills of that student. And they are not grades or passing of a course. The goal should not be written to, you know, Johnny will achieve 75%

in all of his courses in the 11th grade year. That would not be an appropriate measurable annual goal. Measurable annual goals are written for skills that can be expressed anytime throughout the

school day. They are not specific to a specific setting such as the special education classroom. The skills identified in the measurable annual goals can be taught in the general education classes and

monitored by both general and special education teachers. But remember, special education is a service and not a place. There are also, and when we have been doing trainings with school districts over

the last four or five years, a lot of concern and a lot of comments about, well, what are the, quote, transition goals? And again, just to reiterate from a few slides back, all goals written in the

IEP are considered transition goals because they are helping that student achieve their post-secondary goals. They're leading to that student's success and going on for further training, employment,

and independent living. And again, they are not the same as those post-secondary goals. And there has been a lot of confusion, I think, because the post-secondary goals of further training,

employment, and independent living are also called goals, but those are long-range and those are occurring after the student leaves school. What we're really talking about today are those measurable

annual goals, the goals the student is working on within the course of that IEP year. When we're looking at developing measurable annual goals, it's again important to build upon skills to best help

that student. And we're really looking at what areas that that student needs to work on that are going to make the biggest difference, the biggest change and improvements, for that student over the

course of this IEP year. In our trainings, we frequently will talk about the importance of having clear and measurable data or baseline data in the present ed levels in order to define what the skill

deficits or the needs of the student are, and then in order to write the goal. You should be able to go back and look at specifically where's the student starting? Where are their current skill

levels? And then build upon that. We now want to look at the four required parts of writing a measurable annual goal. And these four parts are the conditions, the student's name, the clearly defined

behavior, and the performance criteria. When we look at condition, this is really talking about the situation in which this goal will occur, the materials used, and the setting where the evaluation

will occur. When we're looking at this, some examples include the location or like during a lunch break. The materials that are going to be used, such as a graphic organizer. The instructional

strategies used, such as given a two-step direction. So what is the condition around which this goal will take place, this skill area that's being developed? The student's name is the next thing that

needs to be contained in the measurable annual goal. And again, IEPs are an individualized process and we have to make sure that the student's name is clearly stated. Some issues with this come in,

especially with cutting and pasting using computer programs. We have seen this, again, frequently in districts where it really is an error, really it's something that occurs because we know how

oftentimes people are really busy and they don't go back and necessarily proofread that goal. So we have seen students' names incorrectly stated. Oftentimes the pronouns he and she will be mistaken.

So again, just to make sure as you're writing the goal, that you are going back and you're proofing it to make sure that the student's name is correct in those goals. Next, looking at the clearly

defined behavior. And basically you're looking here is to explicitly state what is it that that student is going to be doing. In doing training with teachers, one of the things that we talk about in

looking at behaviors, if you can close your eyes and visualize the student actually doing or performing that activity, then that is probably a well-written, clearly defined behavior. In aligning or

looking at how the IEP goal aligns to the standards or anchors, when we look at the standards aligned curriculum, we can obtain the basis for what would that behavior be that that student is going to

be doing. The last part in writing a measurable annual goal in looking at this process is looking at the performance criteria. And in this particular section, most folks have the criterion of how

well. And that is, you know, easily oftentimes the easy part to put in. It's 90% or 80% accuracy. However, we really look at performance criteria as having these three distinct parts. So as well as

how well we want the students to perform, so say for example at 85% accuracy level, we also need to look at how consistently do we want the students to perform? In other words, how many times does

this student need to perform the task at 85% in order to know that the student has attained that skill, has mastered that skill? As we know, student may be able to do something one time, but that

doesn't necessarily mean that they have mastered that skill. And then we also need to look at the evaluation schedule, how frequently the progress will be monitored for that student. In this

particular slide, it's showing us an example of a way of organizing the writing of a measurable annual goal. And it contains the four steps that we just talked about. And we have used this sheet and

its features in actually writing the goals and filling in the various parts. It's a nice graphic organizer of how to look at writing measurable annual goals. The following are a couple of non-examples

of goals. And in this particular non-example for Pam, you'll notice that no skill was really involved. So it's given instruction, Pam will maintain a least a 75% in her class each nine weeks over the

course of the year. We're not sure exactly what Pam needs to work on. Again, getting back to what is the need of this student, what is the skill that she needs to work on. And that's very unclear in

this goal. In this next goal, looking at Kevin's reading goal, this goal is a non-example because it really is containing many, many skill areas. You know, Kevin will read and understand works of

fiction, non- fiction in literature, as well as analyze the use of literary elements, including characterization, plot, setting, theme, point of view, tone, et cetera 75% over the course of the year.

There are so many different variables in that goal that it's really unclear as to what specifically Kevin needs to address this year, what we're actually going to be working on specifically. Also,

maintaining 75% over the year is not appropriate progress monitoring. Monitoring grades does not equal monitoring progress. How could we monitor this goal in an ongoing manner? One of the students has

a two-week period where he's at 50% or 100%. So when we're looking at this particular goal, again just to reiterate, some of the pieces that make it really not the best is, one, it's not specific

enough to skills, and it really does not identify clearly how the progress monitoring is going to take place for this particular student. Okay, this next slide is looking at our alignment to goals.

And Rosemary is going to go over it and actually use this particular chart in a few of the examples that we're going to be discussing today. But I just wanted to state that when we're writing goals,

this is a good way of looking at this process, that we have to have in present education levels the baseline information, the assessment data. And it's not enough just to have it listed, but we need

to interpret that data and then utilize that to define what are the skills a student needs to work on, what's the baseline and the starting point. Based on that baseline information, then the

student's needs are stated. And then, as I mentioned earlier in the transition grid, we need to reference the measurable annual goal in the grid for what that student is working on this year that's

going to help them -- help him or her reach their post- secondary goals. Then we have the goal written and then we look at how the progress monitoring will be taken on that goal. One of the things

that we will do when we're in training is we will go and look at a goal, and go back and look in present education levels to see why is that student working on that specific goal area? What is the

need? And there should be a correlation to those. Okay, next up Rosemary is going to move on and talk about writing standards aligned goals. We did have one question, though, before we move on. And

the statement is, why is visiting a college fair not an appropriate IEP goal? The reason that visiting a college fair is not an appropriate IEP goal is the student does not have a specific skill

deficit in visiting a college fair, actually going there. That particular goal is really an activity. And as we talk about looking at that grid section, we do have activities, and activities such as

meeting with an OVR counselor or going to a college fair. They're great activities. They're going to help that student in, you know, achieving their post-secondary goal of going on for further

training. However, IEP measureable annual goals are based on skill deficits. So we have to look at what is that specific area of need for that student? So for example, in visiting a college fair,

perhaps the student has communication needs. They have difficulty in interacting with someone. Maybe it's a speech goal. Well, that would be a skill deficit area that you could possibly have for that

student, but it wouldn't --- the goal would be working on a speech communication area, not attending the college fair. Okay, with that, I'm going to turn this over to Rosemary and she's going to

continue with the remaining bulk of this presentation on the end of the line process in writing goals. ROSEMARY NILLES: Thank you. We have had a number of other questions, and I think most of them

will be answered as we go through this section, but there were a couple that I wanted to clarify right away. And one of those was regarding the classroom diagnostic tool. And you often hear that

referenced as CDT. And that is an online, individualized, computer-based assessment that addresses -- that can assess the areas of reading and literature, math and science. And it's only for students

grades 6-12 in Pennsylvania. It is free. And how you would get more information about using it, I would go to your IU curriculum staff. They're very skilled. There have been a number of trainings in

Pennsylvania. It is a relatively new tool. Many of our schools are just beginning to use it or have just started. So you'll see in the examples that we show you later that there are some references to

the type of data we can gather. The point I want to make about assessments is that we can't recommend any particular assessment. And the standards aligned system, the fair assessments is simply saying

that we need to gather assessment from a variety of sources and a variety of types. We really can't make a judgment about a student's level of functioning in reading or math, for example, based on one

assessment let alone based on their grades. Places to go for examples, reading assessments might be on our PaTTAN website, our RtII section. Look under secondary RtII toolkit. I can't exactly tell you

how to get it just now, but I think if you go to Secondary Response to Instruction and Intervention, you would find a link to the toolkit. You might also find it under Resources. There was another

question about an assessment that gives grade level, and I think that was maybe a reference to benchmark. Benchmark assessments do not provide a grade level. They simply give us an idea of progress

towards grade level standards, whether the students are meeting particular standards. For example, the ForeSight assessment that is most commonly used uses a series of four math assessments that

assess standards and assessment anchors to be achieved by the end of the year. So there are four similar assessments. They don't gradually increase in skill. At the beginning of the year, students

don't do as well because they haven't been taught that content. Whereas toward the end of the year, we should be seeing the vast majority of students meeting those grade level standards. So I hope

that clarifies those questions. One more thing on the CDT. Because they are individualized, they don't look the same for both students -- for all students. A student might begin in math at grade

level, let's say eighth grade level, but may be given more difficult math problems if they are successful. Or they may drop down if they're not successful. But no two students look alike, and that is

why it is not a benchmark assessment. However -- and so it's not a substitute for ForeSight. We get that question a lot. Two different types of assessment. CDT is totally individualized. It can be

given up to five, maybe six times a year. It can give us good information on our students, but again, it's not the only source of assessment information. And you'll see in the examples that we use, we

never rely on just one assessment. And we try to integrate the assessment data that we get. There was another question on standards aligned, measurable annual goals. And we'll go right to the bottom

bullet. And here it is in writing, standards aligned, measurable annual goals are required in reading or math for students who take the PSSA modified in reading and math. So example -- for example, a

student takes PSSA modified in reading, then their reading goal or goals should be absolutely aligned to the standards. However, we don't like to leave that statement without, again, a strong

recommendation that each of you look at the standards for all of your students with IEPs. Standards aligned, measurable annual goals are derived from the PA academic standards and/or the assessment

anchors, the big ideas, the concepts or competencies. The examples we'll show you today are typically written to standards or assessment anchors, but you may use all of part of the other things that

I've mentioned. And I want to make that point too. You may not have a measurable annual goal written to an entire standard. And you'll see a couple of the examples are written to parts of standards.

Again, they're based on individual needs as described in the present levels of academic and functional performance. Pardon that acronym, it's a lot to write, but again, based on assessment data. So

let's look a little more at the process of selecting skills. Not every goal must be based on grade-level standards. Certainly if that wouldn't meet the child's individual needs. Sometimes students'

specific needs do fall outside of the standards aligned general education curriculum. For example, self- care skills or self-help in particular, possibly travel skills. Many times for our students

with more significant need, they may fall outside of the general ed curriculum. However, we can also make a far link to a standard. So you'll see that most of our goals are going to be -- fall within

the general education curriculum. And that's why this graphic is intended to depict a way of reconciling that required focus on students' specific needs. We are required to do that by IDEA 2004, but

we're also required to, as much as possible, use the general education curriculum and provide that access. So standards aligned, measurable annual goals fall within that middle ground. And we'll

provide additional information as we go along. So another question we ask is, how do we prioritize? Many of our students have multiple skill deficits. Should we write a measurable annual goal for

every skill deficit that we're aware of that assessment identifies? And we would say no. We will allow the students instruction in other areas and their instruction, whether it be an intervention in

addition to the general ed curriculum, we will allow their instruction and the assessments to address many skill deficits. The question is, what prerequisite skills or knowledge does the student

really need to close the gaps between his or her present levels and grade level standards? Another way of asking that question might be, what skills or knowledge is the student going to need to be

successful in his or her post-secondary goals? If a student, for example, is struggling with reading, they're struggling with both fiction and non-fiction, while fiction is an important part of life

and will absolutely be assessed on the PSSA, possibly in their role as an auto mechanic or as a truck driver or even in going to college to study engineering, non-fiction might give us more bang for

the buck when we prioritize this skill. Prioritizing means not listing all the parts of the general ed curriculum as goals. And that was one of the flaws of one of the goals we looked at. We've got to

allow instruction in the general ed curriculum to occur. But prioritizing means focusing on the most critical areas to close the gaps to set the student up for future learning goals, set the student

up to be successful in the general education curriculum, and set the student up for success in attaining his or her post-secondary goals. So many students do have so many needs, so we have to make

decisions about which particular skills to address as measurable annual goals. And remember that the skill deficits that we list as needs in that final section of the present ed levels, that section

of needs, and many of you who have trained with me know that I like to use a funnel to show that the information throughout the present levels tends to be detailed. But when we get down to the

strengths and needs and how the students' disability affects involvement and progress in the curriculum, we're funneling through. We're just skilling. We're concentrating that information. We're not

getting any surprises by that point. So anything we list in the needs as a skill deficit needs to be addressed as a measurable annual goal. But in consideration, think about endurance. Will the skill

last beyond the particular class or year? Is it a skill that the student will need in the adult world? Leverage. Will the skill serve the student in multiple settings? Again, across the building. And

that's why we don't write a goal for science or a goal for physics class. Rather, we would write a communication goal, a writing goal, a reading goal for comprehension, or perhaps a goal for decoding

those words that tend to trip up our students in general ed classes. We look across the curriculum, multiple settings. And of course we consider the PSSA blueprint, which skills are considered high

priority on the PSSA. But the PSSA blueprint is a great tool because the skills that are assessed on the PSSA are important, high leverage, necessary, and enduring skills. The other thing is

necessity. Is the skill important across the curriculum? Is it necessary for success in the workplace and for post-secondary education and the community? So we can't tell you exactly when you have a

student with multiple needs how to prioritize. That truly is up to the IEP team, and that's why we can't tell you on a webinar this is what you should choose. But those are some things that you should

consider and share with your IEP team. So which standards do we typically use? Well, certainly we use the standards anchors, big ideas, concepts, and competencies in reading, writing, speaking, and

listening, as well as math. And we do have standards for algebra I and II and geometry. So those are where we're going to draw the vast majority of our academic goals. But I want you also to consider

using the career education and work standards. They're wonderful for work habits and organizational skills. And the draft standards, and again these are drafts, but you'll find them on their downloads

on the standards aligned portal, student interpersonal skills standards. And again, we've already said these aren't required. It's just good practice. So which measure -- which academic skills need to

have measurable annual goals? We see a lot of confusion in the field, particularly when students are included in general education classes. And that's why Michael reviewed with you that measurable

annual goals can be written for students and should be written for students who are included in general education classes. Teachers often wonder, well, how will I write a measurable annual goal if a

student is in a general education class for English, for literature, for algebra, geometry, or whatever the math course? How can I write a standards aligned measurable annual goal? I have no way of

monitoring. And the message we give is special education shouldn't be standing alone. We, along with our general ed colleagues, need to find ways that are easy and doable that will help assess the

skills on a regular basis in the general ed classroom. And monitoring grades are only one teeny, tiny part of looking at skill development. What the question here is, if the student needs to develop

skills in reading, writing, or math in order to access, participate, or progress in the general curriculum and reach their post-secondary education goals, then we do need to write a measurable annual

goal for those skills because now they're not just curriculum, they're skills. We're going to prioritize those skills as measurable annual goals. So now we're going to show you the process that we use

at PaTTAN across our initiatives as far as steps for developing a standards aligned IEP goal. And we're going to walk you through this process with a couple of examples, and then we're going to let

you take a turn. First, we begin with reviewing the present levels of academic and functional achievement and functional performance. And your well-written present levels should contain an awful lot

of information that will help you guide you towards knowing what's most important. You identify your student need in the present levels and you identify where their skill deficits are, but then step

three is to prioritize those needs as skills to be developed. And that is your list of needs, the funneling through as I like to describe it. Those needs with a capital N need to be developed or

addressed as measurable annual goals. If you haven't already looked at the standards, anchors, or elements in the curriculum framework that correlates with your needs, now is the time to do that.

However, it's possible that you've already, as you wrote your present levels, you were already considering which standards were prioritized. But if you haven't done it, this is the time. And then

after considering all of the above, then you're going to write the goals to include the clearly defined action or behavior. And again, you'll get that from the standards, anchors, and curriculum

framework. You'll write the condition and you'll write all three parts of the performance criteria. We found that in training, talking just about the parts of the measurable annual goals weren't

necessarily -- wasn't necessarily sufficient to help teachers to really grasp, what do I really want the student to do? And so, as a breakout of step five that I'm showing you now, this is really step

five, how are we actually going to address that? How are we going to know if the student is developing that target skill that we've just identified? And so what I like to ask teachers is, what do I

want the student to actually do to show that she or he is learning this skill? And that's where we may use or paraphrase language from the standard. With what materials or under what conditions? What

will the student be doing? How will we measure the skill and how often will we measure that skill? How well must the student perform the skill? How consistently? Because we just can't go on with an

IEP goal forever. We've got to reach an end point when we know they've achieved it. And what other assessments forms of data will also indicate that he or she is progressing towards the goal. Now I

went through that quickly, but on the examples I'm going to show you. we'll dig through those in some depth. Many of you have seen this example of Caroline's tried and true. If you've been in

Indicator 13 training, you've met Caroline. And she wants to be a cosmetologist, but she's got some pretty substantial behavioral problems right now, and so she's had an FBA, a functional behavioral

assessment. And a positive behavioral support plan has been written for her IEP. Her IEP includes measurable annual goals for all of these areas: algebra, budgeting, writing fluency. She's one of

those kids who just doesn't like to write. And writing tasks are actually an antecedent for behavioral outbursts, so she's got a measurable annual goal for that. She also needs to improve her

organizational skills and certainly she needs a behavioral goal to replace those outburst behaviors. So this next slide does contain a lot of text, and I don't like to do this to you on a webinar, but

what I want to show you here is that we have just looked at algebra, okay? So our recommendation, and again it's not a requirement, but a recommendation for writing present levels is to take apart,

look at your academic areas in particular, reading, writing, and math, and address them as a whole so that we're looking at the student as a whole. So I'm going to quickly walk you through this. She's

included with co-teaching. She's cooperative, but she's missing assignments already. What accommodations work for her? Breaking assignments into chunks, frequent chunks, frequent feedback and

encouragement, use of graphic organizers and drawings. Okay, now we get into -- so we already know what specially designed instruction works. Now we have some -- this would be benchmark assessments.

She's basic on her ForeSight. Remember, she's in tenth grade. They do assess 11th grade standards. [inaudible] are increasing, so she's improving. But look where her errors are: algebraic concepts,

particularly equations and inequalities, with great improvement in numbers operations. Okay, this is consistent with data obtained on the classroom diagnostic assessment for algebra. That last

statement, for those of you who have had Indicator 13 training, is new. Okay, a little bit of background. She expressed pride in having measured her last year's goal on numbers and operations. She's

going to continue to practice numbers and operations, so it's not going to be a goal, but she needs those skills for her cosmetology program. They're essential. So we didn't want to ignore those. And

she's also going to practice numbers and operations in her measurable annual goals. So budgeting, and that supports her independent living goal. Okay, now we have progress monitoring information.

She's been using the AIMS algebra foundation probes. And this is a 42-item, 50-point measure designed to reflect five core concepts and skills viewed as the foundations of algebra. And it's done in

five minute probes. She's already been doing it and she started at seven correct answers, and she's already at 13. If she attains 22 correct answers for those probes, that would be indicative of

improved overall skill and fluency in foundations. And she also enjoys this, which is important for a student with behavioral needs. That feedback, that seeing their progress, it's critical. So you

have a summary of just her math. We prioritized her needs because she is in a math class, and this algebraic concepts is needed for her to be successful in that and subsequent math classes. So we went

and looked at the standards and the assessment anchors. We could have used either. We could have also selected a competency. But we went with this assessment anchor because it seems to match what

we're seeing in class, and it's a very high leverage skill. Okay, so now let's go through that process. And if you were her teacher, I'll think out loud with you and we'll think about, well, what do

we actually want her to do? We already know that we have a nice probe in place. Well, what we really wanted to do was solve problems, especially problems with equations and inequalities. Okay, well,

what materials? We've got a nice progress monitoring tool in place, so why wouldn't we want to use that? So let's use what we already have. But how are we going to measure it and how often will we

measure it? Well, we'll use those algebra probes for five minutes, as they were designed, and we're going to do it every two weeks, as designed. Well, how well should she perform it, remembering she's

only at 13 correct answers now? And we had said on the previous slide that she needs to get to 22 at the end of a year's time. Not in nine weeks, but in a year's time. How consistently does she do it?

If she gets 22 correct answers once, will we be satisfied that she's attained the goals? Well, we know that our students with disabilities need to do things more than once. So we said in this example

three out of five consecutive probes. We could have probably said three consecutive probes and that would have been helpful as well. But we know that just these probes are absolutely not sufficient.

We had a lot of data, remember, in her present levels, so wouldn't we want to look at other sources of data as well? And yes, we will. We'll look at her classroom formative assessments, the things her

teachers see in the classroom day to day that inform instruction. We'll also continue to monitor ForeSight and CDP data, and we'll send those home as well with the progress reports. So we've gone

through the process. How would that look on the IEP form? What I'm showing you now is exactly what we just talked about. But did you find it a little easier to look at this and think it out, map it

out in your head first before you go to write it? So now we have it in IEP language. Given a biweekly algebra I curriculum-based assessment, Caroline will solve equations and inequalities, increasing

her score from 13 to 22 correct answers per five-minute time period for three out of five consecutive probes. Notice that we used part of the anchor. How will we monitor her progress? Well, we're

going to make a graph and count her correct answers. And she's going to be involved in that graph. And then there's that additional data. We're going to continue to gather other data from class, from

the ForeSight, and we're going to send a report home twice per nine weeks. Now remember, if her school sends a report home to all students twice per nine weeks, then Caroline would also have to have a

report twice per nine weeks. But maybe that's our decision because this is a critical area. Maybe mom and the team would prefer to see a report more frequently, okay? Remember, we must send progress

reports as often as students without IEPs. So this is an IEP team decision in this case to send it more often. Or it might be that that's the practice in her school. Many of the schools I've worked in

have sent progress reports at the midpoint of the nine weeks. Remember, this is an example. You'll see that on all our slides. So remember, Michael went through the alignment. Let's look at how

Caroline's math flows through her IEP. In the present levels, we've shortened basic on ForeSight, errors in equations, currently 13 correct. That's what we saw in the present levels. So this is how we

wrote it as her needs for her present levels: to improve skills with each algebraic concepts, including solving equations and inequalities. Remember, those of you who have had Indicator 13 training,

know that we're asking you and we want you to show that skill in the grid. It's important enough of a skill that it belongs in the grid to show that it's part of our coordinated set of services. So we

pretty much set it the same way we set it as a need. We could have written it a different way. There's that goal we just reviewed, and there's the progress monitoring that they're going to chart the

number of correct answers. And there's her progress, remembering that she has a full year, and so this is only between October and December. And she certainly looks like if she continues to progress

as she has been, that by the end of a year's time, she will met her goal of 22. And maybe before the end of a year's time. In that case, we might adjust her IEP or choose another goal, calling the

team together. I hope that example based on a fictitious student made sense to you. Let's try another example of a student who has a reading need. And Jen is in ninth grade with a learning disability

in reading and writing. She'd like to become a nurse or a nurse's aide. At this point, she knows she's interested in helping people get well. She's progressing in an intensive reading intervention, so

she is still getting instruction in a reading intervention in a learning support classroom, but she's accessing the curriculum for English and her other areas. She does have other measurable annual

goals for decoding, for writing, and math problem solving. So again, a fictitious example, but maybe typical of your students. Now we're going to look at her present levels only for reading. The rest

of her present levels might include information about math, but this is just reading. So again, a little bit of background information, information on her intervention. She's made a year's worth of

growth in oral reading fluency during the current IEP, now reading 110 words per minute at a sixth grade level with 97% accuracy. And so typically if a student -- in this case, the IEP team decided to

discontinue oral reading fluency as a formal IEP goal. She's still going to be monitored, but it won't be her IEP goal. She'll have a different goal for working on decoding longer words. First, we use

the San Diego Quick Assessment, which is really just a ballpark that was done in December. We like to include dates of when assessments were given. Again, it's not a requirement, but it helps us to

know where they were and when. So she's growing on the San Diego Quick Assessment, suggesting that instructional level is sixth grade and frustration level is eighth grade. And her most recent scores

on ForeSight are low-basic. Now you can see already we have a number of sources of assessment data. We didn't go with just one. Okay, a little more analysis of the ForeSight, and here's also classroom

assessment data. We don't want to give just scores. We want to analyze what do those scores tell us. So here's the paragraph that does that. And we tally September and January. They indicate she

struggles particularly with summarizing and identifying key concepts in fiction and non-fiction, and interpreting and analyzing concepts and organization of non-fictional texts. We get this

information right from both assessments. But the CDT, comprehensive diagnostic tool, indicates that other areas of weakness also include persuasive techniques and text organizational skills. So she's

got multiple needs. How are we going to prioritize for her? We gave her some additional probes because we were concerned about that summarizing and identify. So we gave her some additional probes that

the CDT couldn't give us and just to get an idea. And we've got some baseline data that she is only a 40-50% accuracy on summarizing and identifying key concepts at grade level. So we know that this

is something important. Classroom teachers give us input for the IEP, and that's why we include. She's keeping up with a lot of assistance, specially designed instruction, pre-teaching, re-teaching,

use of graphic organizers such as the concept map or vocabulary map, and oral presentations. She may be using accessible instructional materials. So her priority for reading is to develop

comprehension skills with summarizing and identifying key concepts. Would you agree that that skill has leverage, high utility, and endurance? And it's also going to be assessed on the PSSA when she

takes it in a few years. Now we noted also that she needs to employ decoding strategies for longer words. That's not what we're going to talk about any further, but I just wanted you to be aware that

she would also have a goal for decoding. And we won't be showing that, but addressing her in a holistic -- addressing reading holistically. We wanted to acknowledge there were both. But just looking

at this comprehension skill, that's the goal we're focusing on. So we looked at standards, we looked at competencies. In this case, we simply made the decision to work from an assessment anchor. And

so we looked at this particular anchor descriptor and right down to the eligible content, summarizing major points, processes, and events of a non-fictional text as a whole. So we're going to use

language from these standards in developing her measurable annual goals. So now, again, this is an I do, a demonstration. So you can think along and you may find that you would have done it

differently. And that's the beauty of IEPs, that they don't have to be identical. The examples I'm showing you are simply examples. There is not one way to do this. But I'll show you our thinking.

What do we want her to do? Well, we want her to do exactly what we just said. We want her to be able to summarize major points and key details of passages, whether she reads them silently or orally.

Because most of the time she's going to be reading silently, but we may want to check to see how it goes orally. But how are we going to do that? With what materials? Under what conditions? Well, how

about if we select non-fiction passages, roughly 200 words, from her grade level content? That way we'd know for sure she's accessing the curriculum. But we know she's going to need specially designed

instruction. We know that she does well with graphic organizers, so a concept map or some sort of graphic organizer of her choice. She may work with a teacher to select the one that is most helpful

for her. How are we going to measure the skill? Well, we want her to read and summarize. And we want her to be able to do it orally or in writing. We may have her complete that graphic organizer. We

may have her write it in a couple of sentences. We may have her do it orally. We don't want just one way. And the teacher's going to use a rubric to score how she would do on that. Will she hit all of

the key points? Will she -- will she include all the details or will she leave off any? In answer to a question that is sure to come up, we're not showing a rubric now. That would be something that

would be designed at a particular school. But I know if you would go onto the Internet and google rubrics, you would find some. But rubrics for a skill like this are often custom made, so be careful

about just using something that doesn't hit exactly what you're looking for. Okay, back to how well do we want her to do it? Well, on that rubric, if it's a five-point rubric, we want her to get at

least four of the five points. Ideally, we'd like her to get all five, but minimally four. How consistently? If she did it once, we wouldn't be satisfied. But if she does it four consecutive trials,

we'd feel like she's attained the skill and ready to move onto another skill that's essential. And what other assessments would we use to give us that information? Well, we'd of course continue to use

ForeSight, CDT, classroom formative assessments. What we wanted to get away from here is simply writing down tests, quizzes, homework. We see that frequently in IEPs. We wanted to show you that we're

using something very specific, a very specific progress monitoring tool in addition to these other things that would include her tests and quizzes and her daily performance. Those things alone don't

really tell us how she's doing unless -- they don't give us enough specific information unless we're pulling out this particular skill. So if her classroom tests and quizzes are pulling out this

skill, if we can identify those questions that hit the skill, that's great and we should be doing that, but we simply can't say that maintaining a 70% on all of her classroom tests will tell us if

she's improving or how she's improving on this skill that we prioritized. And there's our measurable annual goal. It's exactly what I reviewed with you. Given that non- fiction passage, we chose her

two classes that would be easiest to do this with. And a graphic organizer. Notice that a little bit of specially designed instruction is built into the condition. Then she'll do her clearly

identified behavior. She's going to summarize. She's going to earn at least four of five points on a scoring rubric on four consecutive biweekly trials. This is how often we're going to do it. Okay?

And there's the standard. Some of you may ask, is it required to list that assessment anchor or standard under the goal? No, it is not. We're doing this for training purposes. So your supervisor or

you as a supervisor may require your teachers to do it, but it is not required by PDE Bureau of Special Education. However, we're showing you this because it shows the link and it's good practice. So

many of your school district supervisors will say, I do want you to list where you got that. And sometimes just listing the number isn't helpful because, unless we're very, very familiar with those

standards or anchor numbers, listing the number isn't really going to tell us the skill. So again, how are we going to monitor progress? We're going to have her scores on the rubric tracked. And

again, we like students to take ownership. So she's going to graph her own progress. And these are those other assessments that we'll also be looking carefully at. In this case, we could have said

every nine weeks, once per quarter, but we wanted to show you that that's not necessarily the way that all goals will be recorded. For example, a behavioral goal might be recorded every week. And

Caroline, the example we used before, her goal was reported every week because it was critical. In this case, we listed two times per quarter and maybe that's her school's practice, that every student

gets a quarterly report of progress and a report at the midpoint. So again, you need to look at your school practices, but minimally you must do what your school does for all students. Okay, and

here's her alignment. We summarized her present levels. This is how we described her need, developing comprehension skills for summarizing key concepts. And we wrote it pretty much the same way in the

grid. We listed it in the grid because it's part of her coordinated set of activities. And so we note them in the grid. And then we listed the goals again and we summarized how she's going to record

her scores. Okay, hopefully that was clear to you. Give you a moment just to regroup and we'll do one more example before we give you the opportunity to work on your own. Now Brad is also a fictitious

student, and the photographs I've used on these are not real students. Well, they are from Microsoft Office, so they're public domain, so these are not real students. And he's in 11th grade, he's 18,

and he's going to graduate at 21. And Brad receives autistic support services for part of his day. Now he is included for family and consumer science, health, and physical education. And his IEP is

going to cross over year to year, and he's already planning to take video production. He likes computers even though his literacy skills are quite low, as you'll see. And part of his day is taking

place in the community to prepare him for his adult life and to prepare him for goals. He's interested possibly in something clerical or with computers, or possibly in food preparation. He does not

want to be a food server, but he might work well in food preparation. So we're exploring goals for him at this point. And he doesn't like crowded settings, by the way. His measurable annual goals are

based on his need, and so he's going to have a goal for vocabulary, another goal for comprehension, a goal for practical money skills because he is working and planning to live in the community. He

needs work on time management and following a schedule. He needs work on writing tasks. He needs to be able to follow two and three step directions. We know he's pretty good at one step directions. He

also, because of the nature of his disability, has some issues around self-regulation. And so he'll have goals for self-regulation as well as pragmatic communication. So you can see his goals are

going to be individualized. But we're only going to focus on one of those goals now, and that will be vocabulary. And in describing vocabulary, we do need to look at his comprehension, so this present

levels that we'll see and they're detailed, but I'll go through them quickly. Just to give you an idea, he's decoding at a mid-second grade level. And notice that we use Brigance in this place. It's a

screening tool. It is not a detailed diagnostic. But we also use the Woodcock Reading Mastery test, which is an example of a diagnostic assessment. They both use word lists. He seems to be strong in

word recognition, but we didn't feel that that was enough information to write a goal, so we looked at other assessments. We looked at the reading comprehension vocabulary grade placement test. And

that uses groups of five words. It's from the Brigance. And the student has to show which one of the five doesn't belong with the others. So it's definitely into comprehension and vocabulary. Well, on

this brief assessment he was fine at first grade level, but at second grade level he only got one out of three correct answers. So we're seeing that his comprehension is breaking down. Again, on the

Brigance reading grade placement test, his comprehension breaks down at the first grade level. And we also saw that on the comprehension -- passage comprehension subtest of the Woodcock Reading

Mastery test. We have it shortened there. It uses modified closed passages and he couldn't go beyond first grade level. So we're zeroing in on some important information about him. He's a good

decoder. He could decode words on the Brigance pre-employment list. That includes words such as personal data, union, other words, interview, but he couldn't explain them. So we know that he's got

some issues around vocabulary. Not just reading vocabulary, but hearing and spoken vocabulary. He's been using a sight word program along with high interest reading materials. He's progressing through

the second grade level, but he needs a lot of supports. Recent probes show used words, sentences, and phrases. And they're showing his strength is retention of sight words vocabulary. So you're seeing

a pattern here. When he's given assessments at ten-word intervals, as his reading program does, he's pretty good on his assessment, whether they're the ten-word intervals or even on cumulative

assessments. So he seems to be able to retain words once he learns them, but he's having trouble with meaning. And then we give information on his current reading goal. He did master that goal of

learning 40 new words from the community, functional words related to work. And he's at a 90% accuracy over mixed probes. So in other words, when we mix up those words in isolation on short sentences

using a variety of print formats, he's at 98% accuracy. And yet on a recent probe, he could only explain about half of those words or use them in sentences or to answer questions. So we really need to

help him expand his reading, hearing, and speaking vocabulary. And you can see that the speech language pathologist would be a critical part of working on this goal. So here's the specially developed

-- designed instruction: short steps, frequent feedback, repetition, visual cues, positive reinforcement, and some text-to-speech software. Now some information with the speech language pathologist.

We like to see integration of information. If we're talking about reading and the connection between reading and oral language, then that information makes sense. So his SLP concurs. He struggles with

complex language and meaning, multiple-meaning words, new vocabulary, and inferential skills. And she summarized or he summarized the test of adolescent and adult language, which is shorted as the

TOAL-4. That's an individual diagnostic test of listening, speaking, writing, and text comprehension. His lowest scores were on spoken analogies, word derivation, and word opposites. Again, these are

skills that involve manipulation of words and concepts in our heads as well as -- and they indicate how we might do on other reading tasks. And the speech pathologist did include a detailed report on

page seven of that hypothetical IEP. Remember, this is an example. It's a fictitious example. So at a recent staffing, Brad's team discussed the need to expand his use of vocabulary explaining and

using new words. This will help in reading comprehension, but it will also support his pragmatic language. And we made the connection to his post-secondary goals. These skills are not only needed for

success in his general education classes, but also needed to help him attain his employment goal of clerical or food preparation, and accessing the community with supports. So again, examples, but

we're trying to show you how you can weave together information from a variety of assessments, from a variety of sources, and from a variety of personnel. So we're looking at integrating. His priority

needs: expanding his vocabulary, explaining and using new words in content areas and related to work or community experiences. So you may see some of the words he works on drawn from family and

consumer science, maybe phys ed, maybe next year from his video production class. We're looking at high utility words, words that will serve him in conversation, words that will serve him in both

classes and in the community. There is the standards connection. It's a near link, but this is a grade level standard even though he is only reading somewhere between a first and a second grade level.

I want you to see how we were able to make that connection with grade level standards. Now clearly his specially designed instruction and the material we use will be adapted to meet his individual

needs. Okay, let's go through that process again and you'll see the thinking strategy that we used. Again, you may think of it differently, but this is one way to do it. So the first question is, what

do we actually want him to do? Remember, we said that he's having trouble using words. Even though he retains them visually, he's not able to use them in conversation and sentences. He's struggling

with meaning of words. So we'd like him to show that he knows new words by reading and then explaining using a sentence or answering questions. We want him to demonstrate understanding. So how will we

do that? What materials can we use or under what conditions? We decided to use new vocabulary lists from his classes or from the community. Now, of course we're only going to introduce a few at a

time. And for the purposes of this measurable annual goal, we estimated that 60 in a year's time would be reasonable. Maybe it's a low estimation. Maybe if our methods are successful, he'll attain

this goal in six months or at the end of a semester. And that would be great because then we could notch it up. But for now, we'll go with 60. How will we measure that skill and how often will we

measure it? Well, we're going to -- every week, we're going to use a three-point rubric to assess his understanding of those words. We're going to pick words that have already been taught, so if he's

been taught ten words, then we'll pick three or six of them. We'll pick six to begin with. If he's already been taught 25 words, then we'll mix them up and pick some more. So in other words, we may

have them on cards, we may have them on lists, we may have them in different print formats. We may even show them -- show him those words in connected text. In fact, we should because we want him to

be able to access these words in a variety of situations. So how well do we want him to do it? Remembering this is a year's time. Well, by the end of the year, we'd like to be able to pick any ten out

of those 60 words, any ten mixed up, and have him get at least two out of three points minimally. Better yet, three out of three points. How consistently? We know that once isn't enough, so we want

him to demonstrate that above skill four weeks in a row. So we would be mixing up those words for four weeks in a row. If he can do that, tell us what the words are, use them in a sentence, use them

in conversation, we're at least knowing that he's beginning to be able to use those words. What other ways will we know? Well, certainly in our day to day classroom assessments, we'll try and engage

him in conversation. Another adult perhaps will ask his general ed teachers -- we will ask them, but perhaps his supports coordinator or if he has a TSF to make sure that they're using those words

with him at home or in the community. And certainly parents and other caregivers. So we'll be looking to see that those words are generalized. And we don't want it to be rote. We'd like him to be able

to use those words in a variety of sentences. This is how it looks on the goals. Remember, this is the end of the year goal. This is the annual goal. So this is how it will look in a year's time. In a

moment, we'll show you how it looks broken out. I'll let you read that yourself. Notice below the reference to the standard. Again, not required, but just a good idea. His scores on the rubric and

other scores I will show you on the next slide will be graphed on a teacher tracking form. But again, we're going to be looking for other sources of data, so the speech language pathologist will be

gathering that data, general teachers, and other members of Brad's team will report this progress every nine weeks, although we may have chosen to say we'll record it every third week. That's the

team's decision. Now Brad, because he would be taking the alternate assessment, needs short-term objectives. So what we're doing on the next slide is breaking out that task into smaller chunks. And

there are many, many ways to break out short-term objectives. In this case, I will read it because this is being closed captioned. We won't be using a rubric for the first two short-term objectives.

We'll be simply using that data collection form and then move to the rubric. So he would begin with any six random selected words from 15 from those content classes or related to work or community. So

read and explain the meaning with 80% accuracy before consecutive weekly trials. And then we move to give him eight randomly selected words from a list of 30. He'll read and use each one in a sentence

and answer questions with 80% accuracy. So we've notched it up. Here we were simply reading and explaining. And the third short-term objective is any ten from a list of 45 words. We want him to do all

three: read, orally explain, use the word in a sentence, and answer questions. And now we've moved to the rubric, scoring at least two out of three for four consecutive. And that moves us back to the

final goals, using ten words from 60. Let's look at the alignment again. Brad learns and retains new sight words, but can only use or explain about 60% of the new words that he's learned. So we

prioritized. It's important that we expand his vocabulary, explaining and using new words in content areas and related to community and work experiences. In the grid, this is part of his set of --

coordinated set of activities, so we're going to give extra effort to teaching and monitoring progress on those skills. So we listed it pretty much the same way. There's the goal, reading and orally

explaining any ten words out of 60. And there's how we're going to monitor progress. This is what we're looking for and you should be looking for in your IEPs. Not this example, but if you've stated

it as a need, for example if you in your IEP for a student, no matter what their need, had a vocabulary need, did you give baseline in your present levels? Did you list it in the grid? Remember, you

don't need to write out the entire goal in the grid. You just reference it, okay? So did you write a measurable annual goal for it? Sometimes we see reading listed as a need, and yet there's no

measurable annual goal and no progress monitoring. Sometimes we see measurable annual goals, for example for writing, and yet it's not listed as a need and there's no baseline data in the present

levels. So we really want to emphasize the idea of flow in the IEP, the idea of alignment, that what you say in the present levels if you prioritize it as a need, then it needs to appear in the grid

and it needs to have a detailed measurable annual goal and progress monitoring. For every one of your goals, whether you have two goals or whether you have ten goals, this is the process. And you

should be able to look back and see that alignment for every one of them. And in our Indicator 13 trainings, we do -- when we work individually with teachers, we often bring them back to this and have

them look for those things. Okay, this isn't in your PowerPoint right here, but again, just summarize it. We showed you standards aligned assessment. We showed you present levels of academic

achievement. We showed you standards aligned measurable annual goals. And we showed specially designed instruction. I think I forgot to show you Brad's, but it's on your slide. And we told you how we

would monitor progress, and we gave you an example of Caroline's progress monitoring, how it looks. But I hope if you're a teacher or a supervisor on this webinar that you would be able to take those

three goals and develop a progress monitoring system for that. Just a couple of reminders when you're finalizing your goals and when you're writing your goals to consider these three key concepts.

Does the goal or short-term objective build important skills? Whether your student is a learning supports student with minimal needs for specially designed instruction, or whether your student has

significant needs, does the goal build important skills that will allow that student to be successful in the curriculum and in their life after high school? And does that goal, does each goal address

prioritized needs from the present levels? Does it reflect, if appropriate, standards, anchors, or big ideas, concepts, and competencies from the curriculum framework? And is it age-appropriate and

individually appropriate? Does your goal or short-term objective contain all four required parts? The condition, which may include specially designed instruction? The student's name? The clearly

defined behavior? Can you actually close your eyes and see it happen? And the performance criteria? How well you want the student to do it, how consistently, how, and how frequently will we be

monitoring progress? Remember, how frequently we're monitoring progress is not the same as how often we're recording the process. two very different things. How frequently is how frequently we're

assessing the skill, collecting that data, charting our data. Whereas progress reporting is how often are we summarizing that data and sending it home to other team members and family. Okay, so those

are the four required parts. And the third question, is it measurable? Can the data collection strategy be implemented? And we always like to ask, would a student, parent, or another teacher be able

to describe exactly what the student will be able to do in a year's time? Students should be able to describe what their goals are. They should understand their goals, what they're working on, what

their specially designed instruction is, and how they're progressing towards their goal. That's part of development of self-determination and self-advocacy skills. Is it written in a way that a parent

or another team member could understand it? And how will one know? Sometimes goals don't have an end point, and that's why we've been particular to show you the measurable annual goals. Always tell

how consistently. When will they reach that end point? When is that goal considered mastered and it's time to move onto something else? Most importantly, when you write your goal, would another

teacher, your colleague, or if a student moved to another district and that IEP was implemented at least for a while, would another teacher understand how you are measuring progress and collecting

data? Now we're going to give you a chance. And so I'm going to introduce to you three students. And I'm looking at the time and this will be a brief introduction. I'm going to ask you to work alone

or with a partner. Select William, who has a writing goal; Jason, math; or Celine, self-advocacy. We're providing you with information from present levels, IEP development process. Remember that table

that we used. We'll give you the standards or assessment anchors. And we'll give you the finalizing the goals slide blank. And then we'll debrief and we're going to share completed examples at the end

of the session. Remember the steps. This is just here for your guidance. Okay, William is an eighth grader interested in forestry or trucking. He has measurable annual goals for writing, reading,

math, and organizational skills. This focuses on his writing. Included in eighth grade class, intensive instruction on decoding, uses text-to-speech to support access to curriculum. In the area of

writing, he willingly attempts short answers, so it's not a problem -- it's not a question of willingness or fluency. He's even able to verbalize or to use a graphic organizer to organize his ideas

and stay on topic. But he's got trouble with errors. He did meet his most recent goal. And to summarize, he has run-on sentences, missing articles, spelling errors, errors in comma and apostrophes. So

his needs is around writing convention. And there's the standard that matches. There's the process that you would go through if you're working on William. Now Jason is a ninth grader included in

algebra class. A post-secondary goal of working with computers and has measurable annual goals for reading and comprehension and writing. Little bit of background: he's in a co-teaching class. We

listed accommodations. He's making it in class, but we know he's gotten aides. He's doing his work. Important information from the teacher. He seems to understand the concepts. However, his

computation skill deficits are slowing down his overall work, causing errors. That's interrupting his fluency. He did master his previous goal of improving computation with whole numbers. A little bit

of information on ForeSight and PSSA, and information from the CDT, comprehensive diagnostic tools. Sorry for the typo. He took the comprehensive diagnostic tool for algebra I. It shows that he's

struggling with linear equations and inequalities. So we did a little more analysis using the CDT and saw that he has trouble with component skills, including operations with real numbers, fractions,

decimals, and integers. We also had another assessment of a test of mathematical aptitude too. We call it the TOMA. In December, he earned a grade equivalent of 6/7. And look, we did an error

analysis. His errors are with exponents, unlike fractions, decimals, percents, and solving for variables. All of his assessment data is consistent with observations by the algebra teacher. See how we

wove it together? His need is accuracy of fluency with real numbers and expression, including integers, fractions, decimals, and percent in order to succeed in algebra I and subsequent classes. Now in

this case, we used the standard, but we only used part of the standard. So if you're writing this goal, that's all you need to use. There's the tools you'll use. One more example. Selena is in tenth

grade, and this is an example of a goal that is not an academic goal, but supports her academic goal. She has a specific learning disability in reading. She wants to go to college. She'd like to

become a teacher or psychologist. She has a measurable annual goal for reading comprehension. And just quickly, she's included with co-teaching. Her ForeSight and Study Island data, along with teacher

input, indicates that she struggles with expository text. She does become confused with multiple step directions, especially within writing. She may need to have directions clarified, extra time to

complete a test or assignment, or have tests read orally. So these are some of the accommodations that she might need. But in college, she's going to have to disclose her disability. She's going to

have to request support. But right now in tenth grade, she's apprehensive about asking for assistance only from the learning support teacher. So she's relying on teachers to provide accommodations.

She's only requested accommodations twice in a whole semester. So her need is to develop skills and habits that allow her to disclose her disability, tell instructors and professors what she needs,

find effective ways to seek help. And we've made the connection with the career, education, and work standards because these attitudes and work habits will support her in her post-secondary goals. And

there are the tools to work on that goal. So what I will do is we will, even if the webinar goes longer, we will show you the examples that we completed. But we're going to give you a few minutes at

least to play around with this. If I had to give a suggestion to prioritize, I would say work on this table first because that will help you. I want you to think about what you really want the

students to do. By the way, at the back of the handout that you downloaded are larger sheets for you to write on if you would prefer to use those. We're going to give you until 11:30. We know that's

not sufficient time, but it will get you started. We're going to give you about another 45 seconds and then we're going to ask you to come back. We have a number of questions to answer. Okay, we're

back. And Michael is going to begin with some of the questions that have come in. COMPUTER: Welcome to GoToWebinar, web events made easy. MICHAEL STOEHR: One of the questions that has come in is --

hang on one second. Sorry, I'm back. Okay. All right, sorry about that. One of the questions that came in was looking at how to show this alignment for the process from present ed levels to -- through

the grid to the goals. So I'm going to go ahead and just pull up an example that we use in our trainings so you all can see that. So just give me one second and let's look at that piece. So this is an

example for a student that we have used before in training called Philip. And basically what we are looking at, you have the present ed levels listed. In this particular example, one of the things

that he needs is to work on proofreading skills because he has difficulty in writing three or four sentences that are correctly proofread. And he is looking at having a job where it's part of the job

he's going to be having to write estimates up for folks. So when we look at prioritizing his needs, and this would be in the needs section, one of the areas that he needs to work on is improving

written language by using a consistent strategy for proofreading and self-correcting errors. So when we look in his grid, and this is actually the question that came up several times today, where

would you reference the measurable annual goals in the grid? And somebody else asked kind of what does this IEP section three look like? So this is an example of that. So basically you have the post-

secondary goal at the top. Then you have the courses of study that he's involved with. And then where we referenced this particular IEP goal is in the body of the grid under the services and

activities. And again, we're considering this measurable annual IEP goal a service. So it's stated here, to continue to improve writing and editing skills using self-monitoring strategy. It's

referenced there. And then we have two activities listed for this particular student in this example. We have the activity of using a digital format and then he's going to look at developing a list of

questions. And both of those are activities and they do not have measurable annual goals connected with them. And then that would lead to this measurable annual goal example for Philip, which is

utilizing a graphic organizing strategy to help him in his writing area. And then we would monitor the progress for that particular goal area. So that's just an example of what that would look like.

Okay, we have some other questions that have come in, okay, including this question about regular education students. And I'm sorry, students that are involved in the regular education programming and

they have general education teachers working with them. And I guess the question is really getting at is there an expectation for general education teachers to monitor progress for students? And I

think that really what we -- the answer to that is not really a cut and dry, simple answer. It really depends on your high school and the systematic processes that are in place with your special

education and general education staffs. When we work with school districts in some places, it is a very fluid process in which the students IEPs are shared. Both the general education teacher and the

special education teacher are monitoring progress for a particular student. However, it does take time to set that up. There has to be consideration and training done between both the special

education and general education staff. But I guess the question's getting at can it be done? Yes, and it is happening in certain places across the commonwealth. Okay, another question that came in was

regarding, you know, is there a rule of thumb or best practice regarding the number of measurable goals that an IEP should have? And really for that question it depends on that particular student and

the number of goals that they need to have addressed to meet their needs for an IEP year. I will say, though, I know in writing IEPs in the past and if we go back even ten years, oftentimes we were

writing 40, 50 goals for some students. And that really is an excessive amount of goals. You know, we really need to look at specific skills that the student needs to work on. We need to hone in on

those skills and be able to monitor progress on those goals over the course of the IEP year. And if you have even 15 goals, it's going to be very difficult to do that. So it's really -- it's looking

at the needs and, as Rosemary was saying, prioritizing those needs to be as specific as possible. Another question came in regarding what is the purpose of a short-term objective, and is it required?

And short-term objectives are only required for students that are taking the PSSA. I'm sorry, the PASA, the PASA, the PASA. And however, they are -- you know, I think for some teachers, they feel that

it's a good idea to utilize short-term objectives. But again, they're only required for students taking the alternative assessment. The purpose of them really is to kind of define or break down the

tasks that are necessary in order to complete that annual goal for a student. There were several questions that came in regarding SDIs and are those required as far as addressing a need? And can you

address needs as specially designed instruction? And yes, you can. So when you look at the needs of a student, they can either be addressed as measurable annual goals or specially designed

instruction. They can be addressed in either way. We had some questions that came in regarding private schools. And one of the questions was concerning training currently occurring with approved

private schools around the areas of secondary transition and of goal writing. And the answer to that is yes, we have incorporated approved private schools as part of the Indicator 13 training protocol

over the last several years. So if your school hasn't been involved in the training, they will or should be included in the training in the next upcoming years. Okay, another question that came in was

dealing with this -- students that are taking the alternative assessment and kids that have complex needs, and how this whole discussion today about standards alignment applies to those students. And

really we are looking at for all students. And Rosemary stated this at the beginning of the day's webinar. All students we should be looking at referencing the standards and developing their

measurable annual goals. We should also be looking at academic areas for all students, even if it's really at a very, you know, basic level, meeting that student where they are in their skill

development. However, we should still be referencing those standard areas. Rosemary, I know you have some other questions that you had. ROSEMARY NILLES: Yes, there was a question regarding the

comprehensive diagnostic tools and where to get that, or at least where to find out about it. And we would suggest that you go back to the standards aligned system web portal, and that's on an earlier

slide, and click the tab for Fair Assessments. And it has actually its own tab for information about the comprehensive diagnostic tool. Okay. Many of the questions that came in I hope I answered by

showing you a number of different kinds of assessments. Another question is, what is the difference between indicating a grade level percentage versus the percent the student achieves a goal? And

that's a very big difference. A grade level percentage is a combination most frequently of classwork, homework, tests, might even involve class participation, whereas the percent of time that a

student achieves a particular skill-specific goal is very specific. And this is a good time to say that not every goal is measured by percent. It may be happening three times per week or a score of

such and such on a rubric. It may be three out of -- it may be three consecutive assessments. So a percentage is frequently used, but it's not the only way to monitor how well a student is doing

towards a goal. I believe Michael has answered the question about how do you have time to do progress monitoring. And when we do our Indicator 13 trainings in the district, we often do find that there

are systemic issues that make it difficult for special education teachers to get into the general ed classrooms. And that's why our most successful schools do have partnerships with general ed and

special education teachers, clear delineation of responsibilities, but we try to find easy ways to monitor progress. There was a question about Kevin's non-example goal and how could it be changed to

correct. Well, we don't have present levels, and that was part of the problem with that goal. There were the present levels that accompanied that goal gave no information whatsoever about how Kevin

was doing in these areas. And so we, at this point, couldn't even begin to tell you how to fix it because we don't have baseline. But if we did have baseline and if that baseline included a number of

skill areas, we would prioritize. And we may select more than one. We're not saying you can only have one goal for reading. But it could be separated out into a couple of different areas if needed.

Another question about the AIMS algebra assessments. Those are standardized and these are not something develop by the schools. There are norms to go with them. As far as where to get them, I know our

PaTTAN staff has done training. I know the IU staff have done training. And I believe on our PaTTAN website, if you look under Math, you will at least get information about how to access them. They're

easy to use and very helpful. Which also the -- someone else asked a question about Caroline's goal. Only two areas, solving equations and inequalities are monitored. So how is the progress tool

arranged so that you can assess just these two skills? There may be other skills assessed on the AIMS Foundations probe, but they're going to get so close to these critical skills that we feel in this

case that it is a sufficient progress monitoring tool to get at those skills. And it will be monitoring other essential skills as well. There was another question about any of the assessments used as

examples, require permission to reevaluate. They certainly could be done within the context of a reevaluation. And I hesitate to say that they would or would not because it would depend on have you

used tools such as this in the past? But CDTs, ForeSight, PSSA, ongoing progress monitoring, these are things that we would expect to see in IEPs whether or not a diagnostic assessment such as

Woodcock Reading Mastery would require a permission to evaluate. It would depend on whether you've been using that on a regular basis, so that would be a question for your administrator or your

solicitor. MICHAEL STOEHR: We also had a question about should the present education levels appear in the goal itself as well as in the present ed levels section of the IEP? And it really isn't

necessary to have that information specifically stated in the goal. And sometimes, to be honest, that becomes very confusing when you state the information in the goal. You really should be able to go

back and find that baseline data in the present ed levels. it's stated as a need and then you write your goal based on what is that student going to be working on over the course of this IEP year.

Another comment came in and it was just in reference to utilizing the career, education, and work standards. And I guess should just reemphasize that using the career, education, and work standards is

an important component as we're working with students in transition in referencing those standards and developing goals for students that are kind of outside of the traditional reading, writing, math

areas. So it really is important just to kind of reiterate that. We had another question that came in, and sorry if the response was confusing regarding students' needs, but really those students'

needs an be addressed either as specially designed instruction or as a measurable annual goal. As you're writing those, you can reference them in both of those ways in the IEP. However, when this came

in, you do need to have at least one measurable annual goal in an IEP. I mean, sometimes we see IEPs and they do not list any measurable annual goals. And really how else are you addressing those

needs for that kid and what are you monitoring for progress for that student? ROSEMARY NILLES: Right, and I would add it is correct that things listed in needs can be addressed via measurable annual

goals, especially designed instruction related services, and sometimes even goals or activities in the grid. But when we're listing a specific skill deficit in the list of needs, that was the basis

for my comment that when we're listing a specific skill deficit, that does need a measurable annual goal. MICHAEL STOEHR: To answer a number of questions, the presentation that we presented today, the

webinar slides for the PowerPoint as well as the examples, are posted on the PaTTAN website. And the examples, and we'll be looking at those in a minute, of how we looked at those three case studies

as far as the assignment that you were doing, the you do piece, will also be posted. Rosemary is going to be going over those in a minute. ROSEMARY NILLES: Another goal about AIMSweb, on the AIMSweb

site they do provide goals. Is using the goal provided by AIMSweb sufficient? And I haven't looked at those recently, but I would say do they align to Pennsylvania academic standards? Simply writing a

goal to oral reading fluency is not what we're recommending. I know we've done that in the past and we've actually in years past in our progress monitoring trainings taught how to write a goal to oral

reading fluency. But we'd really like to be a little broader and list the specific skills that the student needs to do. And then in that case, oral reading fluency might be an indicator of overall

progress in decoding or even comprehension. MICHAEL STOEHR: With CDTs and their location and where to find them and what the CDT stands for, it is classroom diagnostic tool. And I believe Rosemary did

mention this. They can be found on that SAS or the standards aligned system portal. And it actually has a tab for that. So that, just to kind of reiterate what that is and where you can find it. Okay.

Rosemary, if you want to, I'm going to go ahead and move this. And if you want to show the examples -- ROSEMARY NILLES: I just have a couple more questions. Three out of five consecutive probes. The

person who asked that question is exactly right. Once a student did the skill three times in a row, they have mastered this skill. Brad's IEP goal, a couple of comments around this. The standard

doesn't match the wording to Brad's goal. Remember, it doesn't necessarily have to be an exact match. We looked at examples -- or we looked at the standards as a basis. Another comment about Brad's

goal was too complicated. It is complicated. And you might have written that goal in a different way. That's one way of doing it, and that's why we made the point there's no right or wrong way. So

perhaps another person found a simpler way to monitor progress towards improving that vocabulary, and that would be great as long as it meets all the requirements of a goal and has an end point.

MICHAEL STOEHR: A question came in as far as where to find the career, education, and work standards. And you can find those on the career and technical education website. If you go to that particular

site, those are listed. And they actually have a number of resources, so they go along with those career, ed, and work standards. Again, they're found at the career education, career tech ed site for

Pennsylvania. ROSEMARY NILLES: Well, you can find them there and that's a fabulous set of resources on that website. However, you can also get them right on our SAS portal. Click the Standards and you

can find them by clicking Standards, or you can also download them as a PDF document. And we just -- we really like the career, educational, work standards because they give so many ideas for the

self-determination and organization and actual movement towards post-school outcomes. MICHAEL STOEHR: Okay. And again, because a couple more folks just typed [inaudible]. The examples for the your

turn section, we are going to go over those in a minute. But those are also going to be posted to the PaTTAN website. It may just take a few minutes to be posted. One of the support people are putting

those up now. ROSEMARY NILLES: Yeah, they may already be there, in fact. MICHAEL STOEHR: Okay. All right, so let's go ahead. I'm going to move this down and let me go over to the other computer. And

Rosemary, if you want to talk about the examples. ROSEMARY NILLES: Okay, so quickly I'm going to give you some completed examples. William's goal for writing: given biweekly writing prompts in English

class and use of a spell checker of his choice. William will use correct grammar, spelling, and sentence formation as evidenced by writing and editing a three paragraph essay and scoring at least ten

out of 12 points on a conventions rubric on five out of six final products. So that's telling how often, how well, how consistently, and what exactly the behavior is, as well as the specially designed

instruction. William will record his goal on a graph. Teacher will also maintain a graph. And then certainly the teachers would be reviewing other random writing assignments across the curriculum,

okay? So we would be looking for that skill to be generalized. That's one way to write the example, and perhaps some of you had other ways. And maybe they were better ways, and that's fine as long as

your goals include the parts and are meaningful an able to be progress monitored. Okay, Jason's algebra. This was the one that we only used part of the standard given weekly mixed skills probes. He'll

solve linear equations and inequalities with real numbers and expressions, including integers, fractions, decimals, and percents, scoring at least eight out of ten correct on five consecutive

assessments. Notice in this one we didn't use a percent. We said eight out of ten correct. There will be ten -item questions. We could have used a percent. There is the reference to the standard, but

notice on this one we put some goal-specific SDA, SDI, specially designed instruction. He's going to practice on problems with real numbers and expressions, including integers, fractions, decimals,

and percents. His probes will be graphed. His scores will be graphed, reported every nine weeks. Teachers will also be looking at those items on ForeSight, classroom formative assessments and CDT as

well. Lastly, Selina. What we said we wanted Selina to do was to start asking for help by herself. And when you download the completed examples. We'll see how we completed the little grid that helps

us to select a skill or to develop the goal. Given classroom assignments or assessments, Selina will independently approach the instructor to request assistance or clarification at least one time per

week for four out of five weeks. And we even listed the baseline as approximately two times per semester with prompting. That's not necessary to list that baseline, just kind of gave us a reminder of

how seldom she was doing it. Is this realistic? Perhaps we want to say -- we want her to do this at least once every other week or at least once a month. It depends on the student, their classes, and

what the IEP team decides. How would Selina measure that? We like to put the onus back on the student, logging the contacts in her assignment book, reviewing once a week with her case manager. So

maybe there would be a week where she didn't have that opportunity. So you might have chosen to write that goal differently. Here's what we want you to think about. How'd you do? Were you happy with

what you did? I realize you may not have had enough time. Did you feel it was something you'd like to share? Better than what we offered? It includes most of the IEP's criteria? Well, maybe it wasn't

measurable enough or vague, but hopefully you learned today what to do to improve it. Or maybe you are feeling like you still need assistance. And that's fine. Learning to write measurable annual

goals is not something that happens in a two-hour period, so we urge you to work with your supervisor, your colleagues if you have colleagues who are skilled and confident, as well as your IU tac.

Certainly in your Indicator 13 trainings, those of you who are being trained or who have been trained, you have IU and PaTTAN consultants that you can connect with. We just want to emphasize again

that all the pieces must fit together: the present levels, the assessment data, what you write in your list of needs, how you reference your measurable annual goals in the grid, and how you go on to

write the measurable annual goal. It has to make sense. And it needs to really help that student move along towards his or her post-secondary goal. So we want you to think of the IEP as a single unit.

IEP goals do not stand alone. We hope that this has been informative for you. we thank you for your participation and for your wonderful questions. We have Michael's and my contact information on the

very last slide. You may certainly contact us if you have additional questions. We thank you again and we wish you all a good day, and we thank you for your work on behalf of kids.