Reaching Struggling Learners
Reaching Struggling Learners
# 82: Optimizing Special Education: The Case for Mastery and Effective Goal Setting
Are special education goals leaving our students in a lurch? That’s the burning question I tackle head-on as I dissect the pitfalls of nonsensical goals and the cookie-cutter 80% accuracy benchmark that's often accepted as the norm. Through my experiences at Teaching Struggling Learners, I've witnessed firsthand the transformative power of setting precise, foundational goals. We'll break down why aiming for less than 100% mastery in critical skills can do a disservice to learners, and how committing to complete understanding can revolutionize interventions and streamline progress monitoring.
Next up, I'll lay out the roadmap for articulating student progress in a manner that resonates with parents and provides a solid basis for advocating for additional resources and support. Stay tuned as I share strategies to help educators be the catalyst for their students’ educational success. With these insights, you'll be equipped to forge ahead with confidence, ensuring that every piece of data is not just a number but a stepping stone towards meaningful achievements for your students. So refill that coffee cup and get ready for a session that's set to change the game for you and your scholars.
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Links Mentioned in the Show:
https://teachingstrugglinglearners.com
My special ed teachers know the pain. New student comes in with goals that make absolutely no sense. I mean, honestly, some of the goals that we have read I mean all my special ed teacher friends, you know it, you are shaking your heads, yes, at this. Just, some goals come to you and you just you cannot make rhyme or reason of what they were trying to say, trying to get through and also mini rant. So we put 80% accuracy on just about every goal, right? 80% accuracy in four out of five trials. So they only have to know 80% of the stuff, 80% of the time. I mean, honestly, how much logic does that really make? But I mean, you know, we don't, we don't want to think too hard about all that. The reality is, with all this, the goals, the way that we're writing them right now, the way that we're writing them right now, it's just not a solid foundation for kids who desperately need a solid foundation to move on. So today we're going to talk about making good special ed goals.
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling Learners. I'm a boy mom and a veteran teacher. You're listening to the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast where we talk all about helping students succeed academically, socially and behaviorally. Thank you so much for tuning in. So I've talked about it for years now that the better your goals are, the better your progress monitoring is going to be, the easier your progress monitoring is going to be and finally, the better results that monitoring is going to be and, finally, the better results that you're going to get. I kind of feel like I'm beating a dead horse with this, but it's true, it's absolutely true, and it's even more true if it's if that's even possible. It's even more true for special education goals and those IEPs. When you have good goals, clear, explicit goals that are literally an idiot could read and understand what you're trying to go for, it helps you know exactly what to target and if the intervention or program or whatever it is that you're using is working and how fast it's working. Because the reality is, if something's working but it's just not working fast enough for our students to be able to make real progress, we should probably think very seriously about switching stuff up. But if we don't have clear goals, we can't have clear progress monitoring and we can't tell yes or no this is working or not working, or we should pitch it or we should keep it. So we really do have to make a whole lot better goals for our special education students.
Speaker 1:Now one of the things again that I have been saying for years and years and years when it comes to progress monitoring goals. I want to scream it from the rooftops when it comes to IEPs and special education goals, please, please, please, if you want to make the best goals possible for your students, always choose the most foundational skill. I know I know I've done it myself for years before I switched things up and started making, you know, really big changes in how I was teaching and writing goals. But we tend to want to pack so much into the goal because it's a year out and you know we want to make sure that you know this goal is, you know, rigorous enough and all that stuff. Guys, the kids are getting rigor in the gen ed classroom. Stop it. Look at the most foundational skill that that student is missing and project out. If you think that that student's going to get that in six months, then put that in the goal that six months from now, the student will be have mastered this goal with 100% accuracy, and then your next one goal could be the next step that you think that they need to do the next six months out, or however you want to put it like that. But the reality is, stop packing so much into a single goal. One goal needs to be attached to one foundational skill, the most foundational skill that that student has a gap in. And also, let's be honest, we're just going to. I'm going to put all my cards out on the table again. I'm getting into a habit of doing that here.
Speaker 1:But kids should know 100% of their letter sounds. They should be able to read 100% of the short A CVC words or be able to read 100% of the short vowel SH or CH or TH words. If you're putting it in a goal, let's be honest. The kids haven't really mastered it. If they can only do it 80% of the time, guys, that means that 20% they don't know. If we put in there that they're going to be able to identify 80% of the sounds, four out of five times. So 80% of the time they only have to know 80% of the sounds. Sometimes that's not mastering a goal. That's not mastering a goal.
Speaker 1:And let's be honest, for our students with special needs we know we've been there they either get it or they don't. Let's be honest. They either have the sounds down and they really have them down, they really have the sight words down, they really have it or they don't. And of course, we're thinking about this over multiple weeks, you know. Yes, obviously students will remember from day to day. They slowly catch up and you know they get more sounds on a day but they forgot two or three of them from yesterday. We get that, but overall, consistency-wise, those students either they get the sight words that are presented or they haven't learned them yet. There really isn't this 80% that we keep putting in.
Speaker 1:If we're honest with ourselves and we're actually tracking our data, we know, then, this whole 80%. If the kids are only getting 80%, four out of five times, they haven't mastered it. That skill is still something that they need to work on. So let's make sure that when we're talking about very finite things, which we should be talking about right, when we're talking about foundational skills for our students, they should, more likely than not, have it 100% or pretty darn close to it, right. And so, finally, if they master a goal, yay, wonderful, fantastic, celebrate it, that is wonderful. We can advance the skill once they've mastered it, right. If the kids and this kind of goes to what I was saying earlier about making sure that we are choosing foundational skills that are small enough, that are pinpointed enough that we can actually progress, monitor them, will have mastered 100% of their letter sounds and they do it in three months.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, pat yourself on the back. You are a fantastic and amazing teacher. You have hit the jackpot and you should probably make a million dollars. I mean, you're a teacher, so you should make a million dollars anyway, but that's beside the point. Celebrate it and then build on it. It's okay. It's okay to have a couple goals in there that say, hey, one is for letter sounds, the next one is CVCs. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1:You don't have to put them all in the same goal, because you're stealing from your students and you're stealing from yourself the ability to sit there and say, wow, look at this sweetie, you just mastered that big goal and you did it so quickly because of all your hard work and all my hard work as a teacher, and now we're going to move on to this even better goal and it's going to help you do all these other things. That's amazing. Don't steal the joy from that, because, goodness knows, in special education, those joys are that they are few and far between. At this point we got to start setting ourselves and our students up for success. We have to start really celebrating the wins because, let's be honest, we don't get that many. So don't steal them from yourself and don't steal them from your students by jamming a whole bunch of stuff into one goal because we want to make sure it's rigorous enough. Let's let's do this for ourselves, let's do that for our students, and this is something else. And this kind of goes back to what I was just saying about pinpointing the exact foundational skill. If you want to make really good special ed goals, be so specific that even your admin in your classroom or in your school building, your administrators no, no, your grandpa could pick up that IEP and would know what you're trying to accomplish. Leave absolutely nothing to question and don't be afraid to put an example in there. Don't be afraid.
Speaker 1:I put in several times that students. I didn't want my students they were practicing sight words and they had to, you know, get all these sight words. I didn't want them to be looking at a list of a hundred sight words. I wanted them to have their sight words on the cards and that they would be able to identify. You know, one card, one word on a card at a time so that they wouldn't get overwhelmed, and blah, blah, blah. But I put that in there and I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1:When my administrator went and read, read over that goal, she, she was able to say, oh, oh, do you have those cards? Yeah, I have the cards, of course, I have the cards, duh, but that's how specific you want your goals to be, so that anyone can pick up your IEP and go, oh, I know what they're working on. And, because you're going to have your data to back it up, I know how I can continue with this data. Or I know how I can help this student progress even faster in reaching this goal, because I mean that would be awesome, right, getting a little bit extra help with that. No one is ever going to say no to that, right.
Speaker 1:So I know that you have been through if you're a special education teacher, you have been through goal making, training and all that, and they focus on the wordage that the student will be able to. And then they want to put all this grandiose blast stuff in there and you have to have a percent of accuracy and then you have to have a number of trials or opportunities and shenanigans like that. If you got to put that in there, then you got to put that in there. I get it. But at the same time, if you don't just make your goals specific, make them measurable.
Speaker 1:I know it sounds like smart goals, but I'm not actually going to go all the way with this. They need to be specific enough that an administrator you know, the one that doesn't, you know doesn't really show their face in the hallways that often that one could pick this up and go, oh okay, I know what she's trying to do with this student. And that they're measurable, that it's something that you can actually put a number to, because those two things right there will make your goals amazing. You're going to make them understandable and you're going to make them something that you can actually show data on, and in a couple weeks we're going to talk them something that you can actually show data on. And in a couple of weeks we're going to talk about this Use that data to advocate for your own students, which I mean, let's be honest, we're all trying to do that at this point.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, I'll get off my soapbox until next week, and next week, we're going to talk about communicating that data, because you have those really good goals that you just made, right, I mean that we just talked about. We're going to talk about communicating that data because you have those really good goals that you just made, right, I mean that we just talked about, and you're going to be able to now collect that beautiful data and communicate it with parents in a way that they can understand, and then, after that, we're going to talk about how to use that data that same data from those really good goals to advocate for your students so that they can get the services and the supports that they really need. Until next time, may your coffee be strong, your students calm and, as always, your students progressing. Bye.