Dyslexia – The Incredible Disappearing Goals (Photo by Wonderlane/flickr)
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What could I possibly mean this time? A disappearing goal? Was the goal written with a special pen? Did the goal disappear when the student met the goal? Nope and Nope. What happened was really a brilliant and quite creative way for a school district to solve the problem of failing to teach a child with dyslexia to improve his reading and spelling. Below is the story of the incredible missing goals and other IEP magic tricks that every parent and/or advocate should be on the lookout for.
I would like you to meet Jason. He is entering the fifth grade and has had an IEP since the middle of third grade. His initial assessment included documentation of teacher comments from each grade who reported that Jason had difficulty with phonemic awareness, fluency and spelling. He has dyslexia. His initial IEP included two goals, fluency and spelling high frequency words. His fluency goal was to read a third grade passage (he would have been in 4th grade by the next IEP) with 90 CWPM – not a terrible goal, right? Now, I am not going to get into the fact that there only two goals and no baselines…yadda yadda yadda (for more about goal writing and dyslexia: http://www.specialeducationadvisor.com/dyslexia-its-all-about-goals-goals-goals/.) What I have to tell you is much more interesting.
