What happens if a Child doesn’t meet the IEP goals?
Before I get into my answer to the question I am not an attorney, I don't play one online (not even a little bit) and the information that I am going to provide is not legal advice nor a replacement for legal advice if you need it.
Q: What happens if a child doesn’t meet IEP goals? Do they just disappear? I’m looking at my son's IEP and three goals haven't been met and they are not included in the IEP for the next school year.
A: Dear Parent,
This is a really great question and is not as easily answered as it's not a yes or no answer to the bigger question - by not meeting goals has the district failed to provide a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). First is to understand that not meeting goals and not making meaningful progress are two different things. Not meeting a goal can indicate a denial of FAPE, but not necessarily so. Goals should not disappear from year to year just because the objective is not met.
Many times the team doesn't even discuss this and just tries to repeat goals, ignore those needs, switch goals to other areas (such as basic reading skills to fluency), write inappropriate goals without current baselines etc.
IDEA 2004 states in Section 300.320
(i) A statement of measurable annual goals, including academic and functional goals designed to—
(A) Meet the child’s needs that result from the child’s disability to enable the child to be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum; and
(B) Meet each of the child’s other educational needs that result from the child’s disability;
(ii) For children with disabilities who take alternate assessments aligned to alternate academic achievement standards, a description of benchmarks or short-term objectives;
(3) A description of—
(i) How the child’s progress toward meeting the annual goals described in paragraph (2) of this section will be measured; and
(ii) When periodic reports on the progress the child is making toward meeting the annual goals (such as through the use of quarterly or other periodic reports, concurrent with the issuance of report cards) will be provided;
If objective data collection is happening, many times it should be clear that a child is not on track to meet a goal before the annual due date of the IEP. The team is required to revise the IEP as necessary due to lack of progress.
The IEP team, including you, need to figure out what is necessary. Even though a goal not met doesn't automatically signal that a child was denied a FAPE it should trigger a thorough investigation as to why a goal wasn't met and what should be done next.
Have all needs been identified by evaluations?
Are the current present levels used to write those goals accurate?
Were the goals appropriate based on expected progress in a year?
Were the services appropriate in type and amount?
Were the services implemented as they were supposed to be?
Was the program research based?
Other things like attendance, placement, behavior etc should also be considered.
I would request a meeting with the district IEP team and ask the questions that you have from the IEP and the progress monitoring reports and data collection and center the conversation around the questions above.
This is why it's important to have not just the Progress Report but also the data collection given at the time of the reports.
Wishing you luck with your meeting!