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by Lee Ann Jung
Table of Contents
The skills and behaviors a team selects to target form the foundation for the entire growth planning process. If we fail to focus on the goals that are the most important for the student's long-term success, the quality of the strategies and design of the plan are of little consequence. In this chapter, we will take on the important first step of the growth planning process: seeking team consensus on the most meaningful skills for the student to master during the year.
In an older paradigm of student support, it was the specialists who drove the determination of priority goals. Oftentimes, these priorities reflected the results of the standardized developmental or achievement measures. These were also the measures used to determine eligibility for special education services, and they were administered by school psychologists or specialists.
At first blush, this specialist-led process of identifying critical skills makes sense. After all, each of these specialists is the expert in his or her discipline and is the person best qualified to identify what the student needs to be able to do. And standardized instruments seem to be a sensible way to identify a student's greatest needs. However, as logical as this approach to selecting priorities seems, it misses so many factors that make each student an individual: his or her preferences, interests, motivators, classroom activities, routines, and performance relative to general curriculum standards.
Urie Bronfenbrenner (1977) remarked that "much of contemporary developmental psychology is the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time" (p. 513). He was absolutely right. The items from standardized diagnostic instruments, administered in a vacuum to students who are unique individuals, should not be the primary means of determining goals that will drive growth plans or shape IEPs. Instead, teams must take a more comprehensive look at the student—the whole child—and consider far more than test scores. The goal is to target the skills that affect that particular student's ability to access the general curriculum and succeed in school and beyond. These are the critical skills that reach across the curriculum and across time.
Before identifying these critical skills and discussing support needs, it is important that the team devotes time to celebrating the student's strengths and gaining deeper understanding of the student's interests, dreams, and priorities. That means getting the student's input—a 180-degree difference from setting goals based on test scores alone.
Students who are comfortable driving the IEP meeting should be invited to do so. Speaking in front of a team of adults may feel intimidating for other students, so teams will need to make decisions ahead of time about the best way to invite the student to share his or her experience. But all students must be part of rich conversations about their experience ahead of the meeting, and we must summarize and revisit their priorities during the meeting. No growth plan or IEP is meaningful if it does not honor the strengths, voice, and priorities of the student. This process of selecting skills should always feel like something that is being done with students, not to them.
The following six questions can help guide our discussions with students:
These questions are meant to provide general guidance, not a script to use with students. The questions should feel like natural, everyday conversational language, rather than an interview or protocol. Older students can also be asked about their dreams for the future and their plans after graduation. This part of the growth planning process is crucial if the plan is to truly be personalized with students and make a difference in their lives.
The person charged with facilitating the teaming process has the task of guiding the team to identify priorities for the growth plans. Again, the goal is not to identify every skill where a student needs support; it's about identifying priorities.
The following three questions should shape the team's discussion:
Each person on the team has a role in answering these questions.
Inquiry into the first question can begin with inviting the perspective of general education teachers, who brief the team on what students are expected to know and be able to do for the upcoming academic year. These teachers can also clarify what mastery of grade-level expectations looks like for the student's grade level. The discussion of standards and skills may involve review of the Common Core State Standards (National Governors Association [NGA] Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010a, 2010b) or other standards used by the school, such as the C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013) or the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (Achieve, 2013).
Specialists on the team can contribute by reviewing the student's progress data and leading a conversation about the student's performance on the grade-level expectations. For students who receive special education services, these data may be from the previous year's IEP goals, or the data may be a review of the student's recent performance in the classroom.
After the team has reviewed the student's skills relative to academic expectations for his or her grade level, it's time to ask which of these are critical skills. Again, the team should focus on the most important procedural knowledge for the student to master rather than on content knowledge that is isolated to a particular subject area at that grade level. For example, although the 6th grade social studies curriculum may include the topic of westward expansion, and a 6th grade student may need support to demonstrate competency with this topic, this is not something we would choose as a priority for a growth plan. As noted previously, critical skills are those that have an impact that reaches across subject areas and across grade levels. In this example, the critical skills team members might identify would be the ability to study events of the past and analyze problems; to apply knowledge to novel problems; or to take a position on a topic, develop a logical argument and rationale, and support the case with evidence.
When everyone on the team is involved in the conversation, complex patterns of skills and behaviors begin to emerge. Students may experience "motivation" or "engagement" differently with different people or in different contexts. Consequently, a student's behavior or skill expression can look different to different people, at different times of the day, or in different settings. The student's family, for example, might contribute insight into conditions or times of day during which the student finds it easier or more difficult to concentrate. Understanding a student's present level of performance as well as how the skill or behavior looks within general curriculum and home contexts is necessary to select goals that are meaningful.
Not every skill that students need can be found within the general curriculum standards. There are many skills and behaviors that students need to participate meaningfully in school routines, gain access to the general curriculum and learn, and have successful, happy lives. For example, students must be able to remain engaged with the curriculum and activities; communicate and collaborate with other students and adults; and organize their space, time, and materials throughout the day.
Skills in these areas can greatly affect a student's success, but frequently, even though parents or teachers may notice the student's struggle, these skills and behaviors do not make it onto a growth plan or IEP. Sometimes this is because the difficulty the student has is viewed as an inherent and unchangeable quality rather than a challenge that can be addressed through evidence-based support. Most of us have heard comments like "She is a student who has difficulty managing her time" or "He is a student who is always late with assignments."
But prerequisite skills and behaviors can, of course, be taught, and they are often as important to a student's success as mastery of any academic standard. Sometimes they are more important. As such, teaching these skills is a school's responsibility, and targeting them for growth is both sensible and correct.
There is no correct number of goals for growth planning or IEPs, but it is generally understood that adding more goals does not equal better outcomes for students. Instead, teams should select a reasonable number of goals that they agree are the most fundamental to the student's success across time. As schools begin the process of implementation, they may decide to begin with the achievable step of creating just one growth plan with each student.
Sometimes you'll find that team members want to continue adding goals to the IEP in order to be comprehensive. When parents advocate for additional goals, often it is because the IEP does not include goals for all of the student's needs. Although it may seem the right choice to try to create a comprehensive list of goals, the longer the list of goals, the more difficulty the team will have managing the implementation of strategies and coordination of data collection. Remember, this process is about intentional selection of skills to target. The student will still participate in the full curriculum.
Carmen is a 10th grade student in a suburban school district who qualifies for special education under the category of specific learning disability. Carmen also has been identified as gifted. She was first referred for special education services in 2nd grade, when her family and teacher became concerned about her reading fluency and comprehension.
Although Carmen's rate of reading continues to be a bit slower than her peers, she is now reading text at and above grade level with high-level comprehension skills. When presenting her thoughts verbally, she performs at or above grade level in all subject areas, but writing remains an area of need. Although Carmen's writing expresses thoughts with maturity, and the individual sentences she writes are frequently clear, she has difficulty organizing her thoughts into paragraphs and producing whole papers that are clear and cohesive. She is also working to improve her skills in the conventions of writing; spelling, punctuation, and grammar are all a struggle for her. Carmen receives intervention targeting her writing within the general education classroom and in a learning support classroom for one hour each week.
Because Carmen has a diagnosis that makes her eligible for special education, her planning meeting was a formal IEP meeting. Both of her parents, her general education language arts teacher, her special education teacher, a special education facilitator, and Carmen were at the meeting.
In the meeting, Carmen's facilitator guided the planning conversation from a discussion of Carmen's current strengths and areas where she needed support to the selection priorities for her success in the general curriculum. All team members were a critical part of the conversation. The general and special education teachers presented data and work samples of Carmen's current writing skills. And Carmen's parents shared their observations, joys, and concerns. This collaborative conversation generated a set of critical skills that have real meaning to Carmen and will play a real role in both her immediate and future success.
After welcoming everyone, the special education facilitator, Kay, kicked off the conversation by asking Carmen's parents how they thought everything was going this year. Carmen's mom, Claire, explained that she was thrilled with Carmen's reading progress. "It's been such a delight to watch Carmen finally take off with reading," she said. "Carmen, tell everyone about some of your favorite books."
Carmen, who had developed an interest in nonfiction texts about historical female leaders, told the team, "I just finished a book about Rosa Parks that was so inspiring. I love reading about strong women in history and the impact they've had on our world." Everyone smiled at Carmen's enthusiasm. She'd really come into her own this year, exhibiting strong opinions and a new level of maturity.
Kay asked Carmen's special education teacher, Liz, to discuss Carmen's progress in literacy skills. Liz showed graphs of data and work samples, saying, "You can see how Carmen exceeded her goal from last year. She is now on grade level in reading comprehension!" Everyone agreed that the progress had been remarkable, and Carmen's parents were delighted to hear that she was finally on grade level in this area.
Her teachers, Liz and Masha, went on to describe Carmen's improved reading fluency, explaining that her pace had improved so much that Carmen was now comfortable reading for pleasure. Carmen beamed at the description of her effort and accomplishment. Kay turned to Carmen and asked, "You really enjoy reading now, don't you?" "Yes," Carmen replied with a smile.
Kay then asked the team to discuss the grade-level standards for 10th grade for which Carmen would require support. They focused on Carmen's writing skills. Her language arts teacher, Masha, began the discussion by sharing two pieces of Carmen's writing. She showed the group the graded papers' feedback and pointed out how, in both lengthy texts, the number of errors Carmen made in punctuation, capitalization, and spelling increased dramatically after the first few paragraphs. Carmen's dad, Jeremy, nodded and said, "I'm usually the one to help with that homework if she needs it, and I've noticed the same problem with errors in her social studies work." Special education teacher Liz added, "This seems to be what happens on all work that requires multiple paragraphs. For students like Carmen, who both have a learning difference and are gifted, it can be difficult to do the heavy thinking necessary to really engage in the task of expressing complex concepts and at the same time remember punctuation and spelling."
Here, Carmen interjected, "I know it should be easy to remember commas and periods, but for me, it's way harder to remember that stuff than it is to write a good paper. Grammar rules and spelling and stuff like that are so boring, too," she admitted, with a half-smile. Everyone laughed and agreed with her that it wasn't the most interesting skill to learn, but it was necessary to communicate her thoughts in a way that makes them easy for others to understand.
Next, Masha turned to the language arts skill of organization and clarity of writing: "I think we are ready to target skills that will help Carmen organize her writing. I'd really like to see her use a clear topic sentence, include lots of rich supporting detail for each paragraph, and organize it all clearly into a paper with headings." Again, sharing examples of Carmen's writing, Liz pointed out Carmen's pattern of moving abruptly from topic to topic without fully developing any of the details. To Carmen, she said, "When I give you the chance to talk aloud about your topic, you knock it out of the park! You express well-developed thoughts that are organized and supported by many rich details." The challenge, Liz added, was to transfer this skill into the realm of writing. She explained that she had ideas for teaching this skill and could work together with the language arts teacher and other general education teachers to support Carmen in this area.
After confirming with the team, including Carmen, that there were no other academic skill areas where she needed support, Kay asked them to consider other skills Carmen might need to support her success in the areas they'd identified. Carmen's dad, Jeremy, shared, "I'm worried that Carmen always has a lot of late or missing assignments." Carmen's mom, Claire, agreed, saying, "I know she wants to remember her homework, but she forgets to use the agenda and can't seem to get her work done on time." Carmen agreed, too. "Sometimes I do the homework but forget to take it back to school. Sometimes I even get it to school but forget to turn it in! I don't know why I can't remember," she added. "I think it's because I get totally involved in what I'm doing and forget about things that aren't related to that."
Masha said, "I usually tell the class as a group at the beginning of the class to turn in any homework assignments, but Carmen sometimes doesn't turn one in. I wasn't sure if you hadn't completed the assignment, Carmen, or if you had but still weren't looking for it. This helps me understand so much better. Let's figure out a way to help you remember."
Claire and Jeremy provided context and filled in some details. Carmen had a hard time remembering lots of things at home and a hard time keeping up with her things. Jeremy said, "I don't know if you all know this, but Carmen carries all of her textbooks in a backpack at school because she doesn't want to use the locker. She is afraid she'll forget something or forget the combination." Carmen looked embarrassed and didn't say anything. Her mother asked, "Is the forgetfulness related to her learning difference, or is this just something that happens with some teenagers?" Liz explained that many students with neurologically based learning differences have difficulty remembering to do things and keeping up with their materials—it is related to executive function, which many teenagers are still developing. "I can give you more information on executive function," Liz said to Carmen and her family, who agreed that they would like to learn more.
The team concluded this part of the IEP meeting—and growth planning process—by drafting the critical skills outlined in Figure 2.1.
This chapter outlined the process for identifying critical skills as a team—the first step of the planning process and the step that guides its overall direction. The collaborative dialogue at the center of this step is necessary to ensure that growth plans improve students' outcomes.
In the next chapter, we will look more closely at the critical skills identified and consider the settings in which the team will deliver intervention and measure progress, focusing on connecting skills to the general curriculum and providing the appropriate support across contexts.
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