Progress Monitoring and Collection

Goals and objectives in the IEP (Individualized Education Plan) should be individualized and measurable.  These IEP goals should be clear to anyone working with the child.  The task to be completed and the expected outcome should be clear as well.  If the objectives are clear, then monitoring the progress toward these goals is undoubtedly a crucial step.  Progress monitoring shows the small progress made over the course of days and weeks of working on the goals.  Sometimes in working with special needs children, progress may be slow, so it is crucial that teachers and other professionals (psychologists, speech and language pathologists, etc.) be able to monitor progress and see that the child is obtaining new skills as a result of the individualized teaching that is taking place.

Progress monitoring has other practical uses, other than the obvious which is to monitor the progress towards the goal.  Progress monitoring can also be used to help develop curriculum.  While IEPs are by definition to be "individualized", there may be similarities in the nature of disabilities based on the diagnosis, and developing specific goals and objectives to be used to monitor progress for one child with a speech delay may prove to be useful for another child, so progress monitoring can give a teacher specific tasks to work on with a number of children.  Progress monitoring may also be used to identify children who are not making adequate progress.  This is important because the IEP team meets annually to review the goals, and if progress is not being made, the team needs to know this and be able to try other methods to help the child. Perhaps adaptive equipment will be needed, or another type of professional may need to be called in.  The child may even need another placement so the LRE will need to be reconsidered.

Progress monitoring is done relatively frequently, on a daily or weekly basis.  The classroom teacher gets immediate feedback as to whether or not the goal has been met.  In progress monitoring, 80% or 8 of 10 trials is usually seen as "proficient" on a task, regarding IEP goals.  10 of 10 or 100% is seen as "mastery level" on a goal.  Progress monitoring is an instant way to give the teacher feedback on whether or not the student is successful toward meeting the goal.  The student gets feedback on his/her progress as well.  The teacher is able to "tweak" the curriculum if needed to help the student understand and meet the goal, or to determine and report if progress is not being made toward the goal over time.  When the student begins to make progress, that progress can be tracked and quantified until proficiency is met.  Therefore, the progress monitoring is a crucial and practical step in meeting the goals of the IEP.

Cook, Ruth E., Klein, M. Diane, and Tessier, A., (2008). Adapting Early Childhood Curricula for Children with Special Needs. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

Hosp, Michelle and Donaldson, Whitney, (2004). What Progress Monitoring Can Do for You. 15th Annual CASE Conference.