Abstract
Creating educationally useful and legally defensible Individualized Education Program (IEP) documents is one of the main skills demanded of special education services providers. Through periodic reauthorizations of federal special and general education law and constant modification through new case law at the state and federal level, it can be a challenging task to write an IEP which is both useful to the student and complies with all current rules and regulations. Although many school districts are adopting computerized IEP systems, IEP goal writing which drives much of curriculum and specialized academic instruction provided by the special education service providers is still a fundamentally human process. Within the state of California, two sample goal banks are available to guide an IEP team while writing standards-based and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) compliant academic goals. Unfortunately, these goal banks list many sample goals that do not address the present functioning level of students with mild-moderate cognitive disabilities and developmental delays in kindergarten through grade three. This project presents a new set of sample goals that may be more developmentally appropriate for students with mild-moderate cognitive disabilities and v developmental delays in kindergarten through grade three for two content areas, English/Language Arts and Mathematics. The California state content standards for Preschool and Kindergarten through Grade Three as well as the SEACO – CAPA II blueprints were organized into matrices by skill area in a developmental progression to aid in the understanding of how academic skills develop over time. Sample goals were written for critical skill areas based on the matrices to develop the readiness and foundational knowledge required for fluency in reading, comprehension, writing, number sense, algebra, measurement, geometry and data analysis (statistics readiness).