As a Special Education teacher, writing an IEP is the biggest aspect of our job.
The IEP Progress Report is a way to measure student growth and progress towards meeting their IEP goals. This report is typically given to parents at the end of each reporting period when general education teachers would send home report cards (but check the student’s IEP too because it will be outlined in the child’s IEP!).
What’s are the components of an IEP Progress Report?
The progress report is typically generated by your districts IEP program, but should include the following:
- The students annual IEP goals
- Any benchmarks or objectives for the annual goals
- How the progress towards each goal will be measured
- How the student is performing on the annual goal
- Comments and a summary on data collected to show the progress that is being made towards meeting their IEP goals.
What information should the teacher should be including in the IEP Progress Report?
Here are some components to look at to make sure you have all of the information needed for a good IEP Progress report:
- Ensure that during the IEP meeting, SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time oriented) goals are written, including objectives (if your district requires them)
- A graph of your students data points that clearly shows how the student is progressing and how close they are to mastering that goal
- A detailed log of the data points collected including who collected it, what day, and how the student progressed.
- Comments of whether or not the student is progressing towards their annual goal including evidence from the teachers, the parents, the related service providers and anyone else who works with the student.
How to Write an IEP Progress Report
Now you’ve got all of your data collected and the information you need. So what should be on the IEP Progress Report?
- A breakdown of each goal.
- When an IEP goal is written, most places require you to have benchmarks or objectives. These show the steps that will be taken and monitored to how a student will make progress towards this goal. In an IEP progress report, you want to document if those objectives are being met in order to make progress towards mastery of an IEP goal.
- Data points
- As a student’s IEP progresses, it is essential that data is collected accurately and always kept up to date – some districts even have a required minimum amount of data points needed per goal, per reporting period to show consistency. It is vital that the data collected is reflected in the students IEP progress report.
- If it is noted that there is insufficient data or that a child has not yet met an objective or goal, make sure to note why – is it simply because they need more time, are there behaviors preventing this goal from being achieved, are there too many absences or incomplete work? Parents need to know what their child is doing and how they are progressing, no matter what the outcome.
- A brief summary of the student’s progress
- Comments from special education teachers, general education teachers, and other service providers that work with the student should be incorporated, stating input on whether the student is making progress along with supporting evidence and data points that have been collected.
As someone who is writing the IEP Progress Report, what is something you always make sure to put in there? What is something that your district requires you to do to ensure fidelity of the data collected and presented to the parents? Tell us in the comments below!
