ALERT! Get your pens,and emails ready!!!

June 10, 2002

Senate Committee May Eliminate IEP Short-term Objectives

A bill reauthorizing certain parts of IDEA is now being drafted by the Senate
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and it may be introduced as
early as June 21, 2002. Members of the committee are seriously considering
including a provision in the bill to eliminate short-term objectives in IEPs.

Short-term objectives provide students, teachers and parents with periodic
benchmarks to measure the progress of special education students over the
course of the school year. If short-term objectives are eliminated, there
will be no way to measure the incremental progress that students make toward
reaching annual goals during the course of a marking period. Eliminating
short-term objectives would reduce accountability in schools and would deny
parents the information they need to make informed decisions as members of
the IEP team.

Short-term objectives are especially important to students with Down syndrome
or other developmental disabilities. In order to effectively measure
progress for many of these students, annual goals need to be broken down into
the steps leading up to the mastery of those goals. Often progress consists
of only a few short steps at a time, and it is difficult to predict how long
it will take to attain a particular goal. Short-term objectives enable the
IEP team to break down goals into realistic expectations for the student for
a grading period. They also enable teachers to prepare monthly, weekly and
even daily course work and classroom activities that bear a direct
relationship to the overall annual goals of the student.

Quarterly progress reports on short-term objectives are often the only
meaningful “report cards” students and parents receive during the school
year. General education students usually receive report cards assessing their
progress for a given quarter. Why should parents of children with
disabilities be denied their “report card” — a meaningful quarterly report
on short-term objectives and annual goals?

Please fax, call or email members of the Senate committee today urging them
not to eliminate short-term objectives in the reauthorization bill that they
will consider later this month or in July. Faxed letters to members of the
committee are most effective, but if you are unable to fax a letter, a
telephone call or email to the Senator’s office is also effective. Because
of increased security measures, regular mail usually takes several days to
reach Senate offices. Time is of the essence. Contact all members of the
Senate Committee today!

If you need more information on the importance of short-term objectives in
IEP, please go to the NDSS website at www.ndss.org and click on Advocacy
News. You will find an NDSS position paper on IEPs that goes into greater
detail. .

Please fax, call or email today!