The IEP can be a daunting task even for experienced parents. The IEP sets the tone of what type of education your child will be getting. It needs to lay out the educational goals for your child and the services that they are to receive (from the school district) in order to meet the goals. The use of the communication device in itself should not be a goal on a child's IEP, but rather a related or assistive service in helping to meet a child's goal. When writing a goal for a student, the focus needs to be on the goal or task rather than on the device. Writing a goal that simply states that the child will use the device, but not how and to what outcome, is not helpful in the educational life of the child.
Below are some examples of poor IEP goals. These examples are too vague to be measurable and will add nothing to further your child's education:
1. During speech, Anna will use an FM System.
2. Ola will wear a voice output communication device during all school hours.
3. Using a talking keyboard and mouse system, Jack will do his homework.
None of the above examples stated the outcome for which the devices were to be used, just that they were to be used. IEP goals need to be very specific and spell out exactly what needs to happen for the goal to be achieved. The goals need to be measurable.
There is a template that can be followed when writing an IEP goal: Using (state the communication device), (student's name) will (state goal) with (number) percent accuracy in (number of times). The following are examples of IEP goals that involve the use of communication devices.
1. During speech, with the use of the FM system, Anna will produce "f" and "s" in all positions of words given an immediate model, with 80 percent accuracy in eight out of 10 trials.
2. Using a talking word processing program, Jack will read selected text and answer questions about the main ideas and essential details, with 80 percent accuracy in 20 trials.
3. Using the pre-programmed word banks in a picture-based word processing system, Ola will complete three paragraphs (consisting of at least three sentences each) of writing over 12 consecutive English periods, with 85% accuracy as to proper sentence structure.