Is it okay to write maintenance goals such as “maintaining passing grades in all classes”?
Writing goals of this nature can be problematic and we do not recommend their use. One problem is that it sets up an issue of progress reporting and adds to the potential for having additional IEP meetings. For example, what happens at reporting time if the student is passing only 6 of 8 classes? Is he on track to meet his goal? How will you measure or know if the team should reconvene to discuss changing services or instructional strategies? Grades are often not sensitive enough measures to be able to make those kinds of decisions. Grades are important to assist in the understanding of how a student is doing in school. However, grades often are based upon things other than whether the student is demonstrating mastery of a particular skill set. For example, sometimes grades are based on participation in class, timeliness of assignments, effort, attitude, etc., as well as the student’s accuracy of performance. While all of these things are important, they may or may not help in the unde
