IEP Progress Monitoring in New Hampshire: How to Track Whether Your Child Is Actually Making Progress

By the end of a school year, many parents receive IEP progress reports that say "making progress" for every goal—and their child has not made meaningful educational gains. Progress monitoring done correctly prevents this. Progress monitoring done as a compliance exercise just delays the conversation.

What New Hampshire Requires

Under IDEA and New Hampshire's Ed 1109 rules, the IEP must specify:

• How your child's progress toward annual goals will be measured
• When periodic progress reports will be provided to parents

The frequency of progress reports must be at least as often as report cards are issued for non-disabled students. In most New Hampshire schools, that means three to four times per year. If your child receives progress reports less frequently than this, that is a procedural violation.

But "at least as often" is a floor, not a ceiling. For students with significant behavioral or academic needs, quarterly progress reports may not catch problems quickly enough. The IEP can specify more frequent reporting—monthly, or even weekly data summaries—if the IEP team agrees.

What a Progress Report Should Actually Tell You

A progress report that says "making progress" without data is not a progress report. Under IDEA, progress must be reported based on the specific measurement methods documented in the IEP goal. If the goal says "as measured by bi-weekly curriculum-based measurement probes," the progress report should reference actual probe scores, not a teacher's general impression.

What useful progress data looks like:

For a reading fluency goal (target: 80 correct words per minute by end of year):

• October: 52 words per minute
• January: 61 words per minute
• March: 68 words per minute

This is a data-supported progress report. You can see the trajectory. You can project whether the student is on track to meet the goal. You can identify the rate of growth needed to close the gap.

What inadequate progress data looks like:

• "Making steady progress"
• "Working toward goal"
• "Goal partially met"

These phrases have no data behind them. They cannot be used to evaluate whether the current level of service is appropriate, whether the goal itself was calibrated correctly, or whether a methodology change is needed.

How to Build Your Own Progress Tracking System

Don't wait for the school's quarterly reports to tell you whether your child is making progress. Build your own tracking system.

For academic goals: Ask the case manager or service provider to share raw data points—curriculum-based measurement scores, test percentages, work sample scores—at regular intervals. Even informal weekly data collected by the teacher is useful. Keep a running log in a spreadsheet with the date, setting, and score.

For behavioral goals: If the IEP contains a behavioral goal with an interval data collection method (e.g., 5-minute interval recording), ask for copies of the raw data sheets monthly. If the district is not collecting the data specified in the IEP, the goal has no basis for measurement—and that failure to collect data is itself an IEP implementation problem.

For related services: Keep a calendar of scheduled versus delivered sessions. If your child is scheduled for 45 minutes of speech therapy per week and the SLP documents 30 minutes delivered on average, you have a measurable service gap that forms the basis of a compensatory education claim.

What to Do When Progress Is Insufficient

When data shows your child is not on track to meet their annual goal, or shows regression instead of growth, you have the right to request an IEP team meeting at any time to discuss the data and consider adjustments.

Put the request in writing to the case manager and Special Education Director:

"I have reviewed [Child's] progress data for the [goal description] goal and am concerned that the current rate of progress is not sufficient to meet the annual target. I am requesting an IEP meeting to review the data, examine whether the current services and methodology are appropriate, and determine whether changes are needed."

At the meeting, the team should examine:

• Has the service been delivered consistently as specified in the IEP?
• Is the goal itself calibrated correctly (was it too aggressive or too conservative)?
• Is the instructional methodology producing the expected growth?
• Are there environmental or personal factors affecting progress?

If the service was not delivered consistently, compensatory education is on the table. If the methodology is not working, the team may need to consider more intensive or different services.

Creating a Simple IEP Progress Tracking Template

For each goal in the IEP, create a tracking row:

Date each entry. Note the source of the data (teacher-collected probe, SLP session note, etc.). Flag any quarter where data was not provided or where progress has stalled.

This document is yours. Bring it to every IEP meeting. When the school presents its own progress summary, compare it to your record. Discrepancies between what the school reports and what the data actually shows are worth exploring.

Progress Monitoring and Annual Review

The annual IEP review is driven by progress data. If a goal was not met, the team must decide: Was the goal too ambitious? Was the service insufficient? Was the methodology wrong? The answer should come from data, not from a general observation that the student "worked hard."

If goals were not met and no adjustments are proposed for the coming year, push back. Ask specifically what will change in the next year's services, frequency, or methodology to produce better growth.

The New Hampshire IEP & 504 Blueprint includes a printable IEP progress monitoring template, guidance on requesting raw data from service providers, and a framework for analyzing progress reports and identifying when insufficient progress triggers the right to request a program review.

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