IEP Progress Monitoring in Nunavut: How to Track Your Child's ISSP Goals

Your child's ISSP has been signed. The goals are written. The supports are supposed to be in place. Now what?

Many parents in Nunavut discover that the ISSP is treated as a once-a-year administrative task: it gets written in September, filed away, and then reviewed — maybe — at the end of the school year. What was supposed to be a living document becomes a paper record of intentions.

This is not what the Nunavut Education Act envisions. And it's not what the territory's own assessment philosophy — Ilitaunnikuliriniq, the foundation for dynamic assessment — requires. Nunavut's approach explicitly moves away from static, one-time-per-year evaluations toward continuous monitoring of actual student progress. Knowing how that's supposed to work — and what to do when it doesn't — is essential for parents who want to hold the system accountable.

What Ilitaunnikuliriniq Means for Progress Monitoring

Ilitaunnikuliriniq is Nunavut's foundational philosophy of dynamic assessment. It describes learning not as a pass/fail event measured once a year but as a continuous movement through developmental stages — from emergent to transitional to consolidating to applying, and so on.

In practice, this means:

• Progress should be tracked regularly — not just at report card time
• The data collected should reflect actual skill development, not just compliance with the plan
• Adjustments to the ISSP should happen during the school year in response to what the data shows — not only at the annual review
• Cultural context and community knowledge should inform how progress is understood and measured

When you see your child's ISSP goals described in measurable terms — "80% accuracy on 3 consecutive probes" or "4 of 5 observed transitions" — those percentages and frequencies are designed to be trackable. Progress monitoring is the process of actually tracking them.

Who Is Responsible for Collecting Progress Data

Progress monitoring in a Nunavut school involves several people:

The classroom teacher tracks academic goal progress through regular formative assessments — reading probes, math checks, writing samples, and observational notes.

The Student Support Assistant (SSA) collects behavioral and social data through daily observation logs — recording frequency of targeted behaviors, number of prompts required, duration of on-task work, and communication attempts.

The Student Support Teacher (SST) synthesizes the data, reviews trends across goals, and determines whether the plan is working.

You, the parent, are an important source of data that none of these people can collect: how your child is doing at home, what they report about school, behavioral patterns you notice in the evenings or on weekends, and whether they are generalizing skills learned at school to other settings.

A well-implemented ISSP makes explicit who collects what data, how often, and how it is reported to the family.

What Progress Reports Should Look Like

You are entitled to regular progress reports on your child's ISSP goals. Not just the standard report card — a specific update on each goal in the ISSP, with data.

A good progress update tells you:

• What the goal was: Specific, as written in the ISSP
• What data was collected: How was progress measured, and how often?
• What the current level is: Where is your child now relative to the goal?
• What the trend shows: Is progress happening? Is it stalling? Is the goal already met?
• What changes are planned: If the student is not progressing, what is the team doing about it?

Vague statements like "doing well" or "making progress" are not progress reports. If your child's formal ISSP review consists of this kind of language, you have the right to ask for the actual data.

How Often Should Progress Be Reviewed?

The Education Act calls for annual reviews of the ISSP. However, educational advocates — and the RCYO in its systemic reviews — consistently recommend requesting term-by-term reviews, ideally three times per school year. This is not unusual or demanding; it is what the territory's own dynamic assessment philosophy recommends.

The argument for more frequent reviews is practical: if a goal is not working — if the intervention is wrong, the support is insufficient, or the goal itself was poorly calibrated — you want to know that in October, not in June. Annual reviews mean a student can spend an entire school year making no progress on a goal before anyone formally adjusts the plan.

At the start of the school year, or at your first SST meeting, request a schedule of formal progress review meetings for the year. Three meetings — one per term — is reasonable. Get this in writing as part of the ISSP.

Tracking Progress at Home

You don't have to wait for formal school reports to track your child's progress. Keep your own simple log:

• Note what your child tells you about school: what they worked on, what felt hard, what they feel good about
• Track attendance — if behavioral or anxiety-related absences are occurring, document dates and patterns
• Record incidents where you see the skills your child is working on showing up (or not) at home
• Note any regression: skills that seemed to be improving that are now worse, or behaviors that had reduced that are coming back

Bring this information to every ISSP review. Your data from the home environment is part of the picture. It also strengthens your position if you need to push back on a school report that says everything is going well when your experience at home says otherwise.

When Progress Is Not Happening

There are several possible reasons an ISSP goal isn't being met:

The goal was wrong. The goal was too ambitious, poorly calibrated to the student's baseline, or based on incorrect assumptions about the student's current level. Solution: revise the goal to a more accurate starting point.

The support isn't being delivered. The SSA hours written into the plan aren't being provided. The assistive technology isn't available or being used. The teacher changed and the new teacher isn't following the plan. Solution: document the gap and escalate.

The intervention isn't effective. The teaching approach or accommodation isn't working for this student. Solution: consult with the SST about alternative strategies, and if possible, with an itinerant specialist via telehealth.

External factors are interfering. The student is dealing with instability at home, community stress, health issues, or other factors that make school participation difficult. Solution: address the context in the plan — this might mean temporarily adjusting goals, adding support, or connecting the family with community resources.

When you identify that progress has stalled, your first step is a meeting with the Student Support Teacher and classroom teacher. Come with your own observations and ask directly: what does the data show, why do you think the goal isn't being met, and what is the plan to address it?

If the answer is that the support isn't being provided — the SSA hours aren't happening, the plan is being ignored — this is a compliance issue, not a student issue. Invoke Section 15 of the Education Act and the written ISSP agreement, and escalate to the principal if needed.

SSA Reassignment: The Most Common Progress Monitoring Problem

One of the most frequently documented ISSP failures in Nunavut is mid-year SSA reassignment. A student's ISSP specifies 3 hours of SSA support per day. In October, the regional budget is cut and the SSA is reassigned to a different classroom. The school informs the parent informally. Nobody formally amends the ISSP.

This is a violation of the student's rights. If the ISSP specifies SSA hours and those hours are being reduced, the school must:

1. Convene an SST meeting before making the change
2. Document the change in writing with a formal ISSP amendment
3. Obtain your informed consent for any change that reduces the level of support

If none of these steps occurred and the support has simply disappeared, put your objection in writing. Note the specific ISSP provision that is being violated. Request an immediate SST meeting. If the school does not respond within a reasonable time, escalate to the DEA.

Document the academic regression that occurs without the support — test scores, teacher observations, your own notes. This documentation is critical if the dispute escalates to a formal review.

The Annual Review: What to Bring

At each formal ISSP review, come prepared with:

• A copy of the current ISSP with your own annotations on what you've observed
• Your home observation log
• Any progress data you've received and your assessment of what it shows
• A list of goals you believe need to be revised, added, or removed
• Questions about the supports being provided and any gaps you've noticed

The annual review is not a ceremony. It is a working meeting. The ISSP that comes out of it should reflect what the data shows and what your child actually needs for the next year.

The Nunavut IEP & Support Plan Blueprint includes a progress monitoring template, an ISSP review meeting agenda, and a guide to escalating when support isn't being delivered as written. Get the full guide at /ca/nunavut/iep-guide/.

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